Remember this: Branding is about discovering your specific idea; the one thing that you stand for. As a business owner or entrepreneur, your duty is to own a relevant, authentic, and differentiated idea that can live in the minds of your customers and prospects.

With that thought firmly planted, let’s turn to the Food Network. I’ll admit that I’m a sucker for the program The Next Food Network Star, a reality-type program that takes a dozen or so aspiring chefs/TV personalities and puts them through an elimination-style challenge over multiple weeks.

So what does this cooking show have to do with branding? Everything. Because each contestant is challenged to develop a POV, or Point of View, that represents what will make them…wait for it…relevant, authentic, and differentiated. Just like a business or product.

One of the judges, Susie Fogelson, Food Network and Cooking Channel Senior Vice President of Marketing, Creative & Brand Strategy, would constantly remind the deer-in-headlights contestants to define, refine, and evolve their POV. Many of this past season’s contestants slipped—and ultimately suffered elimination—not because of kitchen-related mishaps, but because they forgot their POV and wandered “off brand”.

“Why would someone stop and watch your show?” Fogelson would challenge. Viewers need a reason to cease surfing and pay attention. And admit it: that’s exactly what you want your customers and prospects to do; to stop and consider YOUR products or services because they’re relevant, authentic, and differentiated.

The ultimate winner of this year’s Food Network Star was a young chef from Chicago named Jeff Mauro. Mauro had his POV nailed from the very first show: he referred to himself as the Sandwich King. At first the moniker—and point of view—seemed questionable. Could Mauro really leverage the simple sandwich and elevate the humble POV to his own show on Food Network? The answer was a resounding yes. By consistently presenting his POV to the judges week after week, he cut through the clutter. Everything he did—from his on-screen tests to the creative food he prepared—was aligned to his POV in a way that made him stand out from his competitors.

In the book, Why Johnny Can’t Brand, authors Bill Schley and Carl Nichols Jr. wrote, “The positioning paradox is that the power of your message is directly proportional to how simple you can make it and how few words and images you can use to say it.” To that point, there’s a new show on the Food Network on Sunday mornings. It’s called, Sandwich King.

So…what’s your business’ POV?

If you’ve been looking at your web site and wishing it were a more powerful marketing tool, then you’re in luck – my latest article published on the AMEX Open Forum gives you a step-by-step process to review your existing site and upgrade the content and design to make it a more powerful component of your marketing strategy.

Here are just a few of the tips I cover:

Before you do anything to your site, check in with your marketing goals.  What is it that you want the web site to do for you in terms of getting and keeping customers.  Your next step should be to set a baseline.  If you don’t already have Google Analytics installed on your web site, then install that first and wait a few months so that you can get a good picture of what your site is currently attracting.  Your last step is to decide on what web site platform or software you’re going to use.  Consider choosing a popular platform like WordPress because there are so many people who know and understand the technology behind it that you will never be stuck if your web designer or programmer bails on you.

And finally, the checklist of web re-design:

1. Buy keyword rich domains.
2. Use a high-quality logo graphic
3. Create an use a favicon
4. Write a headline that quickly and easily communicates your value

There’s beauty in the immediacy of social media marketing — instantly you get feedback from customers on your products, service, brands, and campaigns. But the downside of that immediate exposure is its short shelf-life. What’s relevant one day is moot and forgotten the next. Even old-school networking has its drawbacks. A great first impression may be made but there’s not always time for the kind of personalized follow-up you’d like to initiate. Read on for ways to make sure that your marketing message goes beyond the lifespan of a tweet or the fleeting moment of a handshake to make a lasting and recurring impression.

1. Make Your Online Content Last

If you had especially good customer feedback via facebook or twitter, consider including those comments on your website as testimonials. This way, a good day of good news can be used again and offer recurring returns as opposed to disappearing into cyberspace.

If you write guest posts for blogs or contribute articles to online industry publications, instead of writing, posting, and forgetting, include your blog posts on your website under a tab called “resources” or “articles” so visitors to your site can continue to use your good material. With informational content added to your site, your company becomes a resource for potential customers to revisit. If you keep a company blog on your site, be sure to organize it so that even older material can be highlighted in menus titled “Most Popular Posts,” “Signature Posts,” or “And More.”

