Small Business Marketing

Have you come up with a great name for your business or a service you offer?
Did you have a great logo designed that is unique and memorable?
Did you know that your name and logo are valuable assets of your business?

Many businesses don’t understand the value of registering a trademark for your identifiable assets, but doing so allows you to protect your brand in the event someone infringes on your mark.

Marketing your business is a process similar to a home renovation: you need a general contractor to call the shots and make everything fit together.

I made this statement on my Facebook page and now will explain why this is an important analogy. I come in contact with many small business owners that hire different companies that “specialize” in one particular online marketing task.

Focus, focus, focus

It’s the mantra of many involved in small business marketing and is important to those of us who need to deliver client projects while continuing to market our businesses. What marketing should your small business consistently execute that will deliver proven results? Here are my recommendations for where you should focus over the next year.

Marketing people love to write about marketing blunders and mistakes and we all have our opinion on what should be included in the top mistakes every small business must avoid. However, even though we continue to make these blunders visible, I still see these mistakes made, costing small businesses dearly in terms of dollars and results.

The Guardian Life Small Business Research Institute published a report in June 2010 called Six Dimensions That Characterize Success-Oriented Small Business Owners. The survey is based on analysis of a survey of 1,100 small businesses with between 2 and 99 employees. These 6 dimensions include collaborative, self-fulfilled, future focused, curious, tech savvy and action oriented.

The answer, of course, is yes. And even if you don’t have a logo, your business still has a brand.

However, few small businesses really understand what a brand is and why it is important to their overall marketing strategy.

Brand is the perception the world has of you and communicates your personality and influences your prospects’ opinion of who you are and whether they want to do business with you.

In conversations with small business owners, I have realized that my conversation with them takes the following structure.

Business owner: I want to add viral marketing / social media / Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn (pick your favorite platform) to my marketing efforts.
Me: Of course, great idea but first who are your ideal customers as that will determine which platform may make the most sense?

I’ve never been a great sales person. Heck I don’t even think I’m a good sales person. As a matter of fact, I hate selling. However this weekend at my golf club, people thought I was a great sales person (which I found rather humorous) because I was easily selling raffle tickets to raise money for the Susan G.

As many of us get into summer activities, one thing we need to remember is that as a small business owner, we are always creating an impression of our business, affecting our brand and reputation. Whether we are out to dinner with family and friends, socializing at the golf course, tennis courts or beaches, how we behave at all events, whether fun or business oriented, is something we need to recognize as part of our marketing activities.

I was asked an interesting question during one of my coaching sessions:

As a small business owner, if you were to focus on only three marketing activities over the next six months, what would they be?

That made me stop and think for a bit. Putting the gears in motion and applying the power of threes, I realized that this question and its answer would help other small business owners focus on what is important for them to be found.