No one knows you from a hole in the wall. Sure, you can always use some connections, but growing your business is still a long slippery slope.

Not too long ago I was in the same boat. I just had a bunch of information that wasn’t particularly helpful to anyone. Then one day it hit me. And I realized that I knew something pretty valuable…I knew how to Brand an image of myself and I knew how to use that Brand to create a business platform.

Branding does not have to be complicated but when you are just getting started it can really seem that way. What I had discovered is the word of mouth really does go a long way and as long as you remained true to who you were and you believed in giving back you would create a positive image for yourself and for your company.

I started off as just me, just Jennifer S Benson. Nothing fancy really. I was just like the other average stay at home mom’s just trying to make enough money to get some of the essentials that we needed at home. I had started off writing articles to help me build an affiliate business I was working on but there was so much controversy surrounding the business I was promoting that I decided to stop working the business.

The thing is though writing articles is like planting a seed and what I had done without realizing it was just that. I had started to create a personal brand for myself.

One day I was socializing on my social networks and someone contacted me about one of my articles. They enjoyed it so much they wondered if I would write an article for them and what my asking rate was.

This ignited a spark that took me from being just another stay at home mom trying to create something for herself to a small business owner with a staff of 20 and a growing company with growing profits each month.

How did I become the queen of branding? I did it one day at a time and I did it by not trying to make a sale and by not trying to be the guru. I was just the girl who made a lot of friends on social networks and who shared her work every once in a while.

More and more people would ask to follow me and ask to be my friend and invite me to be a part of their networks. I was not paying Google for ads or paying websites to send me customers, my customers were coming and they were finding me.

Branding does not have to be a challenge, in fact, when you treat it as an opportunity to meet new people rather than as a way to gain new customers you will be surprised at how many new customers you actually end up receiving because let’s face it, at the end of the day we are all just people helping people.

This is the beauty of personal branding and it is effective.

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

My girlfriend and I traveled to New York (her first visit) last month for vacation.

We arrived on “day 3” of “Occupy Wall Street” and stayed at a hotel three blocks from the group’s “home base.” I had no prior knowledge of the group or their “message” prior to our arrival.

After witnessing their activities in person for six days and via the media since, I still don’t know what their message is.“We Want Democracy” read one sign.

“Arrest the Bankers” read another.

“Queer Kids…Kill Your Parents” (uh, what??) another sign stated.

“End the War” was on another sign.

“Pro-Union” on another.

This experience got me thinking. If you are an executive in career transition, have you established a personal brand that clearly states who you are and what you have to offer? Is your resume, Linkedin profile and other social media profiles sending the same message and are they aligned with your personal brand?

While I hope that you can confidently answer “yes” to these questions I have encountered far too many people whose branding message, like the “Occupy-ers”, is vague, at best, and usually doesn’t exist at all. If your resume and Linkedin profile is a regurgitated list of tasks that you were “responsible for” then
you have work to do.

In her book, Social Networking For Career Success, Miriam Salpeter writes about creating your personal brand and states:

“Focusing on what you have to offer while thinking of yourself as a brand should help you define yourself and establish your goals. This is the most important thing a job seeker can do.”

Take out your resume and look at your Linkedin profile (be sure they are not identical!). If they read like a list of accomplishments that you are proud of then you are off to a good start!

If this is not the case then contact me. I can help you get started.

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

A good friend recently had to call it quits and give up on a business that she’d been slaving over and pouring money into for years.

The problem?

It wasn’t her lack of effort – but simply the… name she picked for the business that finally killed it.

Our friend Martha had family connections to Peru and wanted to start a business that imported silver jewelry from Peru. With her regular visits to Peru and an apartment in Lima, it seemed she was perfectly set up – then she picked a name for the business.

After a great deal of thought and consideration Martha and her partners came up with the name Tikanchay for the jewelry business, which in Quechua, the native language of the Incas, means to make beautiful.

What a great idea for a business that imported jewelry from Peru, right?

Actually, using a word from the Inca language was a terrible idea to name a business selling to Americans.

Why?

Because of the millions of women in the U.S. who might have been interested in buying their jewelry, as far as I know, not one spoke Quechua. Which means, they had no idea what the name meant.

Much less, unless you just read the word, unless you can copy it in print, trying to remember how to spell it is next to impossible.

Now, I’m not just going off on a rant. Let me share the facts with you.