2. Make Your Promotional Product Part of Your Signature

What if instead of buying a wide-range of promotional products and handing them out here and there, people actually paid you for the privilege of wearing your logo? There’s a fishing shop I know of that started off as one small store and has since grown to over six locations. They make the bulk of their profits from expensive gear and guided fishing charters, but in each location they have a whole wall of plain old hats with the shop’s logo on it. Stickers of the logo are on cars and trucks all over town. Their promotional products have taken on a life of their own. Plenty of people who can’t afford a fancy rod and reel buy hats from this place. The shop can hardly keep them stocked.

To get this phenomenon going for your business, be sure your logo is well-done — something people would want on a hat. Create a brand people want to be a part of, give them a simple way to be involved (like a hat), and you’ll be the first place customers come calling when they do have the money for that rod and reel.

3. Make Your Promotional Product Come in Handy

There used to be a time when funeral homes handed out fans during hot-weather funerals. Give potential customers what they need when they need it, and you get their attention. I’ve seen floating key chains passed out by a boat-towing service and reusable grocery bags given out at a farmer’s market by a bank with an ATM across the street from the market.

When it comes to promotional products, an item with practical use is appreciated — especially with consumers being more interested in sustainable practices and cutting clutter. The key to promotional products is knowing your ideal customers and knowing what products they would be most likely to need, use, and appreciate.

4. Make Your Free Information Pay Off

When you attend networking events, trade shows, or conferences, give away some helpful information on a brochure or info sheet of some sort. Then at the bottom, of course, include your company name and website. Make the information something valuable. For example, I know a copywriter who has actually had someone call to order some of the information sheets she’s passed out for free on Business Writing Tips. She also has sheets on topics such as Proper Email Etiquette and How to Write a Good Blog Post.

Give free talks. A friend of mine who is a dentist gives free talks to schools about keeping teeth and gums healthy and gives away toothbrushes with his name, web address, and contact info on them. He gets his business out there while doing a little good at the same time. If you have good information you’re willing to share, be sure to not only hand it out with your business’s web address and contact info, but also to post it on your website so it becomes a lasting resource for clients and potential clients.

5. Make Your Last Deal Count

You always want to be marketing to potential clients for the future, but don’t neglect the marketing power of your current clients and sales successes. There is plenty of opportunity there to develop more business or garner referrals from a happy client. Capitalize on that already-established relationship by keeping your impression fresh. A great way to stay in touch is to send a monthly or quarterly e-newsletter via MailChimp or Constant Contact.

Make sure again that you anticipate the needs of your customers and provide the information they will find handy. Sharing good news about your company is great, but a newsletter that is going to be read instead of deleted is one in which you offer something helpful to your recipient. Maybe it’s a special coupon or promotion or maybe it’s helpful tax information or energy-saving tips related to your industry. Don’t think of your newsletter as a way to tout your products or services — let a newsletter be another way you make a lasting impression on your clients that your business is all about them.

About the Author: James Lee is a marketing analyst for Amsterdam Printing, a leading company in the promotional pens and personalized calendars business. James has owned small businesses himself and at Amsterdam concentrates on marketing ideas that utilize personalized pens, mugs, and other promotional items such as keychains, magnets and apparel.

The holy grail of “marketing automation” continues to be the reining “shiny object” within the marketing industry.  First reserved for B2C, then for large enterprise B2B, marketing automation has now expanded into the small business market.  But too often companies think they need marketing automation and implement a full system right off the bat. Before you buy, creating a detailed plan of your goals, resources and expectations can save you thousands of dollars in the long run.  It is important to evaluate the problem you’re trying to solve and set clear goals for what you are trying to achieve before shopping for a system.

Here are four steps for building your Marketing Automation plan:

Step 1: Determine your goals/objectives.

This will help you stay focused on your particular needs and not get caught up in extra features and functionality that may not prove useful to your business now or in the near term. In a recent study of businesses that have implemented marketing automation, nearly 50% use fewer than half of the features for the first year of ownership. It is common for companies to over-buy, based on the assumption that they will eventually grow into the system.  Truth is most companies’ move from email marketing platforms to marketing automation platforms because they simply want to be better at email marketing. This makes sense in theory, but if all you want to be able to do, is better target prospects, based on behavior and hand off interested leads to your sales team, based on prospect interest, you don’t need the full feature set that most marketing automation systems offer. The key is to find a system that can meet your needs today, but grow with you as your needs increase. So ask yourself these questions before jumping in:

-      Do you want to be better at email marketing?

