Not Just Pretty | Building An Effective Small Business Brand

Save time with email signatures

Your email signature file can be a valuable resource to save your contacts time and even to save you from writing repetitive emails.

First of all, what is an email signature?
It’s a little patch of text that you can set up in the preferences in your email program, and once it’s set up, it will be included in all of your emails. Nowadays, even some web-based email programs have email signatures available.

And, what do they do?
Have you ever had to dig through all of your emails from a client to find their phone number? Or, visit their website to get their address for a meeting? It can take a while. If you don’t have an email signature that includes your contact information, your clients, prospects and vendors are probably going through the same amount of effort to find your contact details. This can get pretty annoying after a while. And, if you can remove even small annoyances from your customer service delivery, then you’ll have clients who are that much happier.

What should you put in it?
At the least, a signature should include:

• Your name
  
• Your company name (be sure to include “Inc.” or some version of that if you’re incorporated)
  
• Your phone number
  
• Your website
  
• Your tagline (to extend your brand)
  

Your signature can also include a short promotion for an article you’ve written, a special offer, or even a subscription to your newsletter. This promo can change from time to time as you market different specials.

How do they save you from writing repetitive emails?
You can actually set up multiple email signatures within most email programs (Outlook and Mac Mail do this particularly well). If you find that you’re constantly writing the same kind of email, save a template of that email as a new signature. The next time that you need to write that email (and every time after that), you only have to select the email signature and do a bit of editing to your template. I use this for many types of emails, including:

• Various emails to new prospects who come in to my marketing funnel through my website.
  
• The email that goes out to new clients explaining my contract
  
• Emails that get sent to clients with each round of a logo
  
• Emails that go out with the final deliverables for a project
  

My signatures save me an average of an hour of time each week!

What should you write about in your newsletter?

This is usually the biggest concern that entrepreneurs struggle with when thinking about starting a newsletter. You’re an expert in providing your service or creating your product, and there aren’t many professions where that also includes writing articles and copy.

Keep in mind that you are the expert in your field, and most of your clients don’t know the things that come as second-nature to you. An article that you might consider basic or boring might be really helpful for your clients and target market. For example, I wrote this article on fonts, and many of my clients have been able to use that article to improve the overall look and legibility of their materials.

In addition to talking about some of the basics in your field, here are some other ways to find topics to write about:

• Answer the most common questions that people ask you. Every businessperson has those few questions that people constantly ask them. Some of mine were “What pages do I put on a website”, “Should I have a text-only logo or have a picture too”, and “What should I put on my business card”? Writing up the answers to these can produce great articles that you’ll be able to also place on your website to point people to time and time again.
  
• Ask your audience. I have invitations on my website and in the newsletter itself where I ask people about the questions and topics they’d like me to write about. It’s always great to find out exactly what’s on their minds!
  
• Consider your subscriber’s experience. If you have a lot of past clients subscribed to the newsletter, don’t just write introductions to your various services; also talk about the next steps they can take to grow their businesses.
  
• Brainstorm new ideas. Make a long list of everything in your expertise that you could write an article on. Keep this list, and keep adding to it as new ideas occur to you.
  
• Ask a colleague to brainstorm with you. This can be an especially fruitful tactic if you brainstorm with a colleague in a similar field, or someone who understands your profession and/or your target market.
  
• Subscribe to your competition’s newsletters. I subscribe to many other newsletters in my industry – both to keep up with the trends and to get new ideas. When I read an article that is particularly interesting, or that I don’t agree with, I’ll often write an article of my own to express my thoughts on the topic.
  
• Research on your competition’s website. Reviewing their blogs, article libraries, or even just their text can spark new ideas.
  
• Read industry and business magazines. If you’re thinking about business, you’re more likely to come up with ideas of your own on a topic!
  
• Think about the topics discussed in your education. Chances are, anything that you’ve taken a class on would be an interesting topic for your readers.
  
• Save emails and forum posts you write as a base for a new article. When you find yourself writing something that’s got potential, save it so that you can later expand it into a new article.
  

With all of these options in mind, you should be able to come up with a long list of article ideas.

Trademarks vs. copyright.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Some very quick tips:

For a word, very short phrase, or a term, you'll be looking at a trademark. For a logo, you'll also want a trademark.

Copyright covers long written works or images. You would copyright a brochure design or website, for example. Copyright would also apply to an information product.

You can begin to "stake your claim" to the that you plan to apply for trademark by simply putting a TM after the word. After you go through the registration process, the TM would switch to the register mark, a circle-R.

