www.narvinta.com

The bottom line of all advertising efforts is an obvious one: to attract customers and bolster sales. But often, small business advertising is wasted on a shotgun approach that doesn’t focus on the company’s best prospects: those who are ready, willing and able to purchase the product or service. In an attempt to reach “everybody,” these advertisers either miss their true market or spend far more than necessary to reach it.

Once you’ve targeted your market and know exactly who and where your prospects are, it’s important to clearly identify what you want your advertising to accomplish. Specific advertising objectives include:

What’s in a brand name? Everything! Think of these brands: Coke, Barbie, Hershey, McDonalds, Madonna, Pepsi, Bono, Microsoft, Kleenex, Xerox, Steven Spielberg, Dell and GM. Did you notice that brands can be things, replicas of people and actual people? Brands are the public perception of a thing or person. Companies work very hard to establish their brand, sometimes failing when they attempt to tie a secondary product into the popular brand name. Does anyone even remember A1 chicken sauce?

The people and companies behind the above brand names are well known. They are established. They have earned the right to be positioned where they are in the public’s eye. Are you or your product clearly associated with the solution you seek to provide? What about your product? What about your name? How are you positioned in the marketplace? As an entrepreneur, a small businessperson, you have to be ever so keenly aware of every minute detail and opportunity to brand yourself. You need to be the expert. Your product must solve the problem, and the world needs to know about it. Branding therefore, may be the most important marketing challenge you face as your business plan unfolds.

It’s all about public perception. Is Coke the real thing? Does Hershey make the finest chocolate? Does McDonald’s offer the best tasting, most nutritious hamburger? Does GM make the finest cars? We have been trained by skilled marketers to make the above associations. We have been conditioned over time to accept the advertising as real, whether we actually believe it or not. Very clever indeed, these markers have been. You cannot afford to be any less convincing in your efforts.

As CEO of your own organization, you will most likely not have the extensive resources that a major company or big name star has. You probably are the marketing department, the advertising department, the sales team, the accountant and so on. As such, you must remain acutely aware of your image, the perception of each and every customer, and to a great extent, the marketplace as a whole. Your position in the marketplace, often dictated by the perceived quality of your products, your celebrity, your reputation for service, your leadership in your field and your consistency will certainly have a great deal to do with the effectiveness of your brand. You are the brand.

As the brand, you must take the position that you will always be under scrutiny, under the microscope. Assume leadership. You may not be the biggest guy in your field, but through leadership you can establish a market presence that will help you to become positioned along with the major players in your market. Take the lead on local issues or take a stand on a national issue that relates to your product, service and market. Through association, you will be perceived as a market leader, regardless of your size. Attempt to resolve a small problem and associate it with a greater one and you will achieve a level of notoriety, one that you can leverage to increase your brand awareness.

Your company must be credible. That is to say that your products and services must do what you say they will. You must also be credible personally. If you cannot be rightfully associated with your product or service offering, it will be difficult for the public to be receptive to such a contradiction. Honesty and integrity will be assets of great value to you as your marketplace gets to know you.

You must be consistent. You must find your niche, take your stance, establish some position and build from it. If you change every week or every time a new wind blows, people will not take you seriously. They will begin to doubt your leadership and find it difficult to perceive you as a credible source for your goods and services. You will lose whatever market position you have gained and whatever leadership position that you have achieved by wobbling among various directions. The public sees consistency as strength and strength as character. When you are a small company, struggling to grow, the perception of you in the marketplace is a critical factor.

Your marketing plan should certainly include these concerns as well as the incredible importance of the awareness of your market image. Since you are the brand, few components within your business plan should receive more of your attention than the development of the public’s perception of you, your evolving position in the marketplace and the development of your brand image.

Daniel Sitter is the author of the breakthrough e-book, Learning For Profit, the revolutionary how-to book providing simple, step-by-step instructions to teach people exactly how to learn new skills faster than ever before. It’s currently available from c|net’s download.com, the author’s web site http://www.learningforprofit.com/ and a variety of online book merchants. Mr. Sitter is a contributing writer for several online and traditional publications. His expertise include sales, marketing, effective learning techniques, self-improvement and general business interests.

Share This

Branding your comapny should be the first thing a company does. You have to convince potential customers to buy from you. Very few people have a monopoly like Microsoft or Ebay, Everyone else need to steer business to their company or product. When people think about your company, what is their impression. For my company, Solutions Ink, I wanted to portray a fresh, professional, ease of use type of company whoose product meets their quality needs while helping their business. I wanted to portray Solutions Ink as always on the fore front of the printing and promotional product industry’s.

To achieve this I needed to tell potential customers of new and innovative products for the printing industry. Variable data, large format digital printing, digital printing with pantone colors, label and form combinations, magnet and form combinations and e-commerce ordering systems. How best to show customers then actually devise a campaign where the product you are trying to educate your customers about is sent out to them to give them ideas how to use this product to help their businesses. One campaign I organised was to compile a list of fashion retailers whoose logo’s were specific pantone colors that are not reproduced well in 4 color process printing. Today with 6,8 and 10 color presses you can print in 4 color process and 2 pantone colors quite easily. This keeps the integrity of the company’s logo intact in their big marketing or flyer campaigns. This is OK for large run printing jobs. The problem is that even for large chains, you tend to have regional sales in a small amount of stores. In store displays usually are done in small numbers and are printed digitally. Today there are certain digital presses that can insert pantone colors on top of the 4 color process printing. After devising a mock up campaign and targetting by variable data the buyers of these retail fashion chains, I was able to secure 2 large accounts for present and future business.

This technique can be applied to any industry. The key is to really now your product and the strengths of your company. The next step is to educate your customers on your company’s merits. Then you must reinforce your image constantly to stay in your existing customers mind, as well as peak the curiousity of potential new customers.

Once you have achieved this, giving out promotional products is a useful way of staying on their minds. The trick is to find a great promotional product, that fits you budget, is useful to the end user and doesn’t shout your name too boldly. Humour is a great way to have your customers keep your stuff. The items seen most times for an office person are calendars and coffee mugs. To be different in the Montreal Promotional Product market, Solutions Ink sent out to all existing customers a 14 ounze special mug which was imprinted with thermochromic ink. The ink is heat sensitive and evaporates on heat and returns on cold. With this you can print something underneath the thermochromic ink which is revealed when cold. On the outside we simply put the word STRESS in red over a black background. Most people who work know about stress. The humour side was that when you poured your hot coffee the message turned into stress free at Solutions Ink. A simple inexpensive idea that our customers really enjoyed and every time I stop at one of their offices I readily spot our mugs. On top of this I received 4 orders from these customers for these mugs with a different message for their customers.

Another great way for your company to be branded positively is to become associated with a worth while charity. Today we must give back to those less fortunate. Sponsering an event gives your company great exposure but the real treat is in knowing that you’ve helped others. Money is not the end all, all the time. A funny thing, helping others usually rewards yourself if not immediately some time in the future.

The trick is to plan out your actions. Research the market, research your company’s attributes and brand your company’s image positively and constantly. Following these steps should help your company stand out from the competition and make yourself more successful Best of luck. If you need help you can contact me at 514-337-2238 or visit us on the webb at www.solutionsink4u.com

Steven Schneidman

Steven Schneidman has a B.A. in Psychology and an MBA from Canadian Universities. He also served as a professor at a Montreal University and worked for the secong largest Canadian bank. I have owned 2 very successful printing and promotional product companies. My greatest achievement is my wife and 3 kids.

Share This