OK - bear with me here - before I tell you how to have a more successful 2008, I’m going to talk about the *brand* of your business for a few paragraphs - but don’t go all glassy-eyed on me, OK?
In simple terms, the brand of your business is the total message your business communicates to your customers. It’s the sum of your logo, your shop fitout, your customer service, and your business ethos - everything that adds up to ‘the real you’ in business terms.
In pure marketing terms, ‘branding’ and ‘brand management’ are complex concepts that are often vague and immeasurable - so much so that small business owners don’t often invest too much time in ‘their brand’ - well, not knowingly, at least.
The great news is that the smaller a business you are, the more your own personal ethos infiltrates your business, to the point where your business reflects the person *you* are, and vice-versa - in effect, your own values and beliefs shape your business, and hence how your customers perceive your business
- your brand.
In short, for a small business, the big picture of your brand takes care of itself - all you have to do is keep on making small, smart improvements to your business marketing each year.
With that in mind, here’s some top tips for reviewing and re-invigorating your business in 2008.
Email - love it or hate it, it’s ingrained into our personal and business lives - the communication tool of choice for many small businesses, due to its speed, reach, and universal appeal.
Email has changed the way we write our business communications. Compared to typically quite formal written documents, an email allows us to be a little more personal - a little more humanistic in our language - after all, we’ve gone from a turnaround of a few days for snail mail to a few seconds for email.
But even though the humble email has only been in existence for 10 or more years, it has already begun to change again, this time into something even more casual and - worse still - something that often fails to do what it is meant to do - to get a clear and concise message through to its recipient.
The following is a refresher on good email ettiquette, good email habits, and good formatting tips for writing emails with clarity and punch.
Getting a difficult message across in a crowded marketplace is always a challenge. Whether your business has a unique product or service, or you need to educate your market even before you can consider offering them your product or service, one of the best tools you can use is a good metaphor.
By using the right language, you can make a complicated message more understandable to more people. Let me show you the benefits of using metaphors to get your message across - oh, and keep a count of how many I use along the way, and leave your answers in the comments…
Whether you sell widgets, or you service widgets, or you sell your time and skills to others who make widgets, sometimes your business is in a crowded market, and there’s not that much that differentiates your business over other business - at least, not in the eyes of your customers. Certainly, customer service, professionalism, price and quality are the cornerstones of any successful business - but let me add in one more to the mix: good design.
Sure, it’s intangible - spending time and effort making your business look better or run a little smarter doesn’t translate directly into selling any more widgets - but to put it into footy terminology, it’s simply another ‘one percenter’. Well, those one percenters win matches - so lets look at few ways for your business to kick some goals…
It’s something that we look at every day, but hardly ever notice - it’s the image that lives behind our folders and files, and lets us personalise what our computer looks like when no other program is running.
Busy or calming, colourful or plain, a good desktop picture can actually help you rather than hinder you, and give your eyes a place to rest when they’re tired.
So, what makes ‘the ultimate’ desktop picture? Read on, and I’ll give you my top tips, then my own ultimate desktop picture…
We live in world of marketing buzz and hype, where we are bombarded daily with hundreds of messages all telling us what is or isn’t good for us. Every day, new ways of ‘cutting through’ the volume of advertisements and marketing hype have to be invented to get some sort of traction in the marketplace - even if only for a short time before the next ‘big thing’ arrives…
