Not Just Pretty | Building An Effective Small Business Brand

What's your business's purpose?

A friend asked me recently "how do you know what you're supposed to be doing?". And, he meant this on a grand scale - a "why are you here" type of question.

My answer to that was another couple of questions:

• If you were put in an empty room for a while, what would you wind up itching to get out and do? What would you ask for to pass the time? (and, sleeping and reading aren't really answers here... we're not talking about filling the time, but what you'd really want to do)

• If there's one thing that you do now that got taken away from you and made you sad that you couldn't do anymore, what would that one thing be?

And then I started thinking about this in respect to small businesses, and how they always have a hard time answering the deeper question of what's motivating their businesses. Beyond wanting to start something on their own, and beyond wanting to work with their clients, why is it that they're compelled to go to all the work of starting and running a business?

Your answers to this may inform your "why are you here"? And also hint to why you're running your small business, and what you want to help your clients create in their lives. And, your answer to this should inform your overall brand design and brand message - if you can clearly tell people why you're doing your business, they might read that and have a deeper understanding of your motivation, and be able to connect with you on that level.

How To Stand Out At A Trade Show

Think of the last time you were on the midway at a state fair. Every booth was brightly colored, full of interesting things to see, do, and win. Hawkers yelled: "Step right up!", "Three tries for a dollar!", "Win a stuffed bunny for the lovely lady!" Lights flashed, kids ran around, and everyone seemed to be talking at once.

A trade show is like the midway at the state fair.

There may not be quite so many stuffed bunnies at a business trade show, but the level of noise and distraction is just about the same. There are lots of other businesses competing for your customers' attention, all with product demonstrations, service information, and free giveaways. On top of that, there may be speakers, new technologies to play with, raffles, food booths, and networking opportunities.

How do you make sure that your company doesn't get lost or overlooked in all the noise and commotion?

And how can you make sure that your (not-small) investment of time and money will pay off for your company? That you won't end up sitting alone in your booth for hours, wishing that someone would stop in and talk to you?

The answer is in the pre-show preparation.

If you're setting up a display at a trade show, you have to do more than just pay for a booth space, put on a nice outfit that morning, and walk in the door for your company to get real results. You have to think about how you'll cut through all the "noise" to get in touch with your target audience.

What do you have to do to prepare?

1. Create a strategy. Saying "I want to go to this trade show and get customers" is fine, but that's every vendor's goal. You need to create a real, measurable goal for the show before you even sign up.

Ask yourself things like: Why am I here? Am I promoting a particular product or new service? Am I trying to grow into a particular target market? How many people do I want to connect with? What types of people do I want to talk to?

Then, check the show you're thinking of against these goals. You'll want to make sure that enough people will be there, that they're in your target audience, and that you have a reasonable expectation of getting a good return on your investment.

2. Determine the one (or two) things you really need to tell people about. The people you meet at the trade show will be distracted. They'll be tired (or soon-to-be tired). They may be far from home. Their feet will probably hurt, and their arms will be full of promotional trinkets, brochures, and paper they're planning to recycle just as soon as they can find a bin.

These are definitely not ideal conditions under which to meet new prospects. Don't freak them out further by trying to tell them everything you can do for them and every detail of your offer.

Decide before the show what might be most appealing to the show's attendees—you should be able to get demographic information about them from the show's organizers when you sign up. Then plan your strategy and marketing materials for the show around promoting that one aspect of your offerings.

3. Set the stage for follow-up. You probably won't make a big-ticket sale at a trade show. You'll be lucky to make a small-ticket sale unless you're selling products, but even then, it can be hard to get prospects' attention long enough for them to pull out their credit cards.

Instead of aiming for an immediate sale, set up a system to get your visitors' contact information and follow up with them later. This may be as easy as a fishbowl drawing for a prize with a disclaimer that all entrants will be subscribed to your email newsletter. Or you could offer short free consultations to those who sign up. You could also give away an article or report to be emailed to visitors after the show.

