Not Just Pretty | Building An Effective Small Business Brand

Q&A: Home page photo

QUESTION:

I want to find a stock photo for my home page, but I just can't find one that says what I want it to say. I keep coming up with photos of objects or landscapes.

ANSWER:

You'll have a better chance at forming a connection through the home page if there's a person somehow in the picture - people connect with photos of other people. We could also look for a photo that you absolutely love - if you love the photo, then there's a good chance that the people who are going to be your best clients will like the photo as well.

I also recommend matching the photo's color palette somewhat to your brand's color palette. That will make the page look more polished.

Q&A: Website hosting

QUESTION:

Which web hosting companies would you recommend?  Fees?

ANSWER:

I've worked with many web hosting companies - my favorite is Dreamhost.com, but I've also had good success with Go Daddy. They each have reasonable rates, good uptime, good email support, and provide everything a small business should need to host their site in their basic packages. I recommend that you purchase your hosting on a yearly basis becase many companies offer discounts for services purchased "in bulk". 

Don't forget the web for marketing

Many small businesses who are locally based (house painters, pet sitters, nannies and baby sitters, tutors, etc.) occasionally forget to use all of the marketing avenues that are available to them. Since most of their competitors' marketing is typically done via flyers, classified ads, referral, and occasional brochures, they can concentrate on making sure that they have matching marketing materials - flyers of their own, classified ads, and trifold brochures - instead of branching out into other types of materials.

To expand your business, consider developing marketing pieces that are different from your competitions'. More and more customers are looking for services - even local ones that used to be bought and sold on community bulletin boards - online these days. 

So, put up a simple website - with a bit of information about you, some info about your services and rates, testimonials from happy customers, and your contact information. It doesn't have to be terrifically complicated to be effective.

You can also use a blog service to set up a very simple website at an affordable price.

Then, get your website listed on local directories. Google has a local search, and you can get listed on directories like backfence.com or smalltown.com. Look up your local area in the search engines and see what directories are available to you, and take advantage of those.

Your brochure's job

Your brochure's main job is to give you enough space to go into more detail about your services and offerings. To answer the questions that you most commonly get asked about your services.

It should also be a portable size, something that you won't mind carrying around. And, a size that your customers will take home, or back to their offices, and that will give them something tangible to review and remember you by.

And, the design and print quality of the brochure should show that your company is established, and that your services are set up in such a way that you'll be offering them for some time. The very fact that you have committed them to paper, and invested in getting the details printed up, means to your customers that you are established.

Jobs of your postcard

1. To get noticed in the mail instead of recycled

2. To give your prospect enough information to pique their interest

3. To tell your prospect what to do next (call you, get a free report to learn more, visit your website)

4. To be affordable to mail (make sure that the size of postcard you plan will be affordable to mail to all the people you plan to send it to)

5. To get out of your office - make sure that if you print a postcard, you have a plan for getting them out to your prospects. That means having addresses, a plan for getting them on the cards (writing them on, printing mailing labels, or printing directly on the cards). And, planning to get them stamped or metered as well. or, if you're planning to give the postcards out personally (for example, at a networking event or trade show), making sure that you follow through.

6. To be specific - you won't be able to tell your prospects everything about your business on a small card. Pick one thing to talk about and make sure your message is focused.

7. To match your brand and to be consistent with your other marketing pieces.

Your marketing flyer's jobs

The jobs of your flyer depend strongly on what it's promoting and how you're planning to distribute it. For example, a flyer that's being posted on a bulletin board or in a window at a busy library or at the local market should be attention-grabbing and stand out from the other flyers on the board. It can also be helpful to include take-away call-to-action tabs with contact info so that the viewer can take this information with them easily, and be able to follow through on their interest. 

if you are going to place the flyer on the board, make sure that you distribute it in places where your target audience would be most likely to see it. This will help you to get it in front of your best clients. And, you'll reduce the number of unqualified queries that you might otherwise get.

The design of a flyer that's being mailed to a client, handed out at a networking event, left on a partner business's counter (or your own counter) or distributed at a trade show doesn't have quite the same challenge of a bulletin board. In this case, your flyer can be two-sided as well. But, you still want to provide a few things:

1. A design that matches the rest of your brand materials

2. Information about your offering. Again, make sure that this information is focused enough to fit on the one page you have, and to be compelling for your target audience.

3. To tell people what to do next.

4. To give your viewers your contact information so that they can follow up.

Consider if you need to get a digital version of your flyer as well - it might be helpful to post it on your website, or to be able to send a copy to your email list. 

How To Avoid Having Two Separate Businesses To Market Even If You Offer Two Services

I get a lot of questions from small business owners who have two major problems they solve or two services they offer 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 to paring down their services or target audiences.

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. Because 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 products or services, then it might be tempting to separate them 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 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, two mailing lists, two newsletter template designs and the need to format two newsletters in your email program. Then you need to add the articles to your website. That winds up being a lot of work—and that's just if you're putting each newsletter out once a month.

How to avoid this extra work

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

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

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

The thread is often something that comes as second nature to you. You 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...

Use it as the basis of all of your marketing materials. Instead of focusing your home page copy on your services, focus on 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 holds all of your offerings together, then you won't have to separate them into different businesses. You'll be able to make everything you do make sense for your clients in one package. And, you won't have to do all of that extra marketing work. 

All marketing materials have a job

I like to talk about how a small business's website can act like an additional employee in your business - helping you make sales, gather leads, keep in touch with people, qualify clients, get press or media attention, and so much more.

And, today, as I was driving about, it occurred to me that all of your marketing materials actually have a job. 

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Your logo has several jobs: To be memorable, scalable, to communicate your company's brand to your clients, to be appealing... and there are more.

Your business card has several jobs: To give your contact information to your clients, to be easy to understand, to be memorable (so that when you give it out at a networking event people might remember the interaction), to get kept instead of tossed, and to give your new client an idea of what you do (it won't tell your whole story, but it can give them a basic idea)

Your letterhead has jobs, even. To make it easy for the recipient to get back in touch with you, and to make it clear, at a glance, where the communication is coming from.

Not to mention the jobs that brochures, flyers, postcards, etc. have...

If you design your materials with their jobs in mind, then they'll be more effective for your business - and they'll be able to do more than to be just pretty. 

And, if you design a suite of marketing materials to perform the jobs that will help you out in your small business, it can be like hiring employees - except, less expensive than hiring someone full time (or even part-time!) 

You can design a basic brand suite (logo, business card, letterhead, basic website) for under $5000 or $6000. You can also print enough materials to last a year within that amount, and get your website hosted for the year. If you want to create a more in-depth marketing kit, you can expect to spend a bit more - but it will still be much less expensive than hiring an employee.

Octopus illustration

This little guy started out as a logo sketch that didn't turn out - but it sort of looked like part of an octopus. So I decided to finish him up, and he turned out pretty cute!