And, you only have to put the TM or circle-R on the very first instance of the protected word or phrase - not all throughout the page.

For more information:
James S. Huggins has written an excellent book on trademarks for small business owners and entrepreneurs. It will help answer all the questions that the USPTO's site doesn't answer easily. It's a thorough resource and easy-to-understand. His Trademark Is Not A Verb ebook is on sale at his site for $17.00 - a real bargain for the quality information that it contains!

And, for the final word, please contact a lawyer when you've decided to get all official about your trademark - you don't want to set things up wrong!

The Building Blocks of Visual Vocabulary: Consistency

Your Visual Vocabulary consists of the secondary design elements that are used in conjunction with your logo to form your brand identity. Your Visual Vocabulary is composed of the graphics, font styles, colors, and even the type of paper you choose.

Once you have determined the elements to use in your Visual Vocabulary, it is important to use those elements consistently throughout all of your marketing materials. This consistency will make your entire set of materials look like a family. Having a consistent set of marketing materials makes you look more organized and professional. It also makes your business more memorable, because the repetition of the consistent elements creates repeated impressions on your audience. The more you repeat your marketing images and messages consistently, the easier it will be for your clients to associate them with your business.

The four ways to create consistency in your Visual Vocabulary are:

1. Using the same or similar visuals and graphics throughout your marketing materials makes them instantly recognizable, which is becoming more important as marketing media messages become more prevalent and people become more inundated with them. The graphical elements that you can work with in your Visual Vocabulary include the backgrounds, text treatments (such as tagline styles), shapes, layout conventions, and the photo library you use.

Enhance your Visual Vocabulary's consistency by:

• Repeating some of the same graphics across all of your materials. Your logo should appear on all of your marketing pieces and business documents. Other graphics to consider repeating include your tagline, your contact information block, line art, patterns, and any unifying background or decorative shapes or color fields.

• Maintaining similarity in the type of visuals and graphics you use. If you regularly use photography throughout your materials and then switch to clip art for one piece, it will look out of place in your marketing story.

• Placing key graphics in similar locations. By placing some graphics, such as your logo and tagline, consistently in the same place across all of your marketing materials, you will make your materials look like a family.
  

2. Using a small group of coordinated fonts across all of your marketing materials. Your company should have designated fonts to use in the following situations:

• A logo font, which is typically not one of the fonts that come installed on Windows machines: it should be more unique and interesting. Some logos will have two or three different fonts in them. If this is the case, then consider using one of those fonts as the secondary font as well.

• A secondary font, used for headlines, sub-headlines, taglines, special text such as graphics and captions, and decorative text such as pull quotes, which are the large quotes that are used decoratively in articles and documents. This can be the same font as is used in your logo. This is typically an interesting and unique font as well. This may also be used as the font for your contact information in your stationery, depending on its legibility.

• A tertiary font is optional and may be used when the secondary font is not always legible, for mid-length texts such as pull quotes and contact information.

• A serif text font, for lengthy printed documents. Printed materials are more easily read if they are in serif font rather than sans-serif font.

• A sans-serif font, for shorter printed documents and on-screen use. Text on a computer monitor is easier to read in a sans-serif font than in a serif font.

• A website font, which may be the same font as is used as the main sans-serif text font, depending on how that font translates for online viewing.
  

All of these fonts should have similar or contrasting characteristics. Choosing fonts with similar characteristics will make your fonts match and create consistency throughout your documents. Choosing fonts with contrasting characteristics will build visual texture and interest into your materials. For example, you could pick all thin, sans-serif fonts such as Arial and Frutiger to create a harmonious, matching suite of fonts. Or you could pick fonts with contrasting characteristics to create greater interest, such as using a serif font like Palatino for the headlines and then using a sans-serif font like Verdana for the text.

3. Using the same, limited color palette across all of your materials seems obvious, but many entrepreneurs try to make their marketing materials look more interesting by mixing up the color palette of each piece. But instead of making the materials look more interesting, this spectrum of color makes them look disjointed and uncoordinated.

You can create your color palette by:

• The corporate colors established in your logo. Many logos are made up of one or two colors. You could pick one or both of these colors to make up your main color palette.

  If your logo has a lot of colors, you can choose a color or two out of your logo to use as your main color palette. Picking more than a couple of colors to use can make your materials look too bright and unprofessional.