Martha, worked for years to try and keyword optimize her site to generate online sales and after limited success finally sought out a sales representative who could wholesale her jewelry directly to stores.

At which point her sales representative made a best effort to market Tickanchay jewelry. But she struggled, too.

It turns out none of her retail clients could pronounce the name, or spell it either and finally, Martha’s sales representative returned to her and told her, “You’ve got to change the name of your company. I can’t sell for you under the Tickanchay name.”

Martha finally gave in, and renamed the company Bella Peru. Simple and straightforward. Easy to say, spell and understand.

Unfortunately, at this point the name change came too late. The initial partners had already parted ways and with all the years of time and money invested in the business, few wanted to jump in and start over.

My point?

What you name your business matters. It can destroy your small business branding efforts or help your grow your business. Here are a couple of guidelines.

1. Pick a name that is easy to pronounce and to spell for your target market. E.g. if you sell in the U.S. don’t pick an obscure word in Swahili and or use some slang U.S. word if you sell in Saudi Arabia. You easily could end up not only confusing your buyers but even offending them.
2. Pick a name that reflects how you want people to think of your brand. For example, if you want your target market to think of you as a high-tech solution provider, don’t use words like Shoppe or Old Tymes in your name.
3. Don’t try and pick a new name for your company by surveying your employees. First of all, they’re invested in the existing name, and given most people’s resistance to change, no matter how great your ideas, most will want to keep the present name. Secondly, scientifically run focus groups have demonstrated dubious value as a market research tool. Unscientific surveys have even less utility.

Whether it’s the name you choose for your company, the headline you use to get people to stay on your website, or the copy you use in your email – it turns out that the words you use – matter.

Some work to attract buyers. Some don’t.

And it’s not just luck. There is a science – some call it an art – to getting the attention of your target market, to generating a lead and to converting them to buyers.

Find out the proven way to prosper, just by using the right words.

Discover which words will make you rich >>

To your success,

Charlie

P.S.  Warning! Writing takes work. This isn’t like playing the lottery either.

The good news?

Better branding, better company names, better marketing messages and better copy pay off big for everyone who puts in the effort.

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

Last Friday, I was waiting while my wife picked up our takeout dinner and I noticed a marketing slogan in the window of the local bakery.

It read… “Life is short. Eat dessert first.”

Great!

Fortunately for my waistline, they were closed for the day.

How about you?

Seen any great taglines lately? Add them in the comments below or email a picture of them to support@marketingforsuccess.com and we’ll add the best here.

Charlie

P.S. The next day, while riding in the back country of Greenwich I saw the following on caterer’s truck. “Making your home the best place to eat.” Again why is it I’m noticing all the marketing slogans that have to do with food?

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

What do you think of when you hear the word ‘Disney’?

Movies? Cartoons? Disneyland? The little guy with the soft-pitched voice and red pants?

Most small business owners think they know what branding is… but they’ve usually got it wrong. Brand recognition is the following:

• Brand Recognition is awareness of a company, its product or service.
• Brand Preference is preferring one company’s product or service over another.
• Brand Insistence is not accepting a substitute. If I can’t have this product, I’m not interested!

There’s also a fourth choice: Brand Avoidance. That’s when a company has done such a bad job of positioning their company, products, and services that you avoid it like the plague. But that’s another subject.

Brand Recognition is a general awareness of a product, service or company. It’s familiarity. Let me ask you, what happens when you’re planning your vacation and you ask your kids where they want to go for vacation.

If yours are like mine, the first words out of their mouth are DISNEYLAND!

But what if you give them a choice: Universal Studios, Knotts Berry Farm or Disneyland?

They insist on Disneyland.

That’s BRAND INSISTENCE!

This has been the magic of Disney  since 1923. Walt Disney created a culture within his company that’s lasted more than 80 years. It’s a culture of offering quality and focusing on their guests.

When new employees start working at Disney’s theme parks they actually go through courses at Disney University. They learn the Disney way of greeting people. They learn Disney’s mission, history and culture.

What is your corporate culture? What is your foundation? What do you want to create? Do you teach or ’educate’ your people?

How well do you serve your customers?

To be successful in business today you need processes and procedures. Standards are quite important to small business branding. Everybody must be doing things in the same way.

