What’s Your Small Business Brand?
I love to dig through “how to” books, ebooks, and newsletters on marketing, especially online marketing. I’ve read a lot of pages about a lot of marketing topics, and one question I always comes away with is, “What the hell is small business branding, anyway?”
Small Business Branding from John Jantsch
Sure, I’ve read all the books about it, but when it comes to small business branding is a completely different animal than branding for an international conglomerate. I recently came across a great definition of branding from John Jantsch that is perfect for small businesses. He says:
“I like to define small business branding as the act of intentionally becoming more knowable, likable and trustable – in a way, much more aligned with how we might think about a personality.”
To me that makes a lot of sense. After all, we can readily identify people by their personalities. For instance, a friend asks you, “Do you know so-and-so?” If the person has a strong personality, they immediately come to mind, and you reply, “Oh yeah, he’s the guy with the bulldog personality.”
Small Business Branding in One Sentence
The same thing can happen around your small business brand. If you could define your small business brand in one sentence, what would you choose?
In my personal life I am a complete horse-freak. I haven’t found too many horses I can’t love. I read, watch, and inhale just about every horse-oriented piece of information I can find. As with any industry, certain businesses in the horse industry are well-branded and others are not. Here is a mixed bag of one-liners from the horse world. I have heard more than one person say about each of these businesses or business personalities (please note these do not necessarily reflect my own opinions):
Country Supply: “Wal-mart for horses, without the service”
Meredith Hodges: “That mule lady on RFD-TV who outsmarts mules”
Pat and Linda Parelli: “Great ground work … do their people ever get on?”
Fly Predators: “Those bugs that eat flies.”
Smart Pak Equine: “Supplements custom-made for me, the lazy horse person”
Notice how each of these one-liners is a statement about the degree to which each of these businesses or business personalities is “knowable, likable and trustable.” Some are knowable without being trustable (Country Supply) while others are knowable, likable, and trustable (Meredith Hodges). Some are just knowable, like the Fly Predators.
What is Your Small Business Brand?
If you could make a one-liner brand for your small business, what would it be? How could you shape it so that if reflected your brand’s ability to be known, liked, and trusted? How does this affect what your business does, how it offers products and services, to whom it business markets, and with whom your business is associated?
Got a hot small business brand? Something fun or quirky? Tell us in a comment!
If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to have future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Photo credit: “So this mule walks into a bar …”
Tags: examples of small business branding, small business branding
Meet Rick. I met Rick at the local smoke shop, aptly named “Smokes.” The first time I met him I knew I wanted to profile him on the Go Small Biz Blog. There’s something about Rick that makes people feel comfortable, an attitude of mellow attentiveness that really makes people come back. I did.
In this somewhat deflated economy, it’s important to highlight what is working for small businesses. Rick is working for Smokes. Since he has been working at Smokes, business has picked up 40%. Yesterday I visited with him at Smokes to find out what it is about him that makes people keep coming back and keep buying more. Here’s what he told me.
1. Blunt Honesty
A steady stream of customers came in while I was chatting with Rick, and I watched how he helped each one of them. He’s quick with his opinions and they are honest. One man asked to look at an item in the display case. Rick was happy to pull it out, but at the same time said, “That will fall apart on you right away. I would recommend this one,” pointing to a pricier model. The sheer matter-of-factness in his voice made it a no-brainer for the customer, who promptly followed Rick’s advice. Customers know Rick is honest, and are happy to follow his guidance, even if it means spending a few more dollars.
2. The Fuzzy Slipper Factor
People who walk into the store immediately feel comfortable. Even if Rick is helping someone else, he always greets any new person walking into the store and says he’ll help them soon. This may seem like a tiny detail, but how many times have you walked into a store only to be ignored by the salespeople, who are either helping other people or chatting amongst themselves? When Rick is helping you, even if there are other customers in the store, you never feel like he’s in a hurry or you are wasting his time. I call this the fuzzy slipper factor. Rick makes customers feel as comfortable as if they were wearing fuzzy slippers.
3. Informed Opinions
Everyone has an opinion, and many opinionated people can be difficult to listen to, but not Rick. Rick doesn’t just have opinions, he has informed opinions. He proudly pulled out a 2-foot tall water blue platic water pipe and told me that it had been broken. He pulled tried fixing it and pulling it apart with every tool at his disposal, including a hacksaw. But, being an educated microscope engineer, Rick finally figured it out. Rick likes to figure things out, which means that when he offers you an opinion, it’s usually the result of some personal experience or research. Despite the name of the shop, Rick doesn’t blow smoke up your you-know-what!