-      Do you want to be able to behaviorally target customers?

-      Do you need to get more qualified leads to your sales team?

-      Do you have a complex product and are your sales cycles are too long?

-      Have heard that marketing automation is great, so you must need one?

Step 2: What functions do you expect to get out of the system?

The capabilities vary from vendor to vendor. Some solutions tout themselves as being the jack of all trades (master of none), while others pride them on being very good at a core set of features. For instance, some systems will run all of your sales and marketing processes in one place, including CRM, e-commerce, email marketing and drip marketing. While others are more focused on B2B businesses, where they have very robust marketing automation and email marketing capabilities, but integrate with your existing CRM and other systems, instead of providing them. Most small businesses would opt for the former, but would be upset as rapidly discovered the limitations of the system. Others might go for the latter, but would get overwhelmed by the richness of the features set. Evaluate your current systems, what and how you will need to integrate and how advanced you want your systems to operate.

Step 3: Determine your capabilities and limitations:  This will give you a guideline for which solutions meet your needs.  If you don’t have the staff to manage a complex system then all of the added benefits it might provide will be for naught.

-      How many people can you commit to managing a system?

-      A full automation implementation requires a significant amount of unique content for drip campains and lead form pages.  Do you have the resources to create the content to make full marketing automation successful?

-      How much IT expertise or support do you have in house?

-      What is your budget?

-      Is this B2B, B2C, person-to-person or web-based?

-      Do you have a CRM system? Does it need to integrate with your marketing system?

Step 4: Identify your organization’s marketing needs to understand the level of automation you require.

-      How many segments will you be addressing?

-      How long and complex is your buying process?

-      Do you intend for salespeople to use it?

-      Are you looking to track marketing revenue?

-      Do you need predictive analytics?

-      What kinds of programs are you looking to run?

-      Do you need automated nurturing, or will you be running manual drip campaigns?

-      Do you need to include social media in your content marketing programs?

-      Will you be using lead scoring?

Step 5: Invest in training from the on-set! Most failed implementations are due to a lack of investment in training and resource allocation. Engage those that will be using the product, make sure it is easy to use and intuitive because if no one is using the product then the investment was a waste.

At the end of the day, a successful marketing automation system can intelligently message to and nurture your prospects, reduce sales times and focus your sales efforts on only the most promising and interested prospects. Taking the time upfront to qualify these questions, determine your marketing objectives and find the solution that really meets your unique needs can make your marketing automation implementation a triumph.

About the Author: As CEO of Genius.com, Sam Weber is responsible for creating and executing on the company’s overall vision, overseeing all business operations and working closely with customers to grow the business. Weber brings over 15 years of extensive experience in enterprise software sales, pre-sales, support and professional services having worked with companies including: KnowNow; E.piphany; Clarify; Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

Do it yourself marketing has seen several evolutions in the past several years. With the advancement of internet technology and then the social media revolution, DIY marketing has had to make several adjustments. In many ways, marketing has become intrinsically married to the internet and social media culture. For many DIY marketers, this can be a struggle. While it’s impossible to market something without it being seen or heard by the public, it is also a challenge to manage new technologies and multiple social media accounts. These three tools can help you manage your various social media accounts for simpler and more successful marketing.

1. TweetDeck: This application is by far one of the most popular social media managers available. Allowing users to view their Facebook, Flickr, Youtube, and Twitter accounts all from one interface, TweetDeck simplifies social media for the mega user. Use TweetDeck to stay up to date on local events and marketing opportunities, while also, easily managing your correspondence with customers and business associates on your various platforms. Tweetdeck enables you to divide your contacts into columns, so that you can separate specific groups of people into different areas. This allows you to manage your marketing schemes more quickly and easily.

2. Gist: This tool allows users to collect all of their contacts from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, email, and more in one centralized location. This organizational help can be invaluable for marketers trying to manage their network. Gist provides you with the latest news, blog posts, and tweets from anyone in your professional network when you want to receive it and where you want to receive it. Because Gist is so customizable, it can be extremely useful for nearly any user. By gathering the essential information from your inboxes and social networks, Gist provides the perfect way to speed up your marketing potential. Use Gist to become more productive with marketing and connecting to professional contacts.

