Branding is how you make your company memorable. Your logo is a visual icon of your branding. You use your logo on your website, business cards, letterhead, brochures and in your email. A great logo is memorable, creates a visual impact and helps your company become easily remembered. So, what makes a great logo?

It is simple, distinctive, represents the company and has the illusion of action.

1. Simple means that it is not overly complex, can be reduced to a small size on a business card and doesn’t have many complex and competing elements. Simple also means good contrast and a bold look.
2. Distinctive means being unique and memorable, graphic (not just letters), not being cluttered in look and something that has a unique look. The colors, shape and font should be used in combination to help the business stand out and not blend in.
3. Represents the company and is meaningful and appropriate for the company.  It should have permanence so it won’t have to be changed.
4. Illusion of action means the logo has the appearance of motion and doesn’t just sit there. The challenge here is to keep it simple while still showing action.

A simple great logo may not be easy or quick to create, but it is powerful in your company’s branding for marketing strategies or Internet marketing.

Online

1. Turn your website into a lead generation website with an email capture form.
2. Use A/B split testing to improve your website and PPC conversions.
3. Offer your prospects a free ebook or report if they opt in
4. Interact with website visitors by supplying valuable information using auto responders.
5. Add a clear call to action on your website such as “Request a Quote”
6. Do educational email marketing to your list.
7. Publish a weekly newsletter with “how-to tips”
8. Market new products to existing customers and to your email list.
9. Purchase leads from other lead generation websites
10. Optimize your website for more targeted traffic.
11. Advertise on the search engines (PPC advertising)
12. Write a blog (business blog marketing).
13. Write articles and post on article syndication sites.
14. Put on educational events through the Web (webinars)
15. Advertise on other websites using affiliate marketing.
16. Encourage past customers to write testimonials on Yelp, Google Maps, etc.
17. Encourage WOM advertising through social media (Twitter, a Facebook page, etc.)
18. Utilize social bookmarking on Reddit, Dig, Delicious, StumbleUpon, etc
19. Participate in forums to build authority, relationships and leads.
20. Video marketing is a great way to connect with people.
21. Advertise on Facebook.
22. Develop followers on Twitter.
23. Be an educator on Linked-In Answers

Offline

1. Use multiple sources for acquiring leads.
2. Direct mail post cards or sales letters
3. Follow up with existing customers every 90 days.
4. Use a follow-up tool such as a post card or note card
5. Hire a commission only sales force.
6. Speak regularly at business or trade events.
7. Put on a seminar or workshop
8. Print advertising (newspaper, magazines, trade journals)
9. Advertise on local cable TV.
10. Advertise on radio by purchase cheaper remnant advertising
11. Join a lead referral group
12. Be active in professional associations and your local chamber of commerce.
13. Encourage referrals from current customers.
14. Develop strategic Alliances and referral channels.
15. Offer payment for referrals to partners in related industries.
16. Customer complaints can, and should be treated as opportunities.
17. Publish regular press releases
18. Make cold calls
19. Distribute door-to-door flyers.
20. Become a community volunteer.

Every business strives to be better than average. It is the American way. So, what is “average” for a business? I wanted to identify some benchmarks of what “average” is… so I went searching on Google for facts about businesses and this is what I found.

1. Average annual sales are $4 million. The average business has $4 million in sales. According to the US Census Bureau (2007 data published 2009) there are 7.2 million businesses in the US. The two largest sectors of these businesses are retail (15%) and Professional services (12%).
2. The average annual revenue of a small business is $3.6 million according to Entrepreneur. The average annual revenue of a small business with a website is $5.03 million. (entrepreneur)
3. The average business has no employees. Although the average across all businesses large and small is 16 employees. About three quarters of all US business firms have no payroll. Most are self-employed persons operating unincorporated businesses. So the average business has no employees. This is according to US Census information.
4. The average small business doesn’t have a website. According to a WebVisible and Nielsen Online study, only 44% of small businesses have a website. The percentage increases with the size of the business. Of businesses with revenues of $10 Million to $500 Million in size, 84% have websites.
5. The average small business operates at a loss for the first three years of its existence. (from wiki.answers.com)
6. The average and median age of company founders when they started their current companies was 40. (kaufman.org)

Totaling up numbers to come up with averages may give a distorted view of what is actually going on, but they are fun to look at.

How should a business owner decide on how much money to spend on advertising? What is considered normal? Advertising costs are a completely controllable expense but they should create a return on your investment. How much advertising is enough?.

Each industry will tend to spend a different amount of their sales revenue on advertising. To stay competitive, you tend to follow what is typical for your industry. Companies with higher profit margins will tend to spend more. New start-up companies will need to spend more to get noticed.