• What do your people say when they answer the phone?
• How do they handle customer service problems?
• What do they say when they pick up the phone to call a prospect or customer?

What do they do on a sales call? What are your top sales people doing that is different from the rest of your team?

Why should a potential customer do business with you, or your company, instead of a competitor?

If you’re not getting great results from your telephone activity you may need to improve your phoning skills.

What are your closing ratios? If you don’t have a great closing ratio, it may not be your closing skills that need improving. Instead, you may need to improve the quality of the opportunities you are opening.

With processes and procedures you can create a Best Practices manual for your organization. A step-by-step listing of all the things that work best for you and your company.

Sure, you’ve got too much to do. You’re real busy putting out fires. Going from one emergency to another. But when you know exactly where you want to go and what end goals you want to achieve, everything else falls into place.

Wrapping Products Around Each Other

Beyond Disney’s culture is the goal of wrapping all of their products and services around each other. Look at how everything meshes.
There are

• Theme parks
• Cartoons
• Movies
• Television programming
• Disney Channel
• Music
• Clothing
• Toys
• Licensing
• Video sales
• Books and comic books
• Comic strips and a whole lot more.

Everything is geared toward the same audience, families with young children. Your kids see a movie. They buy a toy. Then a book. At home they watch the cartoon on television, with ads for more Disney products.

You buy a video and there are ads for three or four other Disney videos plus ads for forthcoming movies.

Everything sells everything else, which is why small business branding is so important.

What are you doing to create additional products and services that wrap around each other?

How many different offerings do you have for your customers? What can you do to increase the amount of money they spend with you?

To do that you’ve got to change your thinking. Don’t think transactions, i.e. finding a customer closing a sale and then moving onto another customer. Think transformational, improving the lives of your customers.

Here are 3 things you can learn about small business branding from a company like Disney.

• Create a culture within your organization with focus and clarity on your goals and objectives.
• Provide your customers with wonderful service and create ‘memorable’ experience.
• Create a line of products and services that wrap around each other.

Put these strategies to use and you’ll be more successful and won’t have to work so hard.

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

If you live in a small town like mine on the Connecticut coast, you’ll be spending the 4th of July watching fireworks, along with your family and friends and everyone else in town. Why is it that people love fireworks?

Fireworks grab attention with a dazzling display of color and lots of noise. Unlike the sparklers you can hold in your hand, the sound and size of fireworks can’t be ignored. Imagine if your small business marketing was as effective at getting people’s attention!

Diane was starting a new business coaching service and came to me looking for small business marketing fireworks. She knew that she needed a marketing message, one that described what she did and would get her prospects’ attention. Her dilemma was that she works with clients to solve numerous types of problems and instead of having one strategic marketing message, she had a laundry list of them.

Solving lots of problems is good, but when you are trying to communicate what you do, it’s the equivalent of a handful of sparklers as compared to having one large attention-getting display.

Discover exactly how to get attention and more business with your marketing message and improve the response of everything from your ads to your web site. Get the details >>

In order to grab prospects’ attention Diane dispensed with her laundry list of messages and replaced it with one umbrella marketing message.

Here’s how you can create your own brilliant marketing message:

1. List the concerns of your target market relative to your services. This should generate a list of 10-30 problems you solve.

2. Organize your list in order of importance to clients.

What are your clients’ primary concerns?

3. Use the most important client concern on your list as the basis for your marketing message. If you don’t have a summary sentence, then write one.

In our town when a particularly spectacular firework goes off, the audience ooh’s and ahhs. You may not get ooh’s and ahhs from your small business marketing message but you do want it to prompt prospects to action.

When you use your marketing message, fireworks or at least a spark should ignite in your prospects’ minds when they make the connection between their needs and your services. If your marketing message has done its job, people will ask you how you do what you do or contact you for more information.

With a brilliant small business marketing message you’ll grab your prospects’ attention and increase opportunities.

Want to see your sales explode?

Use this link to find out how in 15 seconds >>

- Charlie

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

Understanding the proper use of color is essential to creating a positive small business branding image. Color can send a positive or negative message, increase sales, excite an audience, or make an athlete perform better.

At a very young age we begin to learn the meaning of color from our social, cultural and environmental surroundings. We learn about the meaning of color from our parents, teachers, friends and even advertisements that we see in stores and product packaging. As we learn about the meaning of color we begin to associate emotional reactions and expectations to specific colors. As adults, many of our psychological reactions to color are universal.