Any of these systems is inexpensive, gives you a way to get visitors' emails and/or phone numbers, and provides you with an excuse to follow up later to talk about your product or service—when your prospect is less distracted and overwhelmed.

4. Consider a promotional item. You may need to give out a promotional item to get trade-show zombie-people into your booth. If you do, then make sure it stands out—that it's not just another pen or mini candy bar.

Standing out doesn't mean that an item needs to be expensive. Some of the best and most sought-after items I've seen at trade shows have included hand-held paper fans (it can get hot in convention halls), massage lotion to soothe tired feet later that evening, and good-quality bags to hold all the "stuff" people tend to accumulate at these events.

Just make sure that whatever you give away has some value to your booth visitor and makes sense for your business. That way, it will be less likely to be thrown out after the show and more likely to make you memorable.

5. Wrap it all up with your booth design. There will be visual chaos at the show. The lighting will probably be less-than-ideal. So you'll want to design graphics and signs for your booth that are easy to see, easy to read, not too busy, and that reinforce your brand.

Your first step is to ask the organizers if you need to bring a table and booth structure or if one is provided. If you need to bring one, be sure to source supplies and make delivery arrangements well in advance. If one is supplied, ask about attaching signs, banners, and graphics to the structure. Ask if materials to hang them will be provided and if there are restrictions on attaching stuff to the booth. You don't want to show up with a roll of duct tape and discover that you'll be charged a big damage fee if you use it.

Then, plan to print large-format graphics for the booth. You'll want to include your logo and simple text about your offering. Keep this very simple—most people won't slow down while walking by, so you won't have long to catch their attention! You can also consider using photos, but you'll need very high resolution pictures to get good printing results on large graphics, and that can be expensive. Be sure that your booth graphics match your Visual Vocabulary as well.

Also, consider using freestanding or tabletop easels and printing posters. Get the posters mounted on foam core board and display them around your booth. These are especially effective near the front of the booth for visitors who can't read text that's far away.

Decide the marketing materials you'll bring with you. Again, base this on your goals and the one or two things you need your visitors to know about at this show. Don't take every piece of collateral you've ever created and spread it out on the table, because that will only make visitors uncomfortable.

Don't forget about decorating the top of your table. Ask the organizers if tablecloths will be provided, and if so, what color they'll be. If they're not provided or the color doesn't compliment your brand, you'll want to get a tablecloth for your booth. Consider putting a nice vase of fresh flowers on the table top, or a bouquet of balloons to add inexpensive color.

Think about how you'll display your marketing materials and promotional items. Should you lay them flat? Stand them up in acrylic holders? Fan them out or stack them up? You may want to try several arrangements until you find the one that's most visually pleasing.

Also, think about how you're gathering follow-up information—do you need to highlight a fish bowl for business cards or display a stack of response cards? Choosing the right place and way to display these items can really affect your response rate.

Finally, consider how the booth will look throughout the course of the event. As people take marketing materials, pillage your candy bowl, and pick up promotional items, your booth may start looking messy. Straighten it up from time to time to keep it looking professional. 

These 5 preparatory steps will help you cut through the craziness and clutter at your next trade show. And, then instead of wishing for visitors, you'll find that your booth is packed like the "win a bunny" booth on the midway at the fair! 

Q&A: Making a Word document look like an eBook

QUESTION:

I've written an eBook, and now I want to make it look professional. But, I want to use Word as my "layout program". Help?

ANSWER:

Word is really not designed to act as a layout program, but there are a few things that you can do to dress up your text and to make your product look more professional:

• Start by designing a graphical cover in Illustrator, Photoshop, or some other graphics program.
  For design ideas, take some books off your bookshelves to see what the cover might look like. Choose simpler, blockier covers to model - these will be easier to use as a guide than a more complicated, layered cover would be.
  