3. Ping.fm: While Gist is more focused toward organizing your many social media contacts to simplify managing networks and new updates, Ping.fm focuses on making posting to various platforms simpler. This tool allows users to ping a message or data to multiple social media accounts from one location. This can be especially useful for DIY marketers, hoping to get their company or product seen through social media outlets. Ping allows you to select which accounts you want to post to and really speeds up the process of getting your voice out there.

With all of these tools and services free to download and use there is really no reason DIY marketers looking for some aid with managing their busy social media accounts shouldn’t try all of them. Check them out and decide which services would be most valuable for you and your marketing efforts. Social media is a great way to get your ideas out to the public and to develop a strong professional network. As social media expands and evolves, tools and applications for managing these accounts will become ever more useful.

About the Author:  This guest post is contributed by Patricia Garza, who writes about gadget, technology, design, social media, e-learning related articles at online university rankings.

Sure, we know effective branding is crucial for a company’s viable success, but that doesn’t get us any closer to knowing how to implement a realistic branding strategy. Branding can be even more challenging for small business owners who might not have the funds needed for extensive marketing platforms. Fortunately, small businesses owners still have a number of inexpensive avenues they can explore when looking to brand a new enterprise — they might just have to think outside the box a bit.

When branding a new business, you should really take the time to explore all of the options thoroughly because the decisions you make now will define your company’s image for years to come. The following are five questions you should ask yourself before you begin developing potential branding elements.

1. What are you trying to say?
   Your first priority should be to develop a communicable message that accurately represents your business and what it offers consumers, whether it be a product or service. Take the time to think about every aspect of your business. Writing a mission statement for your enterprise is a great way to solidify what your company is all about.
   You need to have a well-thought-out message from the get-go so your branding practices can be implemented consistently in the future.  The overall design concept, individual logo and expressive colors should flow seamlessly to deliver one comprehensive message about your business.
2. How much money can you afford to spend?
   Some small businesses might have the start-up capital necessary to hire a freelance designer or marketing specialist to help them brand their company. Others might not have funds to allocate toward developing a marketing strategy, which makes the initial branding process that much more important. If the latter is true for your business, contact the marketing or graphic design departments of colleges/universities in your area. Higher education programs often offer opportunities for their students to get real-world experience by working with local businesses. You’ll get free marketing and branding development, and they’ll get college credit and professional clips for their portfolios.
3. How do you want customers to perceive your business?
   The first branding component potential customers will see and remember is your company logo. People should be able to recognize your business by its logo, and color choice plays a big role in your decision. Choose something that will draw attention but still look professional. Get feedback from as many people as you can before you settle on a logo. Ask your friends, family members and professional colleagues what their opinions are, because, as consumers, their opinions are all relevant.
4. What should your online presence be?
   Today’s consumers expect to find the companies they do business with online. As such, every business should have some sort of online presence. The extent to which you promote your brand online will depend on your staff and its financial capacity, but there’s certainly no reason you can’t establish a profile on social media sites for free. If you choose to set up a unique website, make it easy to navigate with contact information that’s readily available. Websites should always be eye-catching yet informative to best meet the needs of potential customers.
5. How will you maintain your brand?
   Once you’ve established what you want your brand to be, consider the various marketing strategies that will help you promote it in the future. Carefully consider who your potential clients are and how to best reach them. Take advantage of every viable opportunity to get your brand out into the public. The more familiar the public is with your brand, the more likely they will be to work with you in the future.

Considering these questions from the get-go will put you on the right track to building a brand that will give you positive results. When developing a brand for your new small business, the takeaway point is to keep it simple and keep it consistent.

This article was written by Kristen Bradley SuretyBonds.com, a nationwide surety bond producer. SuretyBonds.com helps new small business owners meet licensing requirements every day. The agency provides professional advice to entrepreneurs to help them open for business as soon as possible.

In today’s technology-based world, social media is a crucial aspect of your marketing campaign. Think about it, everyone has a Facebook account, a Twitter handle, or a LinkedIn profile. And now, with smart phones proliferating the market, all of these social networks can be accessed with the touch of a button anywhere in the world (well, anywhere that has signal). This being said, DIY marketing strategies have embraced social media as a tool that can project their brand across the planet, no matter how large or small their company may be. To become a household name organizations no longer have to be the biggest, most lucrative in the industry – they just have to know how to use Twitter.

It naturally follows that social networks are something that you need to become involved in; however, there are many horror stories of brands being ruined by poor social media skills, stories that you want to avoid reliving at all costs. So how do you build your brand across the range of social media applications without ruining the reputation of your company? The process is simple, but it takes hard work and a lot of patience. When you get it right, though, all of the effort will certainly pay off.

