Not Just Pretty | Building An Effective Small Business Brand

How to Determine Whether You've Chosen a Good Niche

Choosing a niche—a small, focused target market—for your services can be very beneficial to your business. It will help your clients to focus on and identify the services that you offer, and it will help you to develop deep expertise in a single area—and "niching" will help you to raise your rates and create a successful business.

But to maximize the benefits you'll get, you want to make sure that you choose a good niche. To niche well, there are several questions to consider:

• Can potential customers in your target market afford your services? If you're offering a high-ticket item to a target audience that doesn't have much money, then you can run into trouble. Or if your target audience doesn't control the buying decision or isn't authorized to meet the cost of your product or service, that can also lead to trouble. In these cases, you might explore packaging your services in a more affordable way, creating payment options, or choosing a new targeted niche market that will be easier to sell to.

• Do they put value on your services, and will they be willing to buy? Do they think that they your services? Even if your target audience is able to afford your services, they have to also feel that your services have value to them and that they need those services. If they think that your services would not improve their lives or businesses, then they're unlikely to make the purchase. Likewise, if your customers think that they can do it themselves, or that they don't have a need that your services will fill, then they won't make a purchase.

• Do they understand your services? If your target audience doesn't understand what you do—if it's too technical or esoteric for them to even understand what you're selling or why they might want or need it—then you'll have a very tough time making any sales at all. Make sure that your target audience can at least be taught to understand your products or services and the benefits they provide.

• How hard is it to find the people who are in your target market? If you can't find the people who will make up your target audience, then they likely cannot find you and your offering. For example, the easier it is to find networking groups or mailing lists that have large populations of people in your target market, the easier it will be to market to them by speaking at events and sending out direct mails.

• Are there a lot of other competing providers in your niche? If so, is there enough market for you? If the target you're marketing to is served by many other providers, then it might be difficult to capture enough market share to sustain your business.

• Is this niche within your abilities to deliver, and are you credible in it? Do you have experience serving this niche... or can you get that initial experience easily? Some ways to do this include through pro-bono work, discounts, or aligning with a professional organization to offer discounts to its members. You might also be able to read about the industry you're planning to market to, to learn more about the specific problems and challenges they face.

• Is the niche big enough to sustain your business? Are there enough potential customer companies or enough need in that industry that you plan to serve? If you choose a very specific niche, you might find that there are just a few companies that you could serve. If that's the case, you might want to widen your niche.
  

If your niche fits these criteria, then it's likely that you've created a great niche, one in which you will make more sales and grow your business.

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.

Is your niche working well for your business? If not, my workbook, Stand Out! Differentiate Your Business to Build a Solid Foundation for Your Brand, can help you to define your difference and find your best niche. Learn more about the workbook here!

Did you enjoy this article? I send a new article on designing and using logos, marketing materials, and websites out every month in my newsletter. They're sure to help your business stand out! You'll also get a free copy of our special report, "Brand Basics for Small Businesses", which talks about the 5 steps to making your business brand create bottom-line results for your business, by email. Get Articles | Learn More About The Newsletter

Define Your Difference: To Stand Out and Make Your Business Shine

Thoughtfully defining your business—and your differentiation—will help you to understand who you are, what you do, and what makes you different. Not many small businesses take the time to answer those core questions about their business, but those answers are essential to creating a strong brand identity, focused messaging, and effective marketing materials. Having these will make a stronger impression on your target audience—once you stand out, they'll be more likely to remember you when they have a need for your products or services.

Taking this step will make you stand out from your competition. Just think of your competition—and how they communicate about and market their businesses. So many people are out promoting their business without knowing these basic facts about their businesses, that if you have these elements in place, you'll outshine your competition.

In order to define your business's difference, you need to:

Determine your business's characteristics:

• Who You Are: What is your business all about? What is your mission, and what are your values?

• What You Do: What are the unique services and/or products that you offer?
  

Study and contrast your business with the competition:

• Who Is Your Competition: Who offers the same or similar services or products as you? Who are you consistently quoting your service against, or competing with for shelf space? These are your closest competitors, the ones with which you should be most concerned in the definition process.