The three common methods for advertising budget setting:

1. Percent of sales based on industry averages
2. Percent of sales based on gross profits
3. Based on last year’s advertising expense

Industry Averages: Find out what is typical for your industry. Schoenfeld & Associates consultants of Lincolnwood, Illinois published their study on typical advertising spent by industry. Numbers are a percent of sales revenue.

• 1.3 %    Grocery stores
• 4.0 %    Lawn/garden
• 5.0 %    Education
• 5.1 %    Computers
• 5.3 %    TV, radio, electronics
• 5.7 %    Catalog, mail order
• 5.8 %    Retail stores
• 8.6 %    Investment advice
• 10.4 %  Cosmetics
• 11.0 %  Memberships
• 14.2 %  Toys
• 14.5 %  Cleaning supplies

Gross Profit Margin: Many businesses will allocate their advertising budget based on their gross profit. The following are typical retail store spending on advertising (% of sales) vs. gross profits.

• 1.5%  21% gross profit
• 3%     30% gross profit
• 5%     41% gross profit
• 7%     50% gross profit

Last Years Budget: Established companies tend to estimate next years advertising budget based on what happened last year and what they need to change for the coming year. If you have new products to launch, factor in expenses for these campaigns. You can also shift your marketing mix from traditional media to more cost effective Internet marketing.

To battle rising advertising costs, many companies are shifting their marketing efforts over to the Internet. According to a Forrester Research study 60% of marketers surveyed will increase their Internet advertising budgets by shifting funds from traditional media. Direct mail was cited by 40% of marketers as being one being cut, outranking newspapers (35%), magazines (28%) and television (12%).

Dare to be different and break out of the “plain vanilla marketing” trap that so many businesses fall into. You will never be able to beat your competitors if your customers can’t tell you apart.

Try this… take the marketing message of your 5 top competitors and remove just their name, logo and any brand names. Compare them. I’ll bet they all sound almost identical. If you can’t tell the difference, think about how confused your customers are.

You have to give interested prospects a reason to buy from you. Find key differences between yourself and your competitors.

If you don’t see any real differences, create them. Think about what your customer is seeking that your competitors do not offer. What is your USP (unique selling proposition)? What are ways you can make your company unique and different?

1. Offer an unconditional money back guarantee. Use this to remove perceived risk. Couple this with an A+ BBB rating and you create trust.
2. Deliver faster: Figure out your industry standard and then develop a way to beat this. Ideally you would want to have the fastest delivery in your industry.
3. Free shipping: Offer free shipping or a free upgrade to next day shipping.
4. 24/7 customer service: Offer accessibility so you are reachable anytime your customer need you. It is about meeting their convenience and needs.
5. Offer more: Give more in a package, include bonus offers or give something extra. Costco is a master of this.

If your product is superior, then tout the differences. The key is to stand out in a crowd.

Figure out how to be a leader in your market. What is it that you are best at that would be important to a prospective customer? Market this difference(s). People will buy based on the important differences.

Now is the time to grow your business while others are just waiting for the tough times to pass. Opportunities abound with many of your competitors going out of business or at least in deep hibernation. You just need to understand that yesterday’s tactics no longer work in today’s marketplace. These are the steps you should follow.

Reassess: Your market has probably shifted. Which of your products, markets and customers are the most profitable and have the greatest growth potential? This may mean getting rid of services and products or even customers that are not profitable or ones that consume large amounts of your time without a payoff.

Shift: Focus your marketing budget on advertising that provides the greatest value and results. For most businesses this means shifting away from traditional advertising to online advertising. Update your existing website or add a new niche website for a business segment you want to focus on.

Optimize: Where ever you are spending your marketing budget, optimize for maximum results and return on your investment. Optimize your website for organic search. Optimize your PPC campaigns with landing page design and test different ads. Optimize radio ads and measure leads from each commercial.

Create a Buzz: Promote your business using non-advertising methods. Build your own PR campaigns to announce new products or company directions. Publish your own press releases on sites like prnewswire.com. Start a blog. Add your company to Facebook.

Measure: Your bias has to be toward results. The nice thing about the web is that everything is measurable. Don’t be afraid to try new things as long as they don’t require large investments and long term commitments. If something doesn’t work, then stop and try something else.

Business is about relationships between people. Making a good impression can make the difference of getting the next contract… or not. Building relationships is about common sense and following business etiquette. It isn’t about outspending your competition.