In 2001 Marcel Zentner of the University of Geneva conducted a study to explore the relationship between color and emotion (“Preferences for Colours and Colour-Emotion Combinations in Early Childhood,” Developmental Science, 2001). http://www.affective-sciences.org/node/659

The study concluded that young children associate color with emotion, but they do it differently from adults. Zentner found that children associated bright colors with Happy and dark colors with Sad. Adults color choices were specific and consistent.

“People will actually gamble more and make riskier bets when seated under a red light as opposed to a blue light. That’s why Las Vegas is the city of red neon.” Pantone http://www.pantone.com/pages/pantone/Pantone.aspx?pg=19382&ca=29

The one most important ingredient in knowing how to select color is having knowledge about your target audience.

Understanding the social, cultural and economic backgrounds of your target audience will give you insight into selecting color that communicates clearly to your audience. Learn about your audience by getting involved in similar daily activities. Read the same magazines and books, eat the same food, and study their culture. Keep notes of what colors are being used to represent what types of products and services, and how they elicit specific emotions.

An excellent activity to learn about color preferences of your target audience is to scrapbook images of products that they use. Examine the images for their color groups and try to conclude the most used colors. Most likely a pattern of colors will be apparent.

Once you understand what colors affect your target audience and how they react to specific colors psychologically, it is much easier to select colors for your small business brand that communicates a clear concise message.

If you do your research and understand your audience’s color preferences you will be able to grab their attention by combining colors that are both appealing as well as adding an element of surprise. The final color combination will be distinct, separating you from your competitors while imprinting a positive perception in your targeted clients mind.

- Christine

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

The blogosphere has been busy with chatter regarding a certain company that offers to sell companies followers on Twitter, Facebook fans, and Digg votes. It’s not expensive: Facebook fans go for about 10 cents each.  Many companies large and small appear to be interested in this service.

What is the psychology here? Well, think about if you’re in a strange city and you leave your hotel looking for a place to have dinner. Do you go to the restaurant where only one or two tables are taken, or do you go to the one with a ten-minute wait?

Most of us will choose the one with the wait, because if that many people are there, it has to be good. This same principle seems to be working in social media. People are more likely to become ‘fans’ (or followers) of businesses that already have a lot of fans (or followers), because there is the feeling that these businesses must be doing something right.

Is this something you should do? Will purchasing fans or followers for your social media help your word of mouth program? As you know, people who like your business are likely to talk to others about your business. And in my opinion, you want quality over quantity when it comes to word of mouth: you want people who are currently customers of your business, who come in often, and who will be happy to answer ‘yes’ when you ask them to tell others about your store. And in fact, they are more than likely to become your Facebook ‘fans’ and to follow you on Twitter.

I think that “purchasing” fans and followers gives the illusion that your business popular, but it does very little to get people to your place of business.

Of course you could offer a special Facebook or Twitter discount to these newfound fans and followers, and you might get a few people in the door to sample your business. While I don’t have statistics to back this up, I’m guessing that any of the ‘fans’ that you purchase are unlikely to tell others about your store.

So instead of ‘paid’ followers and fans, think about ways to grow your fan and follower bases organically…through the people who chose to be part of your network (social or otherwise).

Ask them to become a Facebook ‘fan’, and then once they do, ask them to invite their network of friends to become fans of your store too (maybe give them a special code that they can share with their friends to encourage them all to visit your place of business). A thumbs up from current customers will do more to bring new people to your store than a big number of followers or fans.

So if you were thinking about buying some new people…think instead about using those funds to give incentives to current customers and their friends.

- Kim

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

When people talk about your business, what are they talking about? If you can quickly name the one thing that they’re saying (‘we have the best burgers in town;’ ‘our prices can’t ever be beat;’ ‘our employees are the most helpful in town’) then you have a competitive advantage: you have one thing that sets you apart from your competitors. And that’s great. You can stop reading now.

But chances are, what people are saying about your business isgenerally based on an immediate event: people say things like “the store had a sale on paper towels,” “I like that new cashier,” “I can get a manicure really quickly there.”  Now that is all good word of mouth marketing, and important to have, but it isn’t going to help you build your small business’s brand.