Susan Gunelius recently wrote an article on Entrepreneur about a similar topic that provides a jumping off point for our own discussion. Her article can be found here.

1. Know your target demographic. Some social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter, are used by a wide variety of individuals and can be confidently incorporated into any social media campaign. Other sites should be investigated before committing a great deal of time to them.

Consider this scenario: you have opened a teen clothing store, geared toward kids aged 12 to 18, and want your social media efforts to speak directly to your target shoppers. In this case, LinkedIn is most likely a lost cause, as these customers will probably not be involved with this social networking site. Does this mean that you ignore LinkedIn completely? No – the site can still connect you to others in your industry; however, you do not want to focus all of your attention on this account, simply make an informative page and check up on it regularly.

1. Appoint a social media manager. Your brand must be consistent in voice and your accounts must be maintained regularly, so the best way to ensure that your campaign runs smoothly is to have one person handle it. Remember that this will take up a good deal of time and, while it may not be generating income now, it will eventually, so be sure to give the individual enough time to truly work on the project. Only choose someone you trust to work diligently, though, because the Internet is full of distractions.

When you go over this project with your social media manager, be sure that you communicate the image you wish to build clearly. For example, some companies simply post links to their website and to other important information, while others open up a dialogue with their friends and followers. The best approach is one that is natural, which brings us to point 3.

1. No one wants to hear you promote your business all the time. Social media is about getting the word out, true, but it is not about shameless self promotion. Share some links to your brand, some updates on sales or specials that are currently going on, but also share links and information that you think your followers will be interested in. Be careful to keep this professional, though. The last thing you need is an inappropriate link under your business’ name.

Most importantly, be a real person on the other end of the computer, be someone that can relate to followers and open a discussion with members of the target demographic. This will earn their trust and, ultimately, their business.

1. Consider starting a blog. Blogger, WordPress, and Tumblr are all ways for you to enhance your brand and really illustrate the core values of your company. Posts should be made regularly and should pertain to important issues that readers will face. Remember, do not just promote your company – offer entertaining and informative information that will have people looking forward to the next post. These also, as Gunelius mentions in her article, provide additional entry points for consumers.

The most important aspects of building your brand through social media are to remain visible and consistent. By doing these key things, you should attract the attention of consumers who will eventually begin to invest in your company. Remember, though, that this is not just about driving sales, this is about building a relationship with a community. Doing so may not cause your monthly revenue to spike, but it will cause your organization to have a more positive reputation and to be trusted by a larger amount of consumers.

Terry Crenshaw covers economic trends in the United States and writes for www.peterorszagsite.com. Terry is especially interested in tracking the ideas of Peter Orszag and other economic experts as the economy attempts to recover from the recent recession.

I’ve been involved in a couple of web site revisions lately and I thought it might be a good idea to share the process with those of you who are considering giving your web site copy a rewrite.

Step 1: Set Sales Conversion Goals.  Your web site is the most efficient and cost effective lead generation tool you have.  To make it a prospect magnet, you need to set some goals around how many leads you want to get annually, monthly, weekly and daily.  This makes it SO MUCH EASIER to figure out how to tweak and rewrite your copy.

Step 2: Visualize your target audience.  Create a list of USERS.  Your users are the target audience that will be landing on the site. You will certainly have more than one profile, and you should list them all.

Step 3: What do you want your users to be able to do? Next you want to make a list of all the things you want each user category to be able to do.  This will help you decide on exactly what information needs to be included and how much of that information is included.

Step 4: Pick the voice and personality of your site.  The voice of your copy has to be a combination of your own authentic voice as well as a voice that resonates with your target audience.   Even if your product or service is highly technical and your audience has PHd’s and sophisticated linguistic skills, it helps to write your front end content in a friendlier, more accessible tone because it makes it easier for that audience to pass your information on to other decision-makers who may NOT be that sophisticated.

Step 5: Interview your target audience.  This is so easy and powerful, I’m shocked that I hadn’t thought of it sooner.  Schedule and record interviews with your target audience.  Ask them what’s important to them when they are thinking about the products and services that you provide.  Have conversations around what frustrates them when they are looking for a product or service such as yours, where they go for information, what information they are looking for and what keywords they are searching on.  All of this will help you create copy that’s in your target customers actual voice and words.

