Posts Tagged branding
Social Media Marketing: Are You Sharing Information About Your Small Business on Twitter?
Posted by Patrick Woods in Social Media Marketing on
The new rule of conversational politeness: If you don’t have something nice to say, go to the Internet and let the whole world know. The Internet offers the small business owner the chance to market and sell to customers around the world, but the trade-off is that the same medium that allows worldwide commerce also provides the platform for global brand-bashing.
In just minutes, an angry customer can rant on blogs and post negative reviews on websites and forums, compromising your years of hard marketing work. Social networks have only enabled this process.
Many marketers feared Twitter, with it’s massive size and ability to Retweet interesting information, would provide the ideal medium for brand abusers to spread their spew. But is Twitter really the unbridled hate-fest many online marketing types have always suspected.
No.
This study by Pennsylvania State University found that only 22.3 percent of Tweets actually involved brand sentiment, and of those sentiment-related tweets, only about 34 percent involved negative sentiment. In all the tweets analyzed, few than 7 percent of all tweets contained negative brand sentiment.
Additionally, almost 30 percent of tweets involved information seeking or providing information to others. Despite the 140-character limit on tweets, members of your small business’ target audience are engaging in conversations directly related to companies and brands.
Small Business Social Media Conversations
What does this mean for your small business? It’s good news! Social media, it seems, is delivering on the hype of 2-way marketing conversations.
Find your target audience and engage them. You customers want to hear how your small business can make their lives easier or more fulfilling.
Build social media marketing into your overall marketing strategy and begin to meet your customers where they already are.
Small Business Branding: Perceptual Mapping and Your Product’s Position
Posted by Patrick Woods in General Marketing on
Do you know how your target audience views your small business’ product or service? Do you know where you stand in relation to your competition? Affirmative answers to these questions are integral to our small business marketing plan.
One method for helping you examine your small business’ position in your market is to complete a perceptual map that compares the target audience’s perception of the various competitors in your space.
Why is a perceptual map helpful?
- Enables comparison between your position and that of your competitors
- Provides an overview of the competitive landscape in your market
- Reveals overcrowded spaces as well as potential opportunities
- Provide direction for developing the positioning of a new product or service launch
How to create a perceptual map for your small business marketing plan
- List all the competitors in your market along with their position statement
- i.e. Lowest prices in town; best bang for your buck; only the finest luxury
- List our own position statement
- Determine the two axes of comparison
- Most often, positioning statements consider 2 factors: quality and price
- Comparing the position statements of your competitors will reveal the two most important factors
- Plot yourself and your competitors along the two axes
- Confirm your results
- Ask friends and family to have a look at the chart
- Create a survey for customers and clients to complete
- Remember, the perceptual map is somewhat subjective, so your self-perception may differ from that of your customers
- Apply the findings
- How does your brand relate to the wider competitive landscape?
- Is your small business taking advantage of open spaces on the map?
- If your brand falls in line with the pack, are you finding ways to differentiate yourself?
An example of how to do a perceptual map
Example of a Perceptual Map
Let’s say you’ve done some research and uncovered a need for a higher-quality dry cleaner in your town. You’ve talked to many people who are unsatisfied with the existing options, but you aren’t sure why. To help you understand the competitive landscape, you decide to complete a perceptual map.
First, you list all the dry cleaners in town along with what you know and have heard of them. You may even call them and ask, as a potential customer, why you should choose them over the competition.
You find out the two main factors are quality and price, so you plot them along those two axes.
In light of the example, you see that most cleaners in town are perceived as low-cost budget options that compete primarily on price alone. There is only one shop with a position of high quality. It appears that there is room to create a position of high value, of great bang-for-the-buck.
So you decide to found Value Dryclean as the affordable alternative to those overpriced guys, but with higher attention to detail than the budget crowd.
In this way, perceptual mapping helps the small business owner formulate the foundation for a solid small business marketing plan.
Marketing is Like Shopping Carts in the Parking Lot
Posted by Patrick Woods in General Marketing on
Photo by Robert Couse-Baker
For some reason, I’m one of those people who always have to return the shopping cart to its designated place in the parking lot. Over the weekend at Wal-Mart, I found myself doing just that.