• What Makes You Different: How are you different from those competitors? Do you have a specific area of specialty, either in the industry that you serve, problem that you solve, or the service/product that you provide? Do you serve a certain geographic area? Be careful to avoid the differentiators "better," "faster," and "cheaper"—they're either too subjective or too difficult to maintain as your business grows and matures. Your differentiators should stay with you for the life of your business.
  

Plan for your best customers:

• Who You Can Best Help: Determine who makes up your target market. It's best to determine both their demographics—facts like age, race, sex, occupation—and their psychographics—their motivations, hobbies, desires, and other factors that make up their personality.

• How Best to Reach Them: Once you know who you want to help, the next step is to determine how to let them know that you can help them. This means determining how to market your business and which types of media are best to get your message out.

• Which Differentiators Will Compel Them: Creating differentiators will also help your target clients to identify with you. If you tell them that you specialize in their industry and their problem, then they're much more likely to hire you.
  

Defining Your Difference by answering all of these questions allows you to thoroughly understand your business and to better communicate with your customers. When you are specific about what you do differently from your competition, customers can easily identify you as the most appropriate business to meet their needs. It truly simplifies your marketing, promotional, and passive income processes.

And, when you Define Your Difference first, before creating your brand or marketing materials, you will ensure that your brand and marketing efforts will make you stand out from your competition just by communicating these elements of your Brand Differentiation.

About the Author

Erin Ferree is the Owner and Lead Designer at elf design, a full service Brand Identity Design and Management Company that specializes in helping small business and entrepreneurs create a powerful and unique brand identity that differentiates them from their competition and attracts customers to them with Custom Marketing Package Designs.

Did you enjoy this article? I send a new article on designing and using logos, marketing materials, and websites out every month in my newsletter. They're sure to help your business stand out! You'll also get a free copy of our special report, "Brand Basics for Small Businesses", which talks about the 5 steps to making your business brand create bottom-line results for your business, by email. Get Articles | Learn More About The Newsletter

The Truth About Your Competition

Many business owners get very worked up about the issue of "The Competition". But there are many things to keep in mind about "Them" as you define your competition and plan marketing materials that stand out:

• Big businesses aren't your only competition. Be sure to think about the smaller businesses that offer similar products or services—sometimes they can be more of an issue than their size indicates.

• Your competitors are not just the other businesses that provide similar products or services to yours. Your competition also includes the other things that your customer could purchase to solve their problem, even things that aren't in your immediate field. For example, massage therapists and chiropractors could be in direct competition for relief of back pain. Also, look for alternative solutions that might give your clients more pleasure—for example, a married couple having problems might be more likely to go on a vacation than to seek counseling.

• Your competitors are often afraid of you, because you're their competition, too! So, keep that in mind—you don't need to be terribly concerned about them in many cases. Don't make yourself a wreck over it.

• Inaction, indecision, and postponement are other often-overlooked competitors. What happens if a client decides not to undertake the project or make the purchase? In these cases, you still don't get the sale, making this a valid form of competition that you should be concerned about.
  

Your competitors can even help you in many ways:

• Direct cooperation: Partnering with your competition can expand the services that you offer, enhance your product offering, and allow you to brainstorm and leverage the knowledge of others in your industry. Cooperation can often be more powerful than competition.

• Educating your target market: The competition's articles, websites, and marketing materials can help to educate your clients so that they come to you with enough knowledge to make an informed decision. You can even think of your competition's articles and information as work you don't have to do, as long as you agree with their viewpoint and find their pieces well-written. You could form an alliance with them to sell their information products as an affiliate, and make some extra money that way. Or you could link to their articles from your website to give your visitors more information on your industry.

• Creating a stir: Competition between your business and other businesses can generate publicity for your service or product offering, which can generate more perceived need or desire for the things that you offer. You might even get mentioned by name in an article!

• Providing information about what you are not: You can contrast your business with well-known competitors to point out what makes you different. By stating how you're different from a competitor who is widely known, you can often more easily express your differentiation.
  