Step 6: Interview experts inside your organization.  Take the same process as interviewing your customers and interview your internal experts.  Only this time, have them answer and talk about the issues that your target customer brought up.  Don’t forget to record these interviews as well.

Step 7: Transcribe the interviews. Now that you have all these recordings, get them transcribed.  Transcription is not as expensive as you might think.  And if your product isn’t very technical, consider using www.odesk.com to outsource the transcription services to.  I’ve done this with tremendous success.  Seeing your customers’ and your experts’ words in print will give you an idea of how to write the copy.

Step 8: Create a brain dump.  Now that you’ve seen the transcription, you can start writing.  If you don’t feel comfortable writing, then get yourself speech to text software like DragonSpeak and literally give a presentation to your audience.  If you don’t like messing with technology, record yourself speaking each page and have THAT transcribed.

Step 9:  Generate keywords.  Because this is web copy, you’ll want to generate a series of keywords that you want to be known for and make sure that you’ve created a list.  I like to focus on three to five keyword phrases per page with one being the overwhelming focus.

Step 10: Hire a copywriter.  If you don’t feel comfortable writing copy – don’t.  Get help.  Hire a copywriter to get you started and you can always edit and make changes that turn the copy into more of your own voice.

Step 11 : Launch and test.  Don’t try to make it perfect, focus on getting it uploaded and making sure that you are doing Google analytics and tracking your results.  It’s so much easier to tweak than to study your copy death.

It’s the middle of the year and by this time you’ve been running a series of marketing strategies.  Some have worked and some didn’t.  This is a good time to stop and debrief about what worked in your marketing plan and why – and what didn’t work and why.  Use this handy checklist to see where and how you can tweak your strategies to get the desired results.

1. Focus on your strength – the best strategy for inexpensive and effortless marketing is to build it around your natural strengths. I call them signature strengths( tm).  A marketing strategy that comes from a conversation that you are excited about has so much more attraction power than a message that’s structured around something that “should” work because someone else has done it.  To identify your strength, just think back to a customer you gained and look at exactly what it is about that relationship that is so successful.  What is it about YOU that is so appealing to them?  It could be your energy or the fact that you deliver quickly.  Whatever it is — build your natural ability into a competitive strength.
2. Turn your strength into a success- process — know what you need to be successful and be rigorous in defending it.  Don’t take on any customers that don’t fit your formula for success.
3. Identify your ideal customer. Just because a company has a well-known name and is giving you money doesn’t make them an ideal customer.  An ideal customer is FIRST a profitable customer.  That means that the business system that you’ve created meets their needs and provides enough value that they are happy to pay the price.  The third element is, of course, that there is a mutual like of doing business together.
4. Find out what’s important to your ideal customer.  It’s not uncommon to have a customer you like that likes you back, and an offer that they are willing to pay for, but if there’s something that’s important to them that isn’t covered, a dream customer will turn into a nightmare.
5. Know your competitive advantage.  Take the time to do a thorough exploration and analysis of what sets you apart from other alternatives your customers are considering.  Embrace your advantage.  Be sure that your competitive advantages address potential objections that your customers might have
6. Create a compelling brand story – and tell it often.  The way to really make marketing easy, effortless and inexpensive is to leverage your brand story.  What is it that drives your business?  Why did you start your business?  What is it that you believe or value?  Is there a dirty little secret in your industry that you reveal?  Create a story that’s centered on the value that you discover and bring to your ideal customer.
7. Use a keyword rich catch-phrase. Dr. Phil is known for his phrase “How’s that workin’ for ‘ya”.  It’s something he says often and it goes with his in-your-face style.  What is it that you find yourself saying often?  Become known for a phrase or two in your business and you’ll have a wonderful branding and marketing tool that you can really leverage.
8. Fish in your ideal customer pond.  Once you’ve identified your ideal customer – be where they are.  It’s that simple.  Think about attending the trade shows that your customers attend and exhibiting there.  Don’t just go to industry shows where your competition is – go to the shows where your customers are.  If you can’t exhibit there, create an educational or informational topic your customers will appreciate and present it.
9. Reject customers and projects that don’t fit your ideal. If you’re going to focus on your ideal customer, you’d think it was logical to reject anyone who doesn’t fit that profile, but, most businesses don’t.  Create a sales process that weeds through the wrong customers to get to the right ones.  Any prospect that doesn’t fit your ideal profile has a high probability of becoming a dissatisfied, disgruntled customer that will make your life and your bottom line a living hell.
10. Connect with influencers and help them build THEIR brand.  Become laser focused on those people and organizations that are connected to large groups of your ideal customers.  Take the time to choose those centers of influence with whom you can create a win-win scenario and help them build their brand.  In return, you will see your influence and brand grow as well.  Back to the Oprah examples of Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz and the rest of her discovered talent.  They served Oprah well and in return, she grew their brand beyond anything they could have done themselves.
11. Run a referral strategy.  Referrals are not a surprise or a gift or a happy accident.  They can be a function of a referral, word-of-mouth process that you work as diligently as any promotional communications strategy that you come up with.  Create a referral guideline to educate your centers of influence and help them refer you.  Make sure you have at least five referral conversations each day where you get to tell your brand story.  And be consistent and persistent with this process.  You’ll notice a steady stream of ideal customers come your way in no time.

