• 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.

The definition of a trademark from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is a word, phrase, symbol or design, or a combination thereof, that identifies and distinguishes the source of the goods of one party from those of others. Trademarks identify a product, service, person or thing from others in the same field to avoid confusion and to separate your business from all the others.

You can establish rights based on use of the mark in commerce without a registration, but there are benefits to owning a federal trademark registration:

• Provides greater protection for your most valuable asset – your company name and/or logo;
• Grants you as the owner, nationwide right to use its mark in areas where you are not currently doing business;
• Allows you to use the registered trademark symbol, telling the world that you value and will protect your intellectual property rights;
• Eliminates the likelihood of confusion in the market by one of your competitors using the same or a similar trademark on potentially competing products.

In addition, when Facebook enabled page owners to get a user name for their Facebook business pages, a registered trademark owner was able to notify Facebook with their trademark information to prevent others from taking it. In my case, Facebook applied Masterful Marketing to my page automatically.

A Valuable Lesson

I began using Masterful Marketing® as a brand in October 2007 and filed for registration in December of 2007. I went through the process because my brand is unique and important to my marketing efforts. Never did I realize how important that registration was until recently.

A couple weeks ago, I was reviewing my Google Alert for Masterful Marketing (you do have a Google Alert for your company name, yes?) and discovered that another marketing coach launched a newsletter named Masterful Marketing! I immediately checked whether this was a violation of my trademark and found out that it was. My attorney contacted the other marketing company with a letter explaining that they were infringing on my trademark and they quickly apologized and are in the process of changing the name of their newsletter.

Using Masterful Marketing as the name of their newsletter was an infringement on my trademark that would have caused confusion in the market for those who recognize my brand. Because the mark is registered, we were able to easily prevent an issue with someone else using the mark for a similar product or service.

The Marketing Lesson

• Never use a name without doing your homework! Research its use and check for trademarks before you invest in it.
• Protect your name so that you can stop others from infringing upon your rights. Going through the trademark process is easy and the legal fees are well worth it.

Have you registered a trademark for your brand?

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Protect Your Brand: Register a Trademark is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

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. A brand:

• Is everything you are, the value you deliver and the total client experience. Every image you project needs to consistently reflect the personality of your business.
• Reflects your business’s promise, message and values. Your identity should be consistent with, and reinforce, your purpose and your core message to your customers.
• Conveys the expectations and promises that you extend to your clients in terms of quality, service, reliability and trustworthiness, shaping their perception of you and your business.
• Helps the audience differentiate you from your competitors, positively influencing their decision to hire you.

A good brand communicates clearly, artistically and creates credibility. It enables you to provide customers with an image that can evoke feelings about your business, having a powerful impact on whether someone wants to do business with you.

• When someone looks at your business card, website or marketing piece, what does your image project?
• Does this image reflect your business’s personality and values?
• Is your brand consistent in every aspect of your company – from your materials, to your attitudes, to the way you answer the phone, to the way you conduct yourself in public?

How do you determine your brand?

If you have never thought about your brand and just let it happen, it would be beneficial to take some time to determine what your brand projects and whether it is consistent with your values. Ask customers the first words or images that come to their mind when your business is mentioned. If they consistently respond with adjectives that fit your business such as reliable, committed to excellence, or delivers quality on time and within budget, then your brand has been developed and you can now take it to the next level. When responses are inconsistent, ambiguous, or refer to attributes such as cost, it is an indicator of a weak brand image.

If you have a weak brand, determine what it should be and focus on marketing efforts that help build awareness around your brand. Remember that your brand is developed through an entire customer experience and needs to be reinforced consistently through your Web site, sales tools, promotional items, customer service, messages and other aspects of doing business with you.

Evolving your brand

If you have developed a good brand, it should continue to evolve with your business. As your business matures, so should your brand. Evolving your brand does not mean changing your brand but rather refreshing, updating, or clarifying the image you use and the emotion it projects. If you have had the same logo for several years, talk with a designer to see if you can update its look without changing the overall image it projects. If you don’t have a logo, consider having one developed. But if your brand is weak, a little evolution is needed before you embark on a new marketing campaign.

One last tip: Brands take time to develop so avoid totally re-branding your business unless you truly believe you need to (for example, if your brand has been associated with a negative feeling or event).

How well does your brand project your business?

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Do Small Businesses Need a Brand? is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

This is post six in the year end marketing review series to help small business owners get ready for a wonderful new year.