As you can see, there's more to identifying The Competition than just finding other businesses that offer similar services to yours. You have to consider small and large businesses in your industry, and you have to think about the other businesses that provide other solutions to your clients' problems or give them more pleasure. You also shouldn't worry overly about your competition—they're often concerned about you as well. And watch out for inaction—clients might do nothing instead of purchasing your solution. Finally, remember that your competition can provide you with quite a bit of help—competition doesn't have to be a bad thing!

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.

Do you need help standing out from the competition and differentiating your products or services in your field? If so, my workbook, Stand Out! Differentiate Your Business to Build a Solid Foundation for Your Brand, can help you to identify how you're different from the competition, and to connect with more of your target clients to make more sales. Buy it today on my website at http://www.elf-design.com/products.html.

Did you enjoy this article? I send a new article on designing and using logos, marketing materials, and websites out every month in my newsletter. They're sure to help your business stand out! You'll also get a free copy of our special report, "Brand Basics for Small Businesses", which talks about the 5 steps to making your business brand create bottom-line results for your business, by email. Get Articles | Learn More About The Newsletter

Types of Logos: Text, Symbol and Combination Logos

There are three basic types of logos: text, symbol, and combination logos. The type of logo that will work best for your company depends on a number of considerations, such as the size of your company, the uniqueness of your name, and a variety of other factors.

Text logo

A text logo (also sometimes called a logotype or word mark) is a logo largely made up of the text of the company's name. This type of logo can have some graphic elements—lines, boxes, borders—that interact with, surround, or even form the letters. However, the graphic elements should be used as an accent to the text, not as a major or equally-weighted part of the logo.

A text logo works well when:

• You have a multi-word business name. If your business name is made up of many words, that are not commonly or easily abbreviated, or when an abbreviation may not be appropriate developing a text logo will keep the logo design as simple and clean as possible.
  
• You're working with an innovative, unique business name, as with Yahoo or Google. In each case, the business name is enough to make the logo memorable.
  
• You're designing a logo for a large company that offers many types of products, services, or a combination of both, that may be hard to define or "wrap up" in a single picture or symbol.
  
• You're designing a logo "for the long haul"—there is less concern about your company "outgrowing" a text logo—they are timeless and classic.
  
• Trademark protection is highly important—as long as your business name is unique, then a text logo will also be unique.
  

A text logo may not be the right choice if:

• Your business name is not unique; this can mean difficulty for building your brand recognition. Then, without a symbol, the logo will be more difficult to remember or to associate with your business.
  
• Your business name does not describe what you do, it can be hard to tell what products or services you offer when just a text logo is used. Taglines or other graphic elements will need to be employed to tell your audience more about your business.
  

Symbol logo

A symbol logo is the opposite extreme in design from a text logo. This type of logo includes neither words nor letters—only symbols, images and shapes.

A symbol logo works well when:

• Your company already has a high level of brand recognition. If who you are and what you do are already widely known, then you can use a symbol logo as an elegant and clean solution.
  
• You have been using a combination logo for some time and have now built up enough brand recognition for your symbol to stand alone. This is a common transition for a logo design to take when your company grows.
  
• You have a unique symbol in your industry—you wouldn't want to be confused with or mistaken for anyone else in your industry!
  
• You have the time and energy to trademark your logo, and then to police and enforce that trademark. This is how you ensure that your logo continues to be uniquely yours.
  
• You have a global presence and can develop a universal, graphic symbol that speaks to you and audiences. Additionally, a symbol can have meanings on many levels, and can also have different meanings in different cultures
  

A text logo may not be the right choice if:

• You are a company just starting out, you must have the budget and desire to educate your audience on your new symbol logo. This can be a difficult task.
  

Combination logo

A logo that in some manner combines both a symbol and the company name. The symbol and text can be integrated together, side by side, or with one located above the other.

Combination logos are the most common type of logo for several reasons:

• A combination logo offers the best of both worlds. This type of logo offers a memorable logo graphic that tells the story of who you are, what you do, and what makes you different, all in conjunction with your business name for easy identification.
  
