Suitecase Marketing

Branding to Build Your Business

What is branding? Branding in short is the practice of using your business name and logo in marketing communications allowing for the consumer to better recognize you for what products you offer in the market place. Branding does more than create recognition however, branding builds trust and loyalty among the consumer market allowing you to [...]

Brand Yourself For Internet Marketing

The thing about branding is that you do not want to brand yourself with everything. The best thing is to brand yourself with one or possibly two things. The best thing is really one. Some people we work with are branded as a master marketer online. So you brand yourself with the pay per click [...]

Brand Your Business

You may have heard something about ‘branding’ in regards to marketing, but perhaps you’ve wondered what that means exactly. Sometimes it is better to explain something in relation to something else. That’s what I am going to do – so first I will start with ‘positioning’. You also may have heard that term, but also [...]

Branding to Build Your Business

February 17th, 2011

Price Hicks

What is branding? Branding in short is the practice of using your business name and logo in marketing communications allowing for the consumer to better recognize you for what products you offer in the market place.

Branding does more than create recognition however, branding builds trust and loyalty among the consumer market allowing you to penetrate future markets with new product offerings more successfully. Successful branding campaigns can expect more sustained customer relationships and sales over longer periods of time than companies not implementing branding strategies.

The largest and most successful companies in the world all have used branding in their marketing communications building their brand equities into billions of dollars. Tide, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Nestle, Ford, Boeing, Kellogs, and many more have all successfully built their brand to the point where consumers know them by heart and trust their products enough to purchase them without debate to the safety or quality of the product.

Branding is a long term strategy for any business but should be strategized and implemented into marketing communications from the very beginning. If your a small brick and mortar business in a small town or city you should still follow branding strategies just the same as if you were a national franchise or corporation. There is no excuse to not use a branding strategy for your business and that includes small e-commerce websites. If you own a business, you need to brand.

Starting a branding strategy does not entail a giant budget or advertising campaign if your low on company funds. You can start small in various different ways, some ways you may have already started using.

1.)Voice mail – Every business has a voice mail for when there is nobody there to answer. Make sure you use your company name in the voice mail twice. Once in the introduction and secondly in the end.

An example might be “Hello, you have reached 1.) Company Z. We’re sorry but we are unable to answer your call at this time, please leave us your name and number and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Thank you for calling 2.) Company Z. Have a great day.”

This reinforces your company name building recognition helping condition consumers and customers to remember your name from all the other names out there and that is what you want to do in ALL communications.

2.)Mail Communication – This section will apply to email as well. Use your company name and logo at the top of all letter heads including email. Reinforce your company name in the signature area after your messages as well. Example:

Sincerely,
Bob Smith

Company Z, Inc.
www.companyz.com

Constant reinforcing of your brand is crucial to the life of your business and once again you see the use of the company name used twice. Once in the Letterhead and once after the signature. Beginning and end.

3.)Phone Numbers – Local or national, a custom number can help do wonders when it comes to sales call centers or retail locations. While finding a custom vanity toll free number can prove to be somewhat costly, you can still use local vanity numbers for your location even if your a national business. You won’t always have a short business name but by using industry words mixed with abbreviations for your company you can help reinforce brand image just the same. Be creative and you may find some easy and fun ways to implement your company name or niche into an easily recognizable phone number.

4.)Advertising – In all advertising focus on how to include your company name and logo. Audio advertisements use your name twice. Once in the beginning and once at the end minimally. Display and television ads always make sure you company name or logo is always present and visible. Display ads will include online banner advertising as well. Contextual advertising always use your company home page in the visible URL section to simplify the viewing of your company name. The extension of the URL should not be present as it will distract the eyes from the home page name.

There are many other ways to add branding strategies into your marketing communications, just remember that every mention of your company name is another way to reinforce company image to the consumer bringing recognition for your industry equaling into future sales. Anything that involves your company communication to consumers, businesses, employees, press, peers, etc. should always be branded. You will find that a good branding strategy can carry your business a long way and strengthen your company for future markets and endeavors.