Notice that the biggest investment that each of these items requires is thinking time.   The items on this list would belong in Covey’s “Sharpen the Saw” chapter.  If you’re like me (and many other folks) you’ll want to dive right into action.  But the power of this checklist comes in the quality of thinking and analysis more than in the implementation.

Creative marketing can do one of two things for you. Either you can dig yourself into debt and go full force ahead while crossing your fingers, hoping that the return will pay that loan or you can stop worrying and stick to your guns with a low budget. Often times, we have big dreams and think that big dreams means big money. Stop worrying! I will let you in on my secret to powerful brand building on a skimpy budget.

Create a High Impact Brand Using a Marketing Theme

At the end of the day what you want to do is literally drive your customer to the store. Catchy phrases or jingles that we all recognize on television ads or simply a picture that is engraved into your market audience’s mind are all avenues to the store. Aligning your market theme with the vision of your company is a sure way to create a high impact brand. Depending on what type of business your theme could be for an entire year, each quarter, monthly or even from week to week.

• Step One: Design your theme

Your theme should be both specific and flexible. Your company’s vision will help you define what you are trying to portray to the audience. Keeping your theme flexible will allow you to move with the ever changing marketplace without giving the appearance that you are changing but rather a solid company with a solid product and/or service. As an example, when I see a Stagecoach I immediately think of Wells Fargo Bank. This stagecoach is a flexible brand and it can be driven in any direction that the bank would need to take to keep up with the financial industry. Now the stagecoach is only one part of the branding for Wells Fargo Bank. Wells Fargo Bank has had different themes throughout the years.  Currently, their theme is “Together we’ll go far.” The theme is specific – they want to work with the customer to gain a purpose (that purpose would be defined individually by each customer). The theme is flexible – it allows each customer to determine where they are going together with Wells Fargo Bank.

• Step Two: Build you message

Take your theme and convey your message. What is it exactly that you are trying to convey to your market audience? You want them to know exactly how you can help them or why your product is the best product in the marketplace. “Together we’ll go far.” This conveys a very important principle in any kind of business transactions. Togetherness, you cannot create a service or a sale without both parties involved. This theme defines a customer service like no other – they want to work together with you. Again, you have to stay focused on your vision and portray that vision through your theme and that theme is part of building your brand.

• Step Three: Deliver your message

Now that you have defined and built a theme that will ensure to grab the attention of your audience you need to deliver that message. You don’t have to use the expensive television ads, newspaper ads or radio commercials. You can deliver your message through multiple inexpensive channels. The first place to start is your web site. Deck the halls of your web site to influence your browsers and leave an impression. Start a blog and add articles describing your product and/or service to ensure that you are getting your message through. You can use a specific type of writing called SEO which will force your article/blog to come up on search engines such as Google or Yahoo.  Your sales presentations should always evolve around your theme. Have you seen or heard of the power of social media? Take advantage of all trends with the public. Currently, social media is a big hit so utilize places like Twitter and Facebook. Create videos that could be uploaded to YouTube. The delivery of your message can be sent instantly to the whole world. Drive your message across multiple channels and you will see the difference on your bottom line.

Take these steps and flourish your brand recognition and influence the bottom line. You can stick to a healthy budget for your marketing campaign and see tremendous success. With the right theme and multiple delivery channels you will showcase your vision to the customer. Next thing you know they are picking up their keys driving to the store.