  To easily add graphics, try stock photos. Search on istockphoto.com for an affordable stock photo. Be sure to buy a high-resolution version (even though an eBook is a digital product, you'll want to make the cover high resolution so that it will look as good as possible. You may also find that you need a high resolution version of the photo for later promotions, so having the high resolution version around (and spending a couple of extra dollars in the beginning) won't hurt matters.
  
  If you don't have Illustrator or Photoshop, then you can design a simple cover in Word. Use the "Drawing Tools" menu (look in the Help file for the location of yours - it differs in different versions of Word). Get a custom look by selecting custom colors, and not using Word's built-in color palette. 

• Then, design a matching page header and/or footer for the subsequent pages. These can be as simple as a stripe across the top and bottom (match the color of the stripe to the colors on the cover), the title of the book, your business's URL, and of course, a page number. Insert these as text and images in the header and footer of the page.

• If you purchase a non-system-standard font (in other words, something that your computer doesn't come with) and use that for your text, then you can get some pretty professional-looking results pretty easily. Fonts are inexpensive and can really dress up your product. You can browse for fonts at myfonts.com. Keep your choices simple, and consider legibility. Stick to standard text fonts - not decorative fonts. When in doubt, use really common fonts like Myriad Pro, Gill Sans, Warnock, Garamond, or Helvetica. And, by all means, please don't use Comic Sans.

• Combine a serif font (the fonts with little "feet" on the ends of the letters) for your headlines with a sans-serif font (the fonts without little "feet") for the body text. Or, vice-versa. Combine fonts where the letter "O" has similar characteristics - if the "O" is round, combine that font with another font where the "O" is round. Or, if the "O" is tall and narrow, try matching to a tall and narrow font.

• Use the "Format Paragraph" options and add 6 points of space before or after your paragraphs instead of hitting "enter" twice. It will produce a shorter space between the paragraphs, which looks more sophisticated.

How to choose a domain name for your website

On the topic of domain names, I suggest starting your site with any domain name as long as it's easy to: 1. Say (think on a phone message or in a loud networking room) 2. Understand for the person listening 3. Spell

Then, work towards getting a domain name that's easy to: 4. Remember (this is less important immediately, with emails/ bookmarking, but this one can't hurt) I also don't recommend getting a domain name with dashes if you don't own the un-dashed version (from personal experience). Keep in mind that you can always get more domain names and forward your site, once finished to them. You can test many domain names in this way. Don't sit on starting the site for the sake of getting the "right" domain name.

Two occasions where having a representational logo makes sense

For a small business, I almost always recommend designing an abstract logo icon based on the problem you're solving for your clients instead of going with a representational logo. 

But, there are usually exceptions to every rule.

Here are two occasions where representational logos (logos that look like something, like a car or a baby or an animal, for example) make more sense than abstract logos:

• Where the business is selling a physical product, which people are buying because they want to have it. Sometimes the greatest reason that customers buy is because they want to own the thing in question. It might make sense to actually draw your product as your logo in this case. 

• Where the rest of the logo is mysterious. For example, if you're promoting a service with a long name, and you've chosen to use initials only in the logo. In this case, where the name of the business is not used in full, having a representational logo to clue the viewer in on what the logo is all about can really help to make the logo more accessible instead of adding to the mystery.

Why do-it-yourself design is sometimes less-than-successful

It may seem simple to design a logo, marketing materials or a website for your business. After all, you've seen billions of logos. And you see marketing materials and websites every day.

So, you know what looks cool, and what you like to look at, right? So, you can just take what looks cool, and combine that with what you like to look at, and transform that into your marketing stuff?

There are a couple of issues with that:

1. What looks cool is typically based on trends. And, trends aren't a great way to design your small business's materials, because trends typically come and go over the course of a small business's life cycle. You want to build a brand that will last - and that won't look dated or out-of-fashion in a couple of years, or even a decade. You'll be basing all of your business's marketing on the designs that you create - and if you spend a few years with one look, and then suddenly change it all, you can lose your customers' trust quickly.