• A combination logo is an excellent choice for a small- or medium-sized company or a company just starting out, to begin to build brand recognition, because a combination logo is both visually strong and explanatory. The symbol can speak to the services that the company offers, while the company name increases the company recognition.
  
• Combination logos are easier to copyright and protect than a symbol-only logo, because the logo symbol will always be used in conjunction with the business name. This automatically makes the logo unique.
  

You can use this guide to determine the best type of logo to design or to have designed for your company, based on the size of your business, how well-known you are, your business name, and your business plans, among other factors. Choosing the right type of logo design is the first step in building your company's visibility, credibility, and memorability.

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.

Did you enjoy this article? I send a new article on designing and using logos, marketing materials, and websites out every month in my newsletter. They're sure to help your business stand out! You'll also get a free copy of our special report, "Brand Basics for Small Businesses", which talks about the 5 steps to making your business brand create bottom-line results for your business, by email. Get Articles | Learn More About The Newsletter

Logo design at http://www.elf-design.com

3 approaches to positioning your small business

Your business positioning is a statement of what your business stands for – who you are and what you do, at the very core of your business. But, figuring that out isn’t always the easiest thing for an entrepreneur to do alone.

There are three major types of positioning that you should have for your small business, and that’s knowing where you stand:

• Relative to your competition: Where do you fall with respect to the other choices that your target has to get their project done, or get their problem solved? Who’s in your field, and what do you do that’s different from what they do?

• For your audience: What need are you filling for them? What do they want and desire? Who are they, and what motivates them in their lives (even outside of what your products or services can provide)?

• To your strengths: Whatever your positioning, make sure that you’re positioned comfortably. What I mean by that is that you’ll be able to deliver the best service in your niche, that you can do it well and repeatedly – all that sort of thing. And, what talents do you have that make this job the best for you? How do those talents contribute to the end result that your clients get?
  

These three positions should be harmonious, and they should feed into each other and work well together. You don’t want your positions to be at odds with one another, because then as your prospects learn more about you, you’ll start to seem as though you have multiple-personality disorder.

For a great tool to help you define your difference and your business’s position, visit my website and download my “Define Your Difference” Branding Worksheet. It’s full of in-depth questions that will begin to help you see your hidden talents and your unique approach to doing business. And, it’s free!

The importance of having a logo that stands out

Just the other day, I was talking with a colleague who runs a healing center. I was reviewing their potential logo designs (from another designer) and I was struck by the fact that every option they’d presented had a distinctly Asian feel. Brushstroke lines, calligraphic fonts, lotus flowers – Asian art elements were all that had been explored.

But, in the world of healing centers and competing businesses (massage therapists, acupuncturists, herbalists, etc.), this Asian theme is very common. So, would developing an Asian-themed logo really be a benefit to this business? Or would the Asian theme endanger their logo and identity, and make it more likely that the logo would blend in with the competitions’ logo and even be confused with other brands?

Being different can be scary. It’s hard to go a totally different path than everyone else in your field, especially when all of your competition seems to be succeeding and doing well. But, especially in high-competition fields, it can really help to develop an entirely different brand look than the competition.

Imagine that you’re a business prospect for businesses of your type. You’ve gathered some marketing materials, or looked at several business’s web sites. If the art styles are all similar, one business’s information might blend in with the next. If this particular customer has had a bad experience with a business with a similar brand look and feel in the past, they might pass those bad connotations along to your business – either consciously or unconsciously. Either way, that’s not desirable. Or, if they don’t like the art style that’s prevalent in your industry, they could be disinterested by the style and could feel less connected to your business.

On the other hand, if your graphics are different than everyone else’s, your business will stand out and attract more attention by being unique. Expressing your uniqueness and your differentiation will also help you to better connect with your target clients. This will bring you more business, make your sales cycle easier and make your business more successful.

Logo design ISN’T interior design… but both are an important part of your business brand.

Occasionally, when I’m starting in on a logo design for a client, they’ll bring up the way that their office or home is decorated when describing their design tastes. And, while this can be valuable information for communicating visual likes and dislikes to a designer, I caution against confusing interior design with logo design, or with graphic design of any kind.

