Not Just Pretty | Building An Effective Small Business Brand

Q&A: Rebranding launch at a trade show

QUESTION: 

Dear Erin,

I am writing to you because I have a branding related query and look forward to your assistance. My company is a service company offering 360 degree logistics solutions. We also have other companies in the group, all of which are services oriented. We are planning to re-brand our ‘group of companies’ and are in the process of changing everything from the name, logo, website, etc.

We are participating in a large scale logistics exhibition early next year and consider it is an excellent base to re-launch ourselves. However, the re-launch will not be the only thing promoted. We will also be promoting our products, capabilities, etc.

The exhibition will be attended by our competitors, suppliers, customers and important dignitaries from the logistics fraternity.

I would like to know if it will be good idea to re-launch ourselves at this exhibition or will it dilute the re-branding activity.

Look forward to your response.

Warm Regards,

Reshma Dixit

ANSWER:

You can promote the re-branding at the exhibition along with other things - re-branding is more of a sub promotion at a trade show - a "by the way, we've rebranded - and look at all the great stuff we offer".

I would recommend keeping the number of things you promote overall focused so that the people coming to the booth aren't overwhelmed, and so that your staff can handle the different requests with ease. 

How big of a booth will you be having, and how many people will it be staffed by? I'd suggest promoting no more programs than you have people to staff the booth - otherwise, the staff can get overwhelmed trying to answer questions about many different products and services all day long.

Design your booth with the different promotions in mind, and separate them physically as well if that's possible with your booth space. This will help your visitors see instantly that you have different things to offer - and how they can use your different services.

I hope this helps!

- Erin

 

 

Attending trade shows and giving out promotional items can help develop your brand, and if you do it right you will help to keep the right people talking about your company.

Fields to include in your contact form

What fields should you include on a contact form that you put on your contact page of your website?

At minimum, you should get your prospect's name and email address, and leave a space for a message. This will enable you to get their question, to get back in touch with them, and to personalize your communication with your prospects.

Also, above the contact form, be sure to include your contact information - your company's address, phone number, fax, email address, and blog if you have one.

Those are just the basics, though. You can ask for:

Name

Company Name

Address

City, State, Zip, Country

Phone

Fax

Email

Website

And, really, that's just the tip of the iceberg as far as the information that you can ask for goes. But what should you ask your new prospects for?

Wether you need to include any other fields on the contact form depends on a couple of things - what information you'll use when keeping in touch with your clients (why ask for a mailing address if you'll never use it?) and what information your clients would be willing to give you. You don't want your clients to leave your site without contacting you because you asked for too much information, especially if you're not going to use it. 

Keep in mind when you ask for the information on your contact page, that your clients may be spooked just by your asking. Privacy is very important these days, and people can be very concerned about how you plan to use their contact information. So asking for too much information immediately may lose clients and connections for you instead of helping you to get more clients.

So, find the balance that's right for your site - and for your clients.

Designing and writing

I get a lot of calls from people who are looking for someone who can design, code and write their websites. Or, who can design and write their brochures. Or, design their logo and write their tag line.

And they're hoping that I can fill both needs for them.

I don't write for clients for a couple of reasons:

1. Writing and designing are two very different skills. Even if they're not your strong point, think about how drawing something feels as compared to writing something. They're just different types of activities.

Now, I know that there are designer/writer combo people out there - or teams of people, dynamic duos, who do both. But, I've chosen to be a one-person firm, and I don't have a writer who works with me. But I do work with freelance writers that I can refer you to.

2. It would take more time for me to get to know your business. And, then the design project would get more expensive. I try to keep my design prices as low as I can so that the project stays affordable for small businesses. I trim my prices back as much as I can - counting getting to know your business and your design preferences, surveying your competition's designs, doing the creative work of coming up with a unique design, going through revisions, and then preparing the job for print or for the web. It's a lot of work!

Writing is easier than you think - and you can string words together. If you're worried about making what you have to say sound professional, and making sure that your commas are all in the right place, then an editor can help with that at a reasonable rate.

3. I wouldn't be able to write in your voice. Really, any outside writer wouldn't be able to get your voice into the writing for your marketing materials. For a lot of small businesses, the entrepreneur's voice, views and personality are central to the personality of the company. If you write your own materials and use your own voice and point of view in the writing, then your customers will be able to get a better idea of your personality and your company's personality more quickly. And that can be priceless when it comes to making a connection with your clients.

