Not Just Pretty | Building An Effective Small Business Brand

Postcard

A postcard promoting a workshop on effective office communication between generations of workers:

Yet another excerpt from Stand Out!

Communicate Your Differentiation

The next step is to find ways to communicate your differentiators to your target audience. You can do this by using your differentiators as the foundation to create:

• Your business positioning: Your positioning is the underlying foundation of all of your marketing and promotional efforts. Often, your positioning is “for internal use only” – to be used to create and measure your marketing materials and efforts.

• A meaningful logo that tells the story of what makes you different: Use of symbols, fonts, and even the colors in your logo can begin to communicate your differentiators.

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  

  There's info on 5 more sways to communicate your differentiation in Stand Out! Plus, it talks about how to niche your small business, and how to use that niche and your differentiation to rise above your competition. Price: $47 Learn More or Order Now

Q&A: Product Photography

QUESTION:
I am speaking with several photographers about setting up product shots for the website, and had a quick question for you. Do you have a sense of how you would expect the product shots to be framed for the website? I will likely go with a white background but am unsure what to tell photographers in terms of whether they should expect to be shooting the product shots as squares, rectangles, etc.

ANSWER:

It is hard to say this early in the process (I'm just starting the logo for this particular website), but here are some general thoughts:

You want your photos to communicate your brand message, just like everything else in your design. But, since this particular brand has several messages (as many brands tend to!), there are a few ways you could go.

Rectangles usually look more sophisticated, which goes with the "keepsake/ luxury" part of your brand. Squares tend to look more hip and modern. So, it depends which way you want to go - either one could work.

In other associations:
Rectangular framing: Fine art, family photos, picture frames, albums, books, magazines
Square: Youth, perfection, balance, needs to be cropped, so that means that additional work was done

So, the framing of the photo is only a small part of the communication. The framing can communicate different things based on what the content of the photo also says.

You could ask the photographer what they think will look best, too - part of that will depend on the product/model styling and posing. Be sure to pick a photographer with experience posing models and styling products to communicate the overall brand message. The easy way to tell if that's the case up-front is to look at their portfolio; they shouldn't have a portfolio where all the photos look exactly the same. Then, ask them about the brand or campaign message that they were trying to reinforce through the photos - and how they accomplished that.

And, I do recommend white backgrounds - as long as they're not too white. Having a little shadow or texture in the background will keep it from looking sterile. Since "cleanness" in that sense isn't a part of your brand, then having some shading is what I would recommend. It will warm up the photo and make the product/model look like they're not floating in space.

Brochure Card

A brochure-style business card that I created for an esthetician:

More information on brochure cards is available at:
http://www.elf-design.com/services-stand-out-brochure-card.html

Printing Your Own Materials: Do's and Don'ts

Which marketing/ branded materials can you print on your own?

• Flyers: Since flyers are usually for a limited-time promotion, then their temporary nature means that you can take the liberty of printing them yourself. Of course, if you're handing out thousands of flyers, it might make more sense for you to have them printed. Or at least Xeroxed!

• Handouts: Since handouts are usually for a single event or talk, printing them yourself makes sense.

• PowerPoint slide deck summaries: Again, since these are customized or for one event only, it wouldn't make sense to print them professionally — unless you're presenting to thousands of fans!

• Letterhead: If you only print a few physical letters in a year, then printing up an entire batch of letterhead doesn't make much sense; especially when most printers have a minimum of 500 pieces. As a side note, letterhead and envelopes are also the only materials I don't recommend printing with digital printers because the paper stock doesn't look very high-quality.

• Invoices from Quickbooks: Again, they're one-off; printing them on your printer is the only viable option.

• Proposals: Actually, anything that's individually tailored to the prospect should be printed in your office.

• Mailing labels (Avery labels work great for this): Printing envelopes cost a lot.

• Binder covers and spines: Again, unless you're producing many copies of your binder, than buying blank binders at an office supply store and slipping your artwork into the plastic sleeve makes more financial sense than custom-printing on the binder itself.
  

Which materials can you absolutely not print on your own?

• Business cards. Between printing a bunch of cards, trimming them, the thin papers available for home use, and the low cost of printing cards digitally, there's no excuse to print these at home.

• Postcards. If you're printing a postcard, you'll run into some of the same problems with business cards. Print quantities, trimming them straight, and thin paper will all make your postcards look less-than-great.

• Letterhead: If you use more than a few copies of letterhead in a year (or, if you could think of other ways to use more copies of your letterhead), then I recommend going to the expense of printing the letterhead. It will pay off in the long run by making your business look much better put-together.

• Brochures. Have you ever seen a trifold brochure that's printed on a home printer? It's pretty obvious, and looks pretty poor. First of all, the paper is usually just regular printer paper — not thick or glossy like a nice brochure could be. And, home printers almost always leave some sort of margin around the edge of the page. Then, there's also the

• Envelopes. Unless your printer's pretty advanced, then printing envelopes might make you a bit crazy. I know that on every printer I've ever owned, the "envelope feed" function doesn't really work well. The printing may wind up crooked, or the envelopes might get jammed and make you fix your printer over and over again. Better to get them professionally printed and avoid having to pull your hair out in frustration.
  

Did I miss something in these categories that you absolutely need to know about? Let me know in the comments!

Printing your own marketing materials

Clients often ask me if they can print their own marketing materials in order to save money. This is a tricky question, because, yes, of course it's possible to print your own marketing materials. You've got an office printer, and some paper. So, sure, you can either take a PDF from your designer and print it, or lay something out in Word or Publisher and run it off.