2. Brand design is actually based on more than what looks good. The best brands are based on creating designs that connect with your best customers. Creating that connection is based on symbology - the language of what shapes and symbols mean to a customer - and psychology - how your customers' minds work, and what associations they immediately and subconsciously make. You want to pick shapes, symbols, colors and fonts that are directly connected to the message that you want to communicate to your audience. And, unless you really study both your business and the elements of design, translating your business's Brand Definition into these shapes and colors can be really challenging.

A brand designer can make the process of creating a brand that won't fall apart when the trends change and that will communicate with your best customers easy for you - and can let you concentrate on running your business and creating products or providing your service!

Having a hard time getting the logo you want from your designer?

If you're working with a designer, looking for "just the right" logo, and you're frustrated in the process, here are some tips to help you get your logo done right:

1. Make sure you're working with a designer who can work in a style you like. Check out their portfolio and make sure that they've done work that inspires you. And, if you're having trouble creating results with your designer, reconfirm that they have done the work in their portfolio - that those samples haven't been done by subcontractors or other employees in their firm. Also, let them know which specific samples you're drawn to.

2. Gather other examples of the logos that you like. It's important that you send your designer logos, not photos or paintings. And, if there is one particular part or thing about the logo that you love specifically - the font, color palette, something about the icon - then tell your designer what it is. This way, they'll be able to get a sense of your visual taste, instead of having to guess at your preferences.

3. Define your business. Too often, a client will give their designer just the bare bits of information about their business - the business name, and the services or products they provide - and then expect the designer to read their mind and perform a miracle. With so little information, how can a designer be expected to really "get" what you're all about, and to translate your personality and individuality into a unique logo? Tell them about your business's mission, what excites you about it, how you'd like your clients to see your personality. Tell them about your clients - who they are, what they need, what their problems are.

4. Give detailed feedback. Instead of saying "I don't like them" when your designer presents the lgoos to you, and then ending the conversation there, get into a dialog with your designer about the options they've offered. See if there's anything in any of the logos that appeals to you - or any rough direction that interests you. Don't just dismiss everything because it's not perfect in the first round - getting anything just right usually takes a bit of practice.

5. Break the design process down. Sometimes, a logo won't seem right because it's in the wrong color palette, or matched with the wrong font. Focus first on the logo icon, and then look at the font. Apply color last so that the color doesn't distract you from the merits of the design.

If these steps fail, then perhaps the best logo for you isn't one that you personally love - but your business may be better served by creating a logo that appeals to your clients:

6. Keep in mind that the logo's job is to appeal to your best clients - not to just make you happy. Instead of just thinking about whether you personally like the logo, show it to some of your best clients and get their opinions on it. It's actually better to have a logo that your clients like than to like it yourself in some cases - because the logo's job is to help them see your personality and to remember your business, not to just make you proud. 

These steps may help to get you closer to having a logo that will work for your business - instead of going around in circles with a designer, coming up with nothing but frustration.

The Jobs of your Marketing Materials

• To bring in new clients: Of course, this is the basic reason why most small businesses market. But, it had to be said!
• To help you keep in touch with past clients and to let them know how they can continue to use your services, or what other products they can buy. This can help you make more sales to customers who already trust you.
• To be consistent: This consistency is in terms of not only the look and design of your marketing materials, but also in terms of the words that you use in them and the timing with which you send certain things out (like your email newsletter). 
• To extend your brand: A brand is not made up of a logo alone. You need some printed, emailable, and other marketing materials to help form a full picture of what your business is all about for your clients. And, you need to put that logo on something...
• To remind your customers to act: By sending out marketing pieces, you'll remind your customers and prospects that you're there, that they wanted to buy something from you, and to go ahead and do it. This can be enhanced by also including a call to action on each marketing piece - a couple lines of text (usually highlighted in a box or some other stand-out graphic) telling them what to do next. 
• To give you a full range of marketing capabilities: And to enable you to "touch" your customers in multiple ways: online,  by email, by mailing them a postcard, by handing them a flyer. If you have many different ways to get in contact, it increases the chance that a prospect will pay attention or notice a marketing piece.
• To inform your clients: Not just of what's available, but of how your offerings can improve their businesses or lives. 