Brand Yourself For Internet Marketing

February 17th, 2011

Price Hicks

The thing about branding is that you do not want to brand yourself with everything. The best thing is to brand yourself with one or possibly two things. The best thing is really one. Some people we work with are branded as a master marketer online. So you brand yourself with the pay per click technique and that is what you stick with, not to say you cannot master anything else or teach anybody anything else, but people are always going to know you for that one thing. So that is branding. Now for longevity. When you have those brandings you can always create new products, things are always changing and evolving in marketing online, things get better, things could get outdated or not as useful anymore.

Because you have that branding you can always be updating your branding on that product or come out with new products on that type of scenario to generate income. If you are in the home based business industry, that is just another income stream. Now, in this industry when you lead people or jump from program to program, if a person did that, at least tell the people in the other program that you are in, hey I am moving on to another program, be honest with people. When you do not do that it just kills your branding and kills your business online. Pretty soon nobody is going to trust you and when you say I am going to do this, I am doing this opportunity right now nobody is going to trust you. They are going to think that you are just going to take my money, leave me there and move on to the next opportunity and do not really care about me anyway. You do not return my phone calls or emails or even do what you said you were going to do.

The reason I joined you is because you said you were going to teach me about this business and you did not. So that looses your branding. When you brand yourself, again you can put that on your lead capture page, you can have it in your header graphics, you can have it under your picture, you can have it throughout your sales or newsletter, you can have it at the bottom of your emails. If you write a newsletter on it you can call the newsletter that type of branding. If you do conference calls you start off, I am, and then your branding title, whatever branding you have, you can start the conference calls that way. Everything you do, if you write ebooks you can continue that throughout the book and at the end of the ebook when you do the signature or your picture, you put that branding there under it.

Now, branding does not happen overnight, it can happen quickly, but not overnight. Depending on when you get your branding and how much branding you do after that point, it depends on how many on the internet get to know you for that one thing. I absolutely think and know for a fact that branding creates business longevity. It is only from your own personal branding, because you are an expert at something, all the way to your business practice on branding yourself and how you practice business, whether you are ethical or unethical or however it might be, it creates a branding of yourself. If you are an ethical person you are branded for that. Whether you even tell people that you are ethical or people just realize it and it just becomes your branding.

Whether you do everything you say you are going to do or follow through with everything, that becomes your branding. If you hop from program to program you become branded as a program hopper. If you send out emails twice a week you soon become branded on that email list. You send out two emails a week and you do that consistently every week, people expect it, you become branded for that. When you stop doing that people are like, are you going to send out anymore emails, that becomes your branding. These are unique things that can create business longevity for yourself. Without it you will not have a long lasting business. You will always be worried in your business where your next commission or sales is going to come from.

Brand Your Business

February 17th, 2011

Price Hicks

You may have heard something about ‘branding’ in regards to marketing, but perhaps you’ve wondered what that means exactly.

Sometimes it is better to explain something in relation to something else. That’s what I am going to do – so first I will start with ‘positioning’. You also may have heard that term, but also did not really know what it meant. ‘Positioning’ is a marketing term that means to take a product or service and “position” it in the mind of your prospects/clients by comparing it with or against something already familiar in their minds. Al Reis and Howard Geltzer first published a book about it in the 1970’s.

To give you an idea of positioning, take Avis. Hertz car rental already had first place in the market. By being first place, they preempted that position. Everyone knew that they were #1. So, Avis, to get any recognition at all, had to position themselves with Hertz, but actually couldn’t take their spot. Do you recall what they did? You got it – “Avis. We try harder.” By positioning themselves as the best second runner up, they were able to capitalize on a larger portion of that market.

Some people think branding is like positioning, but it is different. The main difference is that positioning is a fluid concept. In other words, you can position yourself at different times in different markets as different things. Branding is more set in stone- it’s a hard-core recognition factor.