Your brand is your name, and your small business logo, and a few key words and phrases that people think about your small business when they hear your brand name.  Your competitive advantage should be built into your brand. One store’s competitive advantage could be providing the same benefits as a competitor but at a lower cost. Or, a store can deliver benefits that exceed those of a competitor. So better prices, easier parking or access, more knowledgeable staff, later operating hours, higher quality products and services, faster response…any of those things can be your competitive advantage.

And here’s the important thing…your opinion on what your competitive advantage is may not be the same as your customers’ opinions. And you need to find that out. Ask customers for a word or phrase that describes your small business. If you’re not hearing the same words or phrases, or if those words and phrases don’t match what you think your competitive advantage is, then you need to address that.

First, make sure your competitive advantage is clearly understood by all your staff. Make sure they deliver on that competitive advantage every single day. Then be sure that your customers recognize that as your competitive advantage.

Then comes the important part: ask your customers to tell others about your competitive advantage. Work your advantage into your promotions and your traditional advertising for your small business.

The best thing about having a strong competitive advantage is that it leads to brand loyalty.  More and more these days, customers are becoming more loyal to stores than they are to individual products and services. Loyal customers spend more money, are less price sensitive, and are more forgiving if something goes wrong when they’re interacting with your store. And importantly, loyal customers are much more likely to give positive word of mouth for your small business.

Not every customer is going to be a loyal customer. And that’s OK.  But it’s certainly a good goal to have, isn’t it?

- Kim

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

When you use the same approach everyone else does, your marketing takes on a “me too” look and your prospects have no idea why they should bother doing business with you versus the competition or just not doing anything at all.

Want a better response from your marketing? Want your prospects to actually contact you and buy from you?

“Me too” marketing is marketing/advertising that looks, sounds, and reads nearly identical to your competition’s marketing. And it can kill your prospects’ interest and your business.

Here’s what most small business owners do. They know they need an ad, a marketing message or a website. So what do they do, they copy what their competition is saying nearly word for word.

This is “me too” marketing because your marketing says exactly the same things as your competition, such as, “great service, low prices, friendly and convenient” and a laundry list of other generic benefits your competitors is listing in their marketing.  Basically, the only thing that is different in the marketing message/advertisements is the name of the company – everything else is nearly identical.

If you want to see “me too”  marketing in action, pickup your local Yellow Pages phone book and go to the “contractors” section (or any section for that matter). Contractors are some of the worst offenders of me too marketing. Let me guess what you will see as benefits:  Free estimates, licensed, insured and bonded, family owned and operated, in business for over 20 years, etc. The ads all say the same boring things. Only the company names are different.

Now put yourself in the shoes of your customer.  If all the companies in your buying category are saying the same thing, how do I choose which one to work with? You may just start randomly calling starting with the first company and work your way through.  Or, a unique ad and message catches your eye because it stands out and is different. Maybe it uses different colors in the ad, or it uses a big strong benefit-rich headline, or best of all, it focuses on THE CUSTOMER instead of on your business. The key is you want your marketing to look and sound very different than your competition.

Okay great. So how do I make my marketing message different and better? Here’s how:

Make a list of what selling points your competition is using and try NOT to list those same benefits. Focus on telling the customer how your company is different and better and why doing business with your company offers a greater benefit for the customer than working with your competitors. Prove to me why I as a customer should choose you. Make a list of the top 3 major reasons why you should do business with us instead of our competition.

Focus on what your customers care about most-how working with you will benefit them and prove it to them. Include customer testimonials in your marketing. Offer money-back guarantees. Offer free information such as call us today (or go to our website) and we’ll mail you a free report on the 10 most important things to consider when hiring a contractor (choosing an insurance agent, choosing a dentist, choosing an accident attorney, choosing a moving company, choosing a roofer, choosing a well drilling company..you get the idea).

Most important of all, give your marketing/advertising a fun personality. For some unknown reason people seem to think business sales messages have to be cold, stuffy and boring. Guess what? PEOPLE HATE COLD, STUFFY AND BORING!

Give your marketing personality. Have fun. Think of your business as a cartoon character and think of what type of personality that cartoon character would have. Make customers laugh. Write your marketing message as if you were talking to your best friend. Use real everyday language and slang just as you use when talking to friends.  Marketing is not the place to be an English professor. Have fun! Stand out. Be outrageous! In fact, the more outrageous the better. Make your customers say, “I need to do business with them-they look fun.”
- Peter

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..