Q&A: Can I have two websites?

QUESTION:

I have a new business name, and a shiny new website to go along with that. But, my old website is performing just fine on the search engines, and even brought in a new client the other day. My old website is also particularily well-suited for bringing in local business. 

Do I have to take the old site down? Should I apply the new design to it? What do I do?

ANSWER:

There's no reason that a small business can't have two websites - aside from the work involved in creating two separate sites. If you're promoting two different products or services, it may even make more sense to have two separate sites.

In this example, you're promoting your services nationally in your new site, but locally in your old site. I think if the old site was cleaned up a bit to make it clear that it's really targeting local prospects, add some information about the local "scene" to it, and make sure that the distinction between the two sites is really clear. 

You should add some links back and forth between the two sites to reinforce that they "go together". If you just add a few, it shouldn't hurt your ranking in any way. 

And, updating the old site with the new business name and design would make sense, just for clarity. You don't want to answer the phone with the new business name, while someone's looking at the old site, and confuse them. I'd also recommend that the site be redesigned to match the new logo/look, but not to match the new site exactly. The local site might look a bit simpler than the national site, for example. That way, it will be clear that they are two separate sites, and if a browser comes across them both they won't get that slimy feel of visiting two sites for the same thing.

What my website is set up to do

My website bears most of the marketing weight for my business. Here's a list of the things it does for me:

• Helps me get found by new clients by being well search engine optimized. The system that I created to help small businesses get good ranking on the search engines is here: <a href="http://www.howtoraiseyourranking.com/" target="_blank">http://www.howtoraiseyourranking.com/</A>
• Helps me grow my list of prospects through my Stand Out! Newsletter here: <a href="http://www.elf-design.com/newsletter-branding.html" target="_blank">http://www.elf-design.com/newsletter-branding.html</A>
• Helps me keep in touch with past clients through the same newsletter
• Explains my processes for logo and web design: <a href="http://www.elf-design.com/process-design.html" target="_blank">http://www.elf-design.com/process-design.html</A>
• Acts as my professional portfolio (and is easier for me to update than a printed version): <a href="http://www.elf-design.com/portfolio.html" target="_blank">http://www.elf-design.com/portfolio.html</A>
• Helps me get the occasional speaking gig: <a href="http://www.elf-design.com/about-Erin-Ferree-speaking.html">http://www.elf-design.com/about-Erin-Ferree-speaking.html</A>
• Helps me to handle the requests for quotes that are constantly coming in without doing any additional work or estimate writing. This is great for giving people a rough idea of costs for business or marketing planning. <a href="http://www.elf-design.com/quoteCMP.php" target="_blank">http://www.elf-design.com/quoteCMP.php</A>
• Provides clients and prospects with my contact information:<a href="http://www.elf-design.com/contact.html" target="_blank">
• Gives me a place to publish my thought leadership, both in this blog and here: <a href="http://www.elf-design.com/articles.html">http://www.elf-design.com/articles.html</A>
• The articles section also allows me to communicate with journalists who might be writing articles on design, and I've been featured in many publications because of that.
• Acts as a shopping cart for both services: <a href="http://www.elf-design.com/packages.html" target="_blank">http://www.elf-design.com/packages.html</A>
• And products: < a href="http://www.elf-design.com/products.html" target="_blank">http://www.elf-design.com/products.html</A>
• Lets me show my personality through showcasing recipes, paintings, photos, and t-shirts I've designed: <a href="http://www.elf-design.com/fun.html" target="_blank">http://www.elf-design.com/fun.html</A>   

As you can see, it does a lot more than being just pretty - and handles some assistant-level tasks, PR tasks, and publishing tasks for me. It also helps extend my brand and helps me find clients. Not too bad for some HTML code, right?