• The same hue or shade. You can extend your basic color palette by using tints or shades of those colors. For example, if you have a navy blue in your logo, you can use a lighter or medium blue as another piece of your color palette, and it will still coordinate.

• Complimentary colors. Every color has a complimentary one-an opposite-on the color wheel. For example, yellow and purple are complimentary colors. This is the best route for extending your color palette if you have a logo with just one color or a logo that's black plus one other color. You can extend your color palette easily by using the compliment to your corporate color in your materials.

• Neighboring colors. Think of a rainbow. If you create a color palette of neighboring colors, you'll create a harmonious and calming feel to your marketing materials.

• The same type of colors throughout your materials. For example, if you use all bright colors, all soft colors, or all complex colors as your palette, you can mix up your color palette and still keep a feeling of consistency throughout your materials.
  

The exception to these rules is when your color palette is mixed up in an intentional way to enhance your brand message, or when you've assigned different colors to different service or product lines. For example, a company with a "bright," "playful," or "energetic" personality might want to mix up its color palette between pieces. Or if you have multiple product or service offerings, you might want to assign each offering its own main color, and use those distinct colors to differentiate your marketing materials for each offering.

4. Using coordinating papers for your printed materials. Paper can be an
inexpensive way to add some interest and depth to your Visual Vocabulary. You can do this in many ways:

• Choosing high-quality paper to print on will always make your materials look more professional. This typically means choosing a thick paper for your business cards and a coordinating paper from the same product line for your letterhead.

• Using glossy paper only when appropriate is best. Glossy paper might be great for a business card or a brochure, but it's not appropriate for your letterhead or other pieces that might need a personal touch. Glossy always looks higher-end and distances your materials from your reader.

• Colored or textured papers can add to your Visual Vocabulary, if they work with your brand message. If you are trying to create an artisinal or hands-on look to your materials, consider colored or textured paper. For a technical or medical look, stick with smooth, white paper.
  

Creating consistency through the repetition of the four elements listed above will make your business appear more professional and memorable. Consistent materials will also make you appear more credible and trustworthy. Consistency can help your business marketing efforts to be more successful.

Consistency bonus

There are a couple of bonus areas in which you can create consistency:

• The copywriting style that you use. Make sure that you consistently write in the same voice, use the same style of copyediting, and are addressing the same type of audience in your writing. Your materials will appear much more unified and cohesive if you do.

  Repeating some of the same words throughout your materials helps you to frame your customer's point of view about your services. This can help you to become known for the topics that you address in your materials.

  Some copyeditors will create an individualized "style guide" to edit your documents against, which will help you to create a consistent tone of voice across all of your documents, articles, and communication. Ask your copyeditor if they can provide this valuable service.

• The timing of your marketing. Timing is important. For example, if you traditionally send out an eNewsletter on a set day of the month, at a set time, your readers will come to expect to receive it then. If you send out four postcards per year, space them out evenly so that people receive consistent messages from you. Consistency in timing also makes you appear more professional.
  

About the Author

Erin Ferree is a logo, print, and web designer who has been making it easy for small businesses to stand out and to be visible, credible, and memorable for the past ten years.

When to send your newsletter?

Another thing to consider is the day of the week that you plan to send your newsletter out. Your clients will be more likely to read your newsletter if they receive it on a day when they’re not very stressed out and when they feel like they have time to read it. You also want to catch them when they’re in the mood to think about your topic, and to consider buying your products or services.

For businesses where your target is other business owners, this means Monday is right out. People are just coming back from their weekends on Mondays, and they’re often not thinking about improving their businesses or buying other services yet. Often, Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays are better days to catch an entrepreneur’s attention. A similar time schedule often works well with corporate employees.

If you’re running a restaurant, vacation or entertainment company, Wednesday or Thursday would be a great time to send out your newsletter since that’s when most people start to think about their weekend plans.

Fridays are generally bad days to send out newsletters – most people can’t wait to get away from their computers on Friday!

A weekend newsletter might be appropriate if you’re discussing religious topics or hobbies, like exercise, knitting, or cooking. Since people are more likely to think about their hobbies during the weekends, you might catch them in the mood to buy.

And, again (this is getting to be a theme, I know) – ask your clients what day they’d like to get your newsletter. There may be some hidden element of their schedule that you would have no way of knowing about – for example, the end of the month is typically a stressful time for people in a financial profession.