Most small businesses have a Web site and some marketing materials that most likely were written a few months ago but maybe longer. Keeping your content fresh, whether it is on your Web site pages, blog or printed materials is important to establishing your credibility and a consistent brand.

Remember that your brand is everything you do and say, not just the visual image your business projects. If your marketing tools are inconsistent with what you tell people, that reflects poorly on your brand. Ensuring your content is up-to-date and your message is consistently delivered to your prospects is an important exercise that should be done at least once a quarter. The more often you review your content, the less work it will become. Doing this review once a year most likely means a lot more content needs to change.

Let the Review Begin

We’ve just determined if:

• Our target market has changed;
• Our products and service offerings were aligned with the needs of our target market;
• We know what makes us different;
• Our core marketing message helps your prospects decide why they should do business with you.

Armed with this information, it’s time to review your materials for consistency and accuracy with what you are actually providing your clients. Start with your Web site and make changes there. When you are happy with the content, then you can update your print materials (if you have any) accordingly.

As you review your content, keep the following questions in mind:

• Do I clearly identify on the home page who I work with, what I do for them and how I help them so I get my ideal client’s attention quickly?
• Are the description of my service offerings still something people can buy or have I changed the pricing and packaging and forgot to update the details on the Web site?
• Have I added a great new service or product offering to my lineup but forgot to add it to my Web site?
• Is my profile accurate or do I need to update it? What does my profile look like with respect to the one I have on LinkedIn?
• Do I make it easy for people to connect with me via my social networks?
• Do all the links on my site still work?
• Is this the year I should commit to adding a blog to my site and create a plan for providing my target market great content?

It’s easy to get caught up in the day to day activities of running your business and working on your business usually gets put aside. But your Web site content, marketing materials and consistent brand is too important to put aside and forget. I know I had to revise my Web site content to align what I was actually providing to my clients with what was described on the Web site.

What questions did I miss that we should be asking when reviewing our marketing materials for quality content?

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Marketing Content Review is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

Will the Change Help or Hurt?

A former client of mine that I’ve worked with for quite a while decided to update their brand. They had talked with me about it while I was there helping them out as they looked to hire a VP of Marketing. They had recently received VC funding and they were planning some much needed expansion of the marketing organization. My assumption was that they would refresh the image but keep the fundamental style, as after four years, their brand had an awareness in the computer security market.

Rapid7 - Original Logo

As you can see, the new logo is quite different from the original. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t dislike the new logo. But my first impression is that they took a distinctive logo and changed it into something that looks very similar to other high technology company images. The original logo was created to project speed and agility and among a sea of vendors on web sites and trade show signs, the logo stood out and was noticed.

Of course, I may not be too objective as I was involved with the original logo design. But you tell me if you think changing their logo will help them or not.

Rapid7 Updated Logo

And it’s ok if you like the new better than the old. I’m looking for opinion about changing your brand drastically and whether this change is for the best. There are definitely times where companies need to do so, but this company was doing well, have a great reputation and are growing rapidly – all reasons why not to change.

So let’s start this conversation. Give me your opinion on the new brand.

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Updating Your Brand is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

Knowing What You Should and Should Not Do Yourself

Entrepreneurs and independent professionals love to do it themselves. I know, I’m one of them. But coming to grips with what you can do yourself, what you should do yourself and what you should stay completely away from is a great learning experience that will benefit your business far better than learning how to execute the best direct marketing campaign.

But many of us entrepreneurs and independent professionals also need to watch how much money we spend so we continue to have a business. But there are ways to cut costs while getting expert professional help.

I have been given the opportunity to write a monthly column for a publication, and in return they have given me a quarter page ad. I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on the ad, so I opened my trusty Photoshop and proceeded to create the ad with the copy I wanted. The image below is my rendition.

Then I sent the ad I created to my designer to make it better.

Now why didn’t I think of that design? Because I’m not a designer. And, as you can see, the ad created by the designer is, of course, far better than what I could do. Where I saved money was by providing the designer the copy and overall theme for the ad. She applied her expertise and tweaked the copy to make it stand out more.

As a business owner, you can save money in marketing doing the things yourself that you do well and bringing in an expert to do the rest. If you can write, do your own writing for the Web, brochures, articles and other materials and engage designers, web developers and other specialists to take your ideas and make them stand out.

©2012 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

The Balancing Act in Marketing is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.