As I approached the nearest return station, I noticed that not only was it overflowing with carts, the parking space directly on the other side of the return stall was also filled with carts. There had to be at least 100 carts crammed into this area. The parking lot crew was definitely short-staffed that day.
In search of plan B, I looked further down the parking aisle, and not 15 feet away I saw the nearest cart return station. It was almost entirely empty, with two, maybe three carts.
Does your small business’ marketing enable simple interaction with your target audience?
People like things to be extremely easy. In the parking lot, this desire for simplicity meant meant refusing to walk an extra few feet to return a shopping cart.
For your small business, the desire for simplicity means that all of your marketing efforts must enable clear and simple interactions.
Photo by Robert.Montalvo
- Brand–do your clearly communicate your unique selling proposition? Is your image clearly communicated to your target audience?
- Promotions–are your offers and discounts communicated so people easily grasp what you’re offering?
- Product–do you clearly communicate the benefits (not features) of your product or service? Is there a simple and powerful answer to “so what”?
- Communication–do you enable pain-free communication with customers and clients by displaying your contact information on all printed and electronic collateral? Are you available via live chat on your website and on the social networks? Does someone always answer the phone and do you always respond to email?
Remember, in the chaos of the daily grind, your target audience requires simplicity in its interactions with you and your company. It’s your duty as a small business owner to enable this simplicity on every front.
Is Your Image Imagined?
Posted by Patrick Woods in Market Research on
Photo by | spoon |
There was a line in a song from the mid-90s that claims: “You never know just how you look through other peoples’ eyes.” In marketing world, the parallel is that you may have an idea of how your your small business’ brand is perceived, but your potential customers may see something totally different.
You may see your product as the highest-quality option in the market, but people shopping in your category may see you as overpriced.
On the other hand, you may offer the lowest fees in town, mainly because you have low overhead and are looking to expand your client base. The problem is that, your target audience associates low cost with low quality.
The list of scenarios is almost endless. So what are some ways to bring into focus the difference between your own perception of your small business’ brand and the perception of your potential customers?
Small Business Brand Diagnosis
- Informal polling – when you’re out in the community (getting coffee, ordering lunch), ask people if they’ve heard of your business. Try to focus on members of your target audience. This may take some time depending on the size of your community, but it’s a simple process to build into your daily interactions.
- Avoid the family focus group – see my post on the dangers of lazy market research.
- Formal research – setup an online survey using a site like Survey Monkey. Promote the survey on your website and in your print collateral. Include a promotional drawing offer, like a $100 gas card, as a gift for responding. At the end of the survey period, you’ll have hard statistics on the perception of your small business.
- In-store polling – to compliment your research among potential customers, talk to your existing customers to see how the understand your small business. Compare the perceptions among clients and non-clients and note the discrepancies.
In a future post we’ll look at ways of implementing the results of your small business market research.
Intentional Design: the Power of a Typeface
Posted by Patrick Woods in Advertising and Design on
Have you ever thought about how the fonts you use in your ads effect the perception of your small business? Do you use Papyrus just because you think it looks exotic or Scriptina just because you think it’s pretty?
photo by sandbaum
Most small business owners have given little thought to what their typefaces say about their brand and instead just use whatever they think “looks good,” whatever that means.
As you might imagine, type choices and changes have major implications for global brands. IKEA recently changed the typeface of its catalog from Futura for Verdana, and here’s an article chronicling the change.
As you read the article, think about what your current design and type choices communicate about your small business’ brand, and make sure every design choice you make is motivated and intentional.
Small Business Legal: Logo Trademark Tips
Posted by Patrick Woods in Advertising and Design on
Have you ever wondered about the legal status of your small business logo or brand? Steve Baird, Chair of Trademark & Brand Management with Winthrop & Weinstine Attorneys in Minneapolis, has posted some very helpful information on Davie Airey’s blog.
Every small business owner should read his treatment of various facets of trademark issues related to logo design.