Stuff to consider when looking for a website host

• Available Backend Functionality: Running contact forms, forums, galleries, and other “whistles and bells” on a website require that the website host either have various scripts and programs available, or, at the least, have the capability to run those scripts and programs. It can be convenient to host your site with a company that has the scripts and programs that you need already installed on their servers, because then they’ll maintain the programs, upgrade them and take care of things for you.

  Ask your designer or programmer if you need to host your site on a Windows or UNIX platform. As the business owner, you don’t really have to know what the answer means, just that your site is hosted on the correct type of machine for your needs.

  
  

• Access to Customer Service: Imagine: it’s Friday afternoon, and you go to check up on your lovely website. And, when you type in your URL, you discover that the site’s down! Oh, no! So, now you dig around to contact support, and you discover that your only way to contact your support staff is by a website form on their site, and that they only answer questions from 8am to 6pm Eastern Standard Time, Monday through Friday! Aaah! Wouldn’t you be happier if you could actually talk to a person and get your site back up right now, instead of waiting, worrying and steaming about it all weekend long?

  So, when you sign up for a host, check out what their customer service availability is, and what methods they let you use to get in touch with people. I strongly recommend not going with a host that only offers a support email or web form – calling a phone number is often the best way to get things resolved. If possible, try calling their support line – see if you get a person or a machine, if there are long hold times, if the people you get in touch with are courteous, and helpful. Also, make sure that you can understand the support staff – that they’re not too technical, and that they don’t have unintelligible accents.

  
  

• Maintenance: Does the company update the software on the servers frequently enough to keep up with the latest advances? Do they perform maintenance at convenient times, or do they take down the servers during your prime business hours? Do the scripts and programs that they offer actually work? Make sure that the answer to all of these is “yes” before committing to a host.

  
  

• Email Needs: Having a branded email address is really important for your online brand. So, that means that your website host will actually wind up managing your email for you as well. Ask your computer guru whether you need an IMAP or Pop3 email account, and then make sure that your website host offers that type of account for you. And, have them set up your email so that it also looks like it’s coming from your branded email address. It’s often easiest – and tempting - to just set up an email forward to your existing account, but then any mail that you send out won’t have your domain name on it. Taking the time to set things up correctly will make your small business look bigger.

  Also, consider how many email addresses you’ll want to set up – many hosts will allow a set number of email addresses to be set up with an account. You’ll want one for each person in your company, of course, but then also having separate emails for different autoresponders, separate emails for your forms, and for different “departments” in your business, like administration, sales, and contacts, can really make your business look more like it’s not just you (even if it is).

  
  

• Storage Space: For the average website, any host will give you plenty of hosting space – my host offers up to 20 gigabites of file storage with every account they host. The average graphical site won’t go over 5 or 10 megabytes, so you’d never even approach the full capacity. But, if you’re planning to have PDF files available for downloads, integrate a lot of scripts, tools and software, or make audio downloads available on your site, those can really add to your site’s size quickly. Make sure you have the space you need available.

  
  

• Credibility: Make sure that the host you choose is established, and will be around for a while. You want your site to be up and available, and if your host shuts down, your site will too. You’ll also probably do some customization of your site to work with the host that you choose. If your host then shuts down, or makes major changes to its’ software systems, you’ll have to re-invest and re-code your site! Pick a host that will stay in business.

  And, host credibility becoming more and more important for email purposes – if your host gets blacklisted on spam sites, then you won’t be able to send out your emails! Make sure your host works with credible companies and has anti-spam practices in place.
  

• And, of course, price: Working with the cheapest web host, or a free hosting company, is usually not the best choice for a small business. But, for a simple website, you don’t need to be paying all that much for a good-quality web host. For example, I pay $8 per month for my host, which is a pretty reasonable price. And, many hosts will offer a discount if you pay for a year all at once – which is more convenient anyways!

Should your newsletter be pretty?

Text-only vs. HTML format: Text-only newsletters look like a standard email; there are no graphics or colors in it. HTML-formatted emails can have graphics, colored text, bold text, and larger text for headlines.

So, which one should you use? There are some experts who are really set on text-only newsletters, and others who only recommend HTML. Often, their reasons for making their recommendation are based on:

• Technical stuff: It used to be more common for graphically-based HTML emails to be rejected by email hosts as spam. Or, different email-reading programs would misinterpret the graphical content, resulting in a funky-looking, illegible email. This is becoming less and less of a problem all the time, though, as long as you have a well-coded HTML email template to work from.
  