The job of interior design is mainly to make your clients feel comfortable, relaxed and at home in your office. Or, in the case of your home décor, to make you and your family feel like your house is a home, to express your personality and tastes and to surround you with things that you love.

The job of graphic design is to communicate your business's story, and to connect with those clients to bring them in. The job of your logo is to perform as a visual “face” for your business, to act as an identifying marker on all of your business and marketing pieces, and to tell the story of who you are, what you do and what makes you different.

An interior design for your office can – and should – reflect components of your business brand. For example, your wall colors could be variations of your corporate logo colors, or should at least coordinate with your logo colors. Your furniture – desk, furniture, conference table – should all be of a style that reflects your business’s brand personality and philosophy. Artwork should also reflect your brand themes. Even the level of clutter, or the number of books visible in your bookshelves can be a reflection of your business’s brand. I have one client whose hand towels in the bathroom are matched to her corporate colors. It’s a small detail, but her clients often comment on the level of attention given to all of the touches in her office.

So, while your brand can inform your interior design, keep in mind the different jobs of each type of design, and make sure that those functions are being performed as well as possible.

A logo isn’t a guarantee

The other side of the spectrum from the “problem-based” marketers are those who are absolutely committed to “truth in advertising”. These business owners often want to create very safe logos that don’t seem to promise too much from their businesses. They’re concerned that if they develop a logo with an underlying message – like “growth” or “transformation” – and then each and every one of their clients doesn’t get that exact same result, then they’ll get a reputation for lying and being a “bad marketer”.

But, a logo isn't a guarantee. It’s an expression of your company’s personality and mission. It should be a positive, optimistic, and enthusiastic declaration of the results you’re trying to create in the world. Don’t create a meek logo that essentially will sell your company short.

Of course, you don't want to lie or exaggerate so much that it's silly. You should be comfortable in your logo, and in the perception that your logo creates for your customers. You should create a logo that sets the bar at a reasonable, achievable level for you to attain most of the time.

But, if the odd client works with you and doesn’t get the results that your logo symbolizes, then it won’t be the end of the world.

Problem-based marketing and your logo

Marketing based on your target audience’s problems and your solution to those problems is a hot topic these days. The basic theory is that you should make your prospects feel their own pain more intensely by telling stories that “paint a picture” about the problems that they could be having, or the fears that they are experiencing – and that this imagery can help bring more clients in your door.

Occasionally, I get a client who’s heard about problem-based marketing and who wants to apply that to their logo. And, while problem-based marketing can be a really effective tool to base your marketing materials on, I don’t recommend that you actually use your logo to show your customer’s problems.

Your logo will appear on each and every piece of marketing that you put out about your company. Just imagine that your prospect has seen one piece of your marketing, with their problems screaming from it, loud and clear. Then, they decide to come to your site and learn more. There’s the problem again! They request more information in the form of a brochure, and when they get it, the envelope has the big, scary problem on it again, and so does the brochure inside (of course!). If they’re not petrified by this point, they sign up – and there’s the problem on the invoice! And throughout the product! Oh, no! You’ll either scare them off or numb them to the problem, which isn’t the goal.

What if you have a couple of different target markets with different problems? Do you then develop a couple of different logos, with the different problems? Make one super-complicated logo that illustrates all of the various problems in one place?

Speaking of complicated, most problems have quite a lot of details. The ideal logo is simple, straightforward and clear – if you try to illustrate a logo with all of the elements of a problem included, you’ll wind up with a logo that doesn’t scale well and that looks like a jumbled mess.

Instead, a positive logo that tells the story of your business - who you are, what you do, and what makes you different – is a better approach. You want your logo to create good feelings and a feeling of connection and attraction in your ideal client – you don’t want it to scare or repel them.

The best way to do problem-based marketing is through your photographs in your Visual Vocabulary, and by using vivid imagery in your text to walk your prospects through creating their own, private picture in their minds. That way, the specifics of the situation that each prospect paints in their minds will be unique. Allowing your customers to create their own picture often results in stronger, more personalized imagery. This will give the picture a greater emotional pull for each client than presenting them with a logo or photo that may not have any personal meaning, and may not connect as well with their hearts.