To give you a better idea, the other day one of my subordinates saw a cup of mine with red circles on it. He said it looked like a ‘Target’ cup. That is branding. That red target logo is branded in that person’s mind. He saw it and immediately thought of the chain store.

However, Target is positioned differently – it’s discount chain with good style. Some people even refer to it as ‘Targé’ – that is positioning. It positions the store with some hoity-toity posh boutique but everyone knows it’s right there with Walmart price wise. Good position.

Branding is more about the following of rules because if you don’t follow those rules, things don’t look the same and people won’t remember you. What if you changed your body periodically – I mean really changed your body. “Oh, today, I think I’ll be Asian – straight black hair, slanted eyes” – but yesterday you were Caucasian; how do you expect anyone to remember who you are when they see you on the street? It is kind of the same. When you put out your marketing pieces, you want to create a similar look and feel so that people remember you. And you want that similar look and feel on every thing you put out.

The good thing is that you get to make the rules…colors the same, style of lettering the same, logo etc. And there is some flexibility as long as you follow the rules. You can’t go too far out of bounds, but you can change some things within the frame of what others can still recognize.

There was an actual study done by GE (General Electric). They found out that it only takes 22% of their logo for people to recognize. Only 20% of their logo needs to be seen before people recognize it.

So, it sort of is like the Western concept of branding your cattle – making sure people recognize what is yours.

Remember I said ‘the same look and feel’? Well, the other side of branding is what it makes you feel about it. Chevrolet used to say it was America’s vehicle – baseball, hotdogs, apple pie and Chevrolet. Now it is “like a rock”. That makes you feel a certain way about it. It still is in line with the old idea about Chevrolet. Americanism = loyalty = dependable = Chevrolet. That song that comes on is their brand. Being America’s vehicle is their position. Both give you a certain feel.

Branding in your marketing has to make you feel something. A technology company can’t have an old style font – you might not think they were very far advanced.

Take PostcardMania. Our colors, bold style font and humorous quips give you the feeling that we are happy and lively. We make sure that our prospects and customers get that same feeling every time they see our mail, emails, packages, logo, etc.. Therefore it is important to look the same every time.

Take a dry cleaner for example. His postcards, packaging, hangers, etc. need to have his logo, colors and font all the time all the same – on everything. That way when people receive his postcards in the mail, they look for what specials that he has because they already like him and have him identified in their mind as something they are familiar with. If he is constantly changing what he looks like, when they get his postcard they don’t know whether they are looking at his specials or what some dry cleaner in general is offering. If they are already familiar with him, they are most likely going to pause and look at what he has to say.

Branding is just like the old coat of arms that families used to have connected with their name. It would instill respect, fear, and wealth – whatever. Likewise, a country’s flag gets people to feel a certain way about their country. Heck, Stalin even used branding! He used the same picture to portray who he was to his people – I am this, I am this, I am this – he wanted them to think a certain thing. It’s really not a new idea – I’m trying to get you to see it has been around for quite some time.

At PostcardMania, we want people to recognize that we know how to get their attention – bright colors, loud type – shows that we know what we’re talking about in terms of marketing. But ‘Postcard Marketing Experts’ is our positioning. Does that make sense? You can see how the two tie in together. One is our position and one is our brand. We’re hoping to create a feeling of being expert, the best in the business, etc., but also friendly and easy to confront.

Think about what message you want to portray. What do you want recipients of your promotion to think about you? What image of your company do you want to put out there? That is your brand. When people see you continually as one thing, they begin to expect the same from you and they get used to you.

Remember when Pepsi came out with clear Pepsi? People freaked out. They didn’t want to drink it. It was a flop. It wasn’t what they were used to – so it didn’t even taste the same to them.

Branding in marketing is recognition – color, font and logo – keep it the same.

If you can get them to remember what it is you are selling, the more likely they will come in and get it…if not, you are depending on drive by traffic and are wasting your money in marketing. And don’t forget this very important marketing truth – if you’re only planning to promote merely one time then branding is not going to help you. Branding is only for marketers that already understand the concept of repetition.