But, beyond the question of whether you can print your own marketing materials is whether you should. And, whether you should depends on a few factors:

• The age of your business. If you're just starting your business, then printing some materials may make sense. It would be a cost-effective way to start getting clients in the door.

• Your confidence in your copy. You could use your early home-printed materials to test your marketing text with your audience — there's no use in professionally printing hundreds of copies of anything and then discovering that it doesn't connect with or make sense to your audience. So, print a few at home and see if they're effective first.

• What marketing materials you're planning to print. Printing a flyer out on your home or office printer sends out an entirely different message than printing your business cards yourself. So, ask if printing your piece at home is appropriate for the actual piece itself.

• The actual amount that you'll save. Printing things at home still has a cost associated with it. There are the hard costs of paper and ink. And, then there's the expense of your time — how much are you willing to spend waiting for your printer, fixing paper jams, and feeding in new paper? With the option of printing many pieces digitally these days, and discount printers such as PSPrint available online, the cost of professionally printing materials is not really that great.

• The loss of credibility that you'll face. What goes through your mind when you receive a packet of printed materials that are obviously printed on a home or office printer? Do you wonder if the business is stable? If they're worth their asking price? If they take pride in their work? Do you think about their level of taste? You don't want any of these sorts of thoughts going through a new prospect's mind. You want them to get your materials, be impressed, and then to consider hiring you — you don't want to create more questions in their minds.

• The likelihood that your competition's materials will look better. Unless you're in a very "homegrown" industry (like a babysitter or errand running service), then there's a good chance that your competitors are printing their materials professionally. How will yours stack up?
  

Another excerpt from Stand Out!

Spy on the competition.

Do a little ethical espionage to see what makes them tick and what makes you different. There’s nothing wrong with seeing what they’re doing, and they’re probably already spying on you a little.

Tips on Spying

• Start with the obvious... their websites. Read every article, study every page, and follow each link. Subscribe to their newsletters. Download their special reports. Read everything.

• Do a Google search on them, and read what others have to say. The media might have written up their company. Or, you might find customer reviews or testimonials, which are like gold to your research efforts.
  

There's info on 2 more sways to spy on your competition in Stand Out! Plus, it talks about how to niche your small business, and how to use that niche and your differentiation to rise above your competition. Price: $47 Learn More or Order Now

The Search Engine Trinity

In Cajun cooking, almost every dish starts with what's known as "The Trinity"—onions, celery and bell peppers. These 3 ingredients are the foundation of almost every savory dish. Whether you're eating gumbo, jambalaya, or even a Cajun soup, they all start with these components. These form a delicious base to each of these dishes.

Like Cajun food, getting a small business listed on the search engines also is based on a trinity of components. These components give your search engine efforts a base to be built off of, and ensure that you'll be successful. Those are: the ease of getting listed, the effectiveness of your listing, and then finally, the level of placement.

1. Ease: If you're like most small businesses, you've got a lot going on. You're running your business, doing your marketing, creating your products and/or delivering your services, and trying to squeeze in some life balance on the side.

Hours and hours of search engine optimization work are the last thing you need to add to your to-do list. You need a simple, easy system to get the most search engine attention for the least amount of work.

2. Effectiveness: Effectiveness is two-fold. First, you want your efforts to be effective with the search engines. You want them to look at your site's code and to rank you well.

Second, you want your listing to be effective for your searchers. If a searcher is looking for products or services like yours, then you want them to see your listing's description, read it, and to be compelled to click on it.

3. Position: Your website probably doesn't have to be ranked #1 for your best keywords to get all the attention you need—being in the top 10 is just fine for most small businesses. You also probably don't need to be ranked well for a very general term, like "consulting". You have to find the combination of search terms and position on the search results that works best for your business and gives you a balance of ease of maintenance (staying in the rankings) and bringing you good clients.

How do you take advantage of the trinity when you work on optimizing your site?

Here are some suggestions on how to address each of these issues in your plan:

EASE:

1. Start with solid advice. There are a lot of search engine systems out there, and a lot of "how-to" advice. Make sure that the system you're using has been tried and tested, so that you're not just going to be spinning your wheels as you work on your optimization.

2. Break your efforts down into short activities. Optimizing your site for the search engines takes several steps—and trying to sit down and just do them all, end-to-end, will take a while. To preserve your sanity, and to do things in a way that will make your efforts have the most impact, plan to do each step one at a time, and then upload your revised files and wait a bit before making additional changes. That way, you'll avoid going crazy, and you'll also be able to evaluate the effectiveness of your efforts along the way.

EFFECTIVENESS:

1. Really look at what you want your site to do for you. Is it really important that you get huge numbers of visitors to make lots of sales? It may be if you've got a product to sell. But, if you're a one- or two-person service business, then it's more likely that you only need a few well-qualified visits to make all the sales that you can handle.

2. Experiment with your description in your listing. Use different description tags on different pages of your website to see which compels more searchers to click. By looking at your site statistics, you should be able to see which page your visitors are coming in through.

POSITION:

1. See where you really need to be ranked. If your optimization efforts have gotten you to the second or third page, then you've already got a good start. You may just need to do a bit of work to raise your ranking to the first age.

2. Ask your best clients and visitors how they found you. What words were they searching on? Which search engine did they use? You want to get more of these "best" clients through your website, so asking clients who you already work well with about how they came to work with you will help you to make your listing more effective.

These few tips will help you optimize your website with a solid base of the optimization trinity—making sure the process will be easy, effective and will get you the position you need.

Presentation Folder

Today, a presentation folder that's printed inside and out. This was designed to match and create a Visual Vocabulary for the existing logo on the front.

Tips on fashionable email newsletters

Emma answers the question, "What's trendy in email design this year?"

http://www.myemma.com/askemma/ae20080204.php