So, that's why I don't write. What I can do is to help you figure out a basic outline of the types of information you might consider including in your site or materials. And once you have an outline, it's often easier to fill in than you think with enough words to make your marketing piece.

The winner is...

I chose the winner today (randomly) for the blog-comment contest I was having. And, the winner is Melanie!

Melanie... step right up and claim your eBook prize. And, thanks for playing, everybody!

Q&A: META tags

QUESTION:

I'm writing the website text, and I wanted to know if it would be helpful for me to include META tags for you at the top of each page.

ANSWER:

Thanks for thinking of it! Some of the META tags will be really helpful, but don't worry about creating others.

META keyword tags aren't actually used by the search engines anymore. Too many companies used that space to cheat and fill up their site with keywords that actually weren't related to the content of the page. So now, the engines disregard that tag and look only at  the text that you've written on the page. That tag's only use now is for your competition to take a look and see what keyword phrases you're optimizing for.

So, choose the most important 2-3 keywords per page and note those - because I can place those in the code elsewhere - and place those at the top of the page when you're writing your copy. More than about 2-3 keywords will look pretty strange when I place them in the code.

Also, writing a different Description tag for each page (or, at least for the different sections) can be helpful for your ranking.

One other way that you can help your ranking is to write a different Title tag for each page, and then to also include your keywords in your headlines and sub-heads.

How to avoid having two separate businesses to market even if you have two services

I get a lot of questions from small business owners who have two major problems or two services that they solve in one business. I'm not really sure why this is so prevalent - but I have a feeling that it might have to do with the reluctance that a lot of small business owners feel when it comes down to paring down their services or target audiences to a single item.

I know I'm extra-guilty of this - I've been advised to just offer logo design, marketing material design or website design - not all three. But I can't bear the thought of limiting myself to just one area - I think the three are so intertwined that they all need to be addressed together. Since they're so intertwined, it's easy to talk about them together.

But, what if the two things you do aren't actually directly related?

If you're trying to market two seemingly separate services or products, then it might be tempting to separate them out and create two companies - one to promote service A and another to promote service B. But, along with two companies comes marketing twice - that means two logos, two business cards (and wondering which one to hand out to get the most out of your networking events!) , two websites (and maintaining and updating two websites), and two newsletter lists to keep in touch with your clients. 

Two newsletter lists means at least two articles per month, and two mailing lists, two newsletter template designs, and formatting two newsletters in your email program. Then you have to add the articles to your website. That winds up being a lot of work every month - and that's just if you're putting each newsletter out once monthly.

How to avoid this extra work

Instead of separating your two (or three) services out into different companies, or even separating your lists within one company, then work on finding out what your services all have in common. After all, you're offering both services or products, so they must have a common skill, interest or problem that they each solve, right?  

I call this exercise "finding the thread". Take a piece of paper and write down your different services, and then draw some lines connecting them all. These lines are your thread - the single connecting factor between all of the things that you do for your clients. 

Try to keep the thread simple - you don't want the connection to be too oblique or to not make sense to your clients. 

The thread is often something that comes as second-nature to you - you just think that this thread is so important that you may do it without noticing. So, asking some of your clients to help you connect the dots, or asking a friend or spouse, may help you identify the thread more easily.

Once you have found the thread

Then, use that thread as the basis for all of your marketing materials. Instead of focusing your home page copy on your services, focus on the thread, or the problem that your clients are facing that can be mended with the thread you offer. Build your logo around the thread (which is also often what makes you different from your competition - your competitors probably don't have this same thread holding their services together). Write the articles in your newsletter with an emphasis on the thread instead of just writing about the services you offer. And, sew everything you do together by always concentrating on this thread.

If you focus on finding and talking about the thread that hold all of your offerings together, then you won't have to separate them out into different businesses - you'll be able to make everything you do make sense for your clients all in one package. And, you won't have to do all of that extra marketing work.

2 Tough Girls Logo

Another logo for a crafty company...

Stanley says "Baroo?"

Datasheet design

Another data sheet design created to match Physician Family Financial Advisors' logo and Visual Vocabulary design, and to coordinate with their website, which I designed earlier this year:

Initial Call Datasheet

A data sheet, designed to match the Visual Vocabulary set out in Initial Call's website and earlier brand design project (that I created a few months ago).