1. Be responsive: Respond to emails within 24 hours and to phone calls within 4 hours. Even if you don’t have an answer, respond with an acknowledgment and a commitment of when you can have an answer. Responding quickly is a key difference for successful companies.
2. Give your full attention: When you take a call or attend a meeting, be fully engaged. Don’t multitask and only be partially there. Don’t look answer emails and only respond with one word answers. This sends the message that you really don’t care.
3. Eye contact: When you meet with customers or employees, look them in the eye. Show them what they are saying is important and that their opinions matter. Don’t take phone calls or other interruptions which send the message that they are unimportant.
4. Voice messages: Leave clear and to the point voice messages. Give your phone number clearly at the end of the message along with a good time you can be reached. Do everything you can to avoid the game of phone tag. If possible leave a question that the other person could answer in a voice message if they should miss connecting with you.
5. Respect people you meet: If you trade business cards with someone at a meeting or connect with someone on LinkedIn, it is OK to start a conversation or greet them with a call. It is not OK to spam them with email solicitations or launch into an unsolicited sales pitch.
6. Clear and concise emails: Time is limited and respect the other person’s time. Emails should be short with one or two paragraphs. There should be a clear and descriptive subject that describes what you are after. If you respond to an email about a different subject, change the subject accordingly. Use the spell check that comes with your email system.
7. Do a little extra: Follow up with handwritten cards, remember their spouse’s name or some other event. You can keep notes in your Outlook contacts or use a Customer relationship management system (CRM). Invite them to dinner or do something else to make it personal.

Business is far too competitive to risk making a bad impression… especially when it is not hard to make a positive impression. The ideas for this blog were inspired from the 2007 business Week article Rules for Making a Good Impression.

I am in the middle of renewing a modest ad in the Yellow Book and I have to ask myself, should I spend the money? We advertise in two of the three local yellow page directories. Each year the books keep getting thinner with fewer people advertising in them.

Each year at the office whenever the directories get dropped off and they go straight to recycling. The same happens at home. I ask myself, why would anyone use the yellow pages when they have the Internet? Now online yellow pages have some value, but the printed books?  It seems like such a waste of resources.

In this age of Internet, websites, online advertising and social review websites, printed yellow page directories are a dying resource. A business gets a much better return from a great business website design or from business blog marketing.

You may ask why we keep renewing our yellow page ads. It is because we still get  a few new customers from the yellow pages. We ask every new client how they found us and we still get a few who tell us they found us in the Yellow Pages. We get barely enough customers to make advertising in the yellow pages worth while.

Will I renew again next year?  I am not sure. The choice would be a lot easier if there was only a single directory like when I grew up. Having three directories in our local area splits the number of readers making it hardly worth the expense.

What do I recommend to other business owners? Track your advertising dollars carefully. If it makes money for your company, keep doing it. If it doesn’t make you money, quickly eliminate it. Replace it with something that works for your business.

I have to share a great Guerilla Marketing tip. We have been using this service for about three years. On hold marketing is low cost and markets to people while they wait to be helped on-hold. Now this is far better than the standard on-hold message or music on-hold businesses. This service produces highly entertaining mini-commercials separated by short bits of music.

Patrick from HoldTime Studios has this perfect “radio voice.” His recordings alternates short periods of music with stories about your business.  He is so good that I have actually had one person ask to be put back on hold to finish listening to a story.

I give out HoldTime Studios contact information at least once a week to people who call in and hear our on-hold marketing. As you can tell, I am ecstatic with the results we have seen. For a very reasonable price, this on hold marketing makes us stand out with people who call in.

We always looking for unique marketing ideas that work; Holdtime Studios is one of them. You can listen to samples of their work when you go to their Music On Hold website.

In the interest of being transparent, Patrick and HoldTime Studios are now a client, but we have been using his service for the two and a half years prior to doing work for him. Because I was sending so many referrals to HoldTime, we eventually ended up talking often and eventually producing a new website for them.

If you want to try something truly innovative, try HoldTime Studios.

Remember “don’t tase me, bro?”

Or when the “Writers Guild of America” went on strike and we went without our favorite television shows, for what felt like forever?

These events happened about a year and a half ago, even though it may feel like just yesterday. And in that time, our entire outlook on living has shifted dramatically because of our current economic situation.

This recession has affected the buying habits of many people. While some strategies used in 2007 may still prove fruitful today, those instances are few and far between. We’re seeing major repercussions because of our situation which include huge companies re-branding themselves, well-known electronic stores filing for bankruptcy, and even companies shifting to a four-day workweek in an effort to combat dwindling profits.

At SEMpdx’s Searchfest 2009, esteemed SEO copywriter Heather Lloyd-Martin asked the entire audience, “When was the last time you updated your home page?” And now, this is a question I’m asking you.

Are you still focused on strategies that worked in 2007, or have you shifted in tone and type-of-sale to accommodate consumers in our new economic climate?

If any company was immune to a huge drop in profits, I’d wager Starbucks would be relatively fine. Everybody needs coffee, it’s become a part of our daily routine and branded in our minds as a necessity; so you think the business model and market that Starbucks owns is fool-proof.

On March 3rd, Starbucks introduced a company first: value “pairings” of a drink and food item at a low cost.

If you haven’t already, go to your website’s home page, analyze, and strategize accordingly.