Branding & Marketing

As a business owner myself, I know the importance of strong branding to sales results. Branding reinforces every marketing effort to give your business a bigger sales impact.

How can you harness the power of consistent branding in your business to support your sales & marketing? These 3 branding rules can help:

1. Be consistent with your colors in all your marketing materials
2. Always use your logo and icon to visually brand your business
3. Focus on your core marketing message in every communication

Hving a brand strategy will lower your marketing costs and increase your marketing effectiveness. Read more about color in branding , visual branding, and marketing messages at the Branding & Marketing blog.

Considering this may be the one time you get in front of many of the decision makers in your industry, you'll want to have everything you need:

__ Exhibit booth
__ Retractable banners
__ Table cloth in company colors
__ Business cards
__ Literature, brochures, price list
__ Product samples, if any
__ Pens
__ Highlighters (to
__ Stapler (to attach business cards to literature)
__ Lead sheets/log book
__ Golf balls, magnets, pens or other give aways

The following are several ways to increase the effectiveness of your marketing strategy and program results using everyday technology.

Use the subject line in your e-mail: Make sure you always use a descriptive subject line to get your e-mail opened. Be aware of many of the words that spamming companies use and don't use those in your subject line or your message may be blocked. For example, the subject line of "Hot New Product" will probably be blocked because of the word "hot". Only email to your mailing list, don't spam! Avoid HTML and large, long e-mails.

Conduct a market research survey quickly, inexpensively, and effectively using www.surveymonkey.com. For a small fee anyone can make a professional survey, gather the information and analyze the results.

Program your name into the e-mail return address. It takes less than a minute and your customers will feel more comfortable opening an e-mail from someone they recognize. If you'll be out of the office, consider using an automated response so they aren't stuck waiting for your reply.

Fax Machine and Cover Pages: Your fax cover page should include your tag line and a brief product or service description. A fax machine on your PC will reduce paper and increase productivity.

Use the signature feature in your e-mail. It's easy to include your name, company name, tag line, phone, e-mail, and web site in every e-mail. This is not only a good reminder of your services, it gives your customer choices on how to contact you by phone, fax or e-mail.

Put your Press Kits on Disk. Many information kits and press kits are now distributed on CD's or DVD's. This allows you to provide information electronically (photos as jpg's and press releases as word documents.) This allows the editors to copy, cut, and paste. Disks make for easy editing! You can also provide links to your web site, video clips and other information very neatly. Less expensive to make than cassettes, CD's and DVD's also ship easily.

Your Internet Web site: Just like every business has a phone number and business address, a website allows customers to locate you online. Your company's home page describes who you are to help set your image, branding & the category of business for your potential customers. Use your web page to sell and cross sell your products and services.

Trade links with other sites of non-competing companies reaching your target market.

Use your website to help you to establish credibility. Post your press releases and articles that you've written on an "In the News" page. Archive past articles. Quoted in a magazine? Post the link on your media page.

Take the time to obtain testimonials and permission to post them on your site from your best customers. When you post them, use your customer's name and a link to their web site. This helps your potential customers see how they can benefit as well. Comments from customers provide tangible word- of-mouth advertising.

Check out this Rebranding article in Smart Business magazine profiling Jerry Lynch at GMP Friction Products. His company, a leading friction materials manufacturer, recently was rebranded by my marketing consulting company, Marketing Resources & Results.

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Marketing Resources & Results

Chances are if you're reading this on Squidoo, you are knowledgeable about the power of Web2.0.

But, are you using Twitter to brand and market your business?

Here are 10 easy ways to use your Twitter profile, settings, content and background to brand your business, your products and services.

There are real RIO benefits of outsourced marketing. By using a branding and marketing expert and executive consultant, you'll have someone who really understands brand strategy and market development while only paying for fractional shares of marketing talent. They specialize in developing metrics and process... and then analyzing sales and marketing metrics... and creating the process for sales development. Marketing outsourcing could be one of the most effective small business tactics to capture market share.

Read more about it here: Ascend Marketing's Cathy Pringle: "Clients Reap Huge ROI Benefits with Outsourced Marketing"

Marketing Resources & Results is expanding to serve the Baltimore Maryland market by offering marketing consulting Baltimore as a new service area.