• Ease of sending the newsletter yourself: Text-based emails, just by their nature, are very easy to write and format. HTML emails do consist of HTML code, and can be more difficult to format and send out every month. But, many email management tools now offer easy-to-use editing tools that you can use with your template to place the new content for each newsletter, seamlessly.
  
• Sales effectiveness: It’s long been said that graphics can increase your sales numbers. But, I’ve also seen many newsletters done in a text format that are very effective at selling products or services as well. So, it seems that the effectiveness of the sales in the newsletter is more likely based on the offer, product, text you use to promote it, the benefits, the audience and the price than whether or not you use a picture.
  

I think the answer depends on your business’s brand, what you do, your newsletter’s purpose, and your customer’s tastes:

• Business Brand: If your business has a rich brand and Visual Vocabulary, it can’t hurt to create a graphical newsletter to extend your brand. But, you can also extend your business brand in a text newsletter by beginning and ending each edition of the newsletter with the same text.
  
• What You Do: As a graphic designer, I couldn’t imagine having a plain-text newsletter. Fashion designers, jewelry makers, artists, photographers, interior decorators – anyone whose work is primarily visual in nature – should all strongly consider having a graphical newsletter. A copywriter, on the other hand, might benefit from the focus that a text-only newsletter would place on the words in the newsletter.
  
• Newsletter Purpose: If your newsletter is primarily intended to educate your potential clients, then a text-only newsletter could certainly work. But, if your newsletter’s primary function is to sell products, then you might want to consider going graphical, since that can help you make more sales.
  
• Customer’s Tastes: Your target audience can also help you determine the best format for the newsletter. For example, a very technical audience of programmers might prefer the straightforwardness of a text-only newsletter. Women tend to prefer images and be more visual than men. And, you can always ask your existing clients what their preference would be.
  

Rebuilding your business to work on the web?

One thing I’ve heard from a lot of new clients lately is that they’re “working on remodeling their business to work online”. But, when we dig into their plans further, I often find out that they already have a very successful offline business, but they think that creating a website means that they have to remodel their business to work like the rest of their industry does online.

In many cases, this just isn’t the case. If your business is working well offline, why make major changes in the way you serve your clients to work just like everyone else online?

For example, I recently talked to a small insurance agency. They have had a successful practice with a wide client base for 12 years. They feel that it’s time to have a website, and when we sat down to discuss the functionality of the website, they wanted it to offer automated quoting, automatic emails of possible discounts to their clients, and several other features that are available on many large insurance companies’ websites. But, when we talked more about their agency and why their clients came to them, they had all of these great stories of their agents interacting one-on-one, personally, with their clients. In fact, this personal attention was one of their biggest differentiators in the market. So, we’re looking instead at building a personal appointment setting feature, as well as a form where the client can request that an agent call them to answer their questions. These features fit much better into their business model, and make them stand out in the field.

Make a commission from Amazon Books

To earn a commission from any Amazon books you promote on your website:

1. Sign up for an Amazon Associates account:
http://associates.amazon.com/gp/associates/join/104-5828546-7026338?node=3435371/104-5828546-7026338

2. They have a tool that will generate a link that you can put on your website. This will be under your Associates account, in a section called "Build Links". This is actually a pretty cool tool; they have all kinds of links with graphics, without graphics, etc. available.

3. Copy-and-paste those links into your website's HTML code, or into your HTML emails!

That's all there is to it!

The final word on designing a successful year for 2007

If you're really looking to grow your business in 2007, one of the best things that you can do at — or before — the New Year is to meet with your designer and have a conversation about your goals and plans for the New Year,

You should discuss things like:

• Your business goals for 2007. If your designer knows about the changes you're planning for your business, they can help you to plan a marketing campaign and system that will help you reach those goals.
  
• Your marketing plans. Depending on your goals, you may need to market quite a lot, or just a little. And, the type of marketing that will serve you best will depend on how you're going to get to those goals –
  
• The number and type of the clients that you need this year. This will affect how frequently you send pieces out and even the types of pieces that you need to send. If you're a financial planner, and you only need to bring in a handful of very affluent clients with a lot of assets, your marketing campaign will look very different than if your plan depends on signing up several corporate accounts to manage their 401k plans. And, marketing to an existing client base often looks very different from landing new clients.
  
• New services or products you plan to offer. If you're creating new offerings, you should plan to create marketing materials to support their launch. Brainstorm with your designer about how you can create demand for these products early in their life cycle.
  

With this information, you'll be able to strategize with your designer about creating a successful plan for marketing your business for growth this year!