Splitting a Brand Design Project Between Two Design Firms

I'm often asked if I could just do either the print side or the website side of a brand design project. And while that's certainly possible, I don't recommend it. This sample shows why.

Splitting a branding project typically results in a lack of consistency between pieces in your marketing kit. All of your brand materials should have similar design elements. When a project is split among different design firms, often those firms don't have a similar style, and you can wind up with print collateral, for example, that looks dramatically different from your website. In this case, when potential customers receive your business card and then go to your website, it might take them a moment to realize that they're in the right place…and that moment can affect the level of trust that you build with them. Since trust is one of the most important factors in the buyer/seller relationship, breaking this trust can have a poor effect on your sales.

Projects are typically split up for a few reasons:

• Lack of full-service design capabilities. If the firm you choose has strengths primarily in just print design or just web design, then that firm will probably not be the best choice to execute both projects. Many firms do offer both print and web services these days, though, so you might look around for a firm that can fill both needs.

• Short timeline. If you're looking to launch your business or product quickly, you might find that one firm can't offer you the turnaround time that you need to get to market fast. If this is the case, and you split the project in half so that the halves can be developed simultaneously, you might actually harm your brand: there will be no opportunity to create consistent graphics between the two projects. You might have better results if you design a minimum number of materials and a shorter, less complicated website for the launch, and then continue to expand your suite of materials after your company or product is up and running.

• Lack of budget. Developing a full brand collateral suite can be an expensive undertaking. However, you're often better served by having fewer materials that are consistent and of a high quality than having more materials that have been pieced out to different firms at a lower initial cost. Good, matching marketing materials will add a lot to your credibility and should last quite some time; great materials can last for the life of your business!

• Hesitancy to decide between firms. If you've requested proposals from several firms, and you really want to work with each of them because they're all so great, resist that temptation. This strategy won't have the best result for your brand, and your brand is one of the most important tools in your business's toolkit.
  

If you must split the project between two firms, you can get a better result if you insist on:

• Communication between the two firms. If the two firms both talk about your Brand Foundation, then that ensures that your marketing pieces will all be on track in terms of their design's messages about who you are, what you do, and what makes you different.

• The creation and use of a Visual Vocabulary and Brand Rules document. Make sure that one firm—typically the one that designs your logo—also will create and deliver a Visual Vocabulary and Brand Rules tailored to your business. These two elements are not always a guaranteed deliverable, so you might have to request that they be created. Your Visual Vocabulary is made up of all of the graphics that supplement your logo to form the graphic "face" of your business and anchor your brand identity. This can include design elements such as:
  
  
  • Font styles
    
  • Colors
    
  • Shapes
    
  • Layout conventions
    
  • Backgrounds
    
  • Photographs
    
  • Special textual treatments
    
  • Paper type
    

  Your Brand Rules document will detail the use of each of these elements, as well as the specifics of your logo and the "do's" and "don'ts" that surround the use of your logo design.

• Completion of the logo, Visual Vocabulary, and Brand Rules before the rest of the project begins. Or, you can have one of the final design deliverables—or sets of deliverables—completed before the design on the next one begins, and have the next one designed to match.
  
  
• See if the two firms will collaborate on the two projects. If the two firms are agreeable to it, and your budget allows for a few extra hours, have the two firms meet to offer feedback and suggestions to each other on their designs. Some firms might not agree to this, though.
  

Splitting up a project haphazardly can be detrimental to your brand, but if you find that it's necessary, and you manage the process carefully, you can still create a strong brand that will create beneficial bottom-line results for your business.

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.

Did you enjoy this article? I send a new article on designing and using logos, marketing materials, and websites out every month in my newsletter. They're sure to help your business stand out! You'll also get a free copy of our special report, "Brand Basics for Small Businesses", which talks about the 5 steps to making your business brand create bottom-line results for your business, by email. Get Articles | Learn More About The Newsletter

Read more about brand identity and logo design at elf-design.com