4. Don’t Sell the Unwilling Customer
The store recently started carrying electric cigarettes, which deliver nicotine through water vapor instead of smoke. Some people love the idea and some people hate it. Many a wife has sent her husband down to see Rick about getting electric cigarettes, mostly because the wives can’t stand the smell of cigarettes. The wives love the idea of an electric cigarette that has odorless water vapor instead of smoke. The hubbies are not so thrilled. One showed up in the store with a chip on his shoulder and the attitude, “OK, educate me!” Rick said he attempted to discuss the product with the man for a few minutes before moving on. No point in selling the unwilling customer. As a person who admits he’s “basically lazy,” Rick doesn’t expend effort that goes nowhere.
5. Help People
This is the biggie. Rick says that in every job he’s ever worked he has always been able to help people–a lot! When people show up to Smokes, he definitely has a friendly helpful attitude, whether they want an opinion on cigars or they want to buy a 2-foot water pipe. Rick may be an employee at Smokes, but he acts like he owns the joint with his level of caring. What’s the point? If you’re going to be in the store anyway, go ahead and care about the people who walk in. Don’t fake it till you make it, be for real. Don’t just be in your business to make a buck. Make a difference if you can.
Meeting Rick is kind of one of those “you had to be there” things. I can write a bunch of stuff about him, but I can’t really transmit that special something about Rick through words. You have to meet him. Or maybe you don’t. You have probably met the equivalent of Rick somewhere along the way.
The question is, how can you put more “Rick” into your small business to make it friendlier, more comfortable, more honest, and more attractive?
Tags: management, sales, small business, smoke shop
Some Small Biz Things to Think About
Getting tired of the usual crud that goes on in your office? Or the productivity that hasn’t been happening in your office lately? A lot of small business owners are just plain bummed because business is bad.
Well, maybe it’s time to shake up your thinking about your small business. Here are some small business to think about. These links point to some interesting blog posts on why social media king Chris Brogan uses coffee shops for offices, on why your small business brand can’t be like Batman, and why you can follow only one or two “teachers” at a time (or go crazy). Enjoy!
Chris Brogan Uses Coffee Shops for Offices
This blog post gives you a great reason to get out of the office. Chris says he rarely goes to his office south of Boston. He likes the easy accessibility of ideas in bookstores. If you need an idea, just stand up and grab a book. Flip through it, get inspired, and then sit back down with your coffee, laptop, iPhone, whatever, and get productive, creative, inspired … anything but bummed but where you business is now.
Check out Chris’ post here.
Why Your Small Business Brand Can’t Be Like Batmat
Rohit Bhargava makes a great point on his Influential Marketing Blog. He says that small businesses can’t brand themselves like Batman, which means being everywhere all the time. Batman has a tool belt with all kinds of tools. If Batman were a small business he would be on every social media platform all the time, spreading the brand message on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Ning, Digg, and more. Small businesses can’t afford to be Batman, according to Rohit, and I tend to agree with him. He points out that small businesses successful with social media have chosen a primary media in which to excel. He points to Comcast and Twitter as a prime example.
Check out Rohit’s post here.
Follow Few Teachers
As Sonia Simone says on her recent Remarkable Communication post, advice on “what to do” for you small business can end up being as numerous as grains of sand in a sandstorm. It’ll drive you crazy. Therefore, don’t try to follow every guru out there who tells you “Obey Me or Fail”! Instead, Sonia gives some tips on how choose the right small business guru for you and your business, and also how to follow productive cycles of learning.
Check out Sonia’s post here.
Photo credit: Renee thinks
Tags: Chris Brogan, small business inspiration, small business management
I mean that. If your butt’s not dirty then there is something wrong.
Taken in the wrong context that could be considered bathroom humor, but it sure made sense to me yesterday, when I took my horse to a team penning and sorting event. For those of you who don’t do horse and cowboy stuff, that means we paid good money to chase cows around for 90 seconds.
These pictures are a couple of my good friends who with me at the penning and also a shot of all the people, horses, and rigs at this event. What’s the point of all this?
There may be a recession but you wouldn’t know it at this team penning.
It wasn’t possible to capture all the horse-and-trailer rigs at this event in a single shot–there were that many people there. People were plunking down $200-$350 for a day’s worth of fun, not counting the cost of hauling their horses to the event, lunch, beer, and the daily overhead of owning horses.
In other words, people may be tightening their belts by not getting regular dental cleanings or skipping on groceries, but they are perfectly willing to pay out cold hard cash, and lots of it, to have some fun.
There are some things that people WILL NOT give up, even in recession.
Their point of view is exactly this: if your butt isn’t dirty (meaning you haven’t been sitting in the saddle and playing with cows) then something is really wrong! Sure, you have to make concessions in a recession, but these people are not giving up their horses or cows. To them, chasing cows around is cheaper and more fun than visiting a shrink.
As a small business how can this situation equal profits for you?
Look at your customers (or consider a new customer base) and ask yourself these questions:
- What is it that these people will NOT give up even in recession?
- What will people give up right away?
- What do your customers use as “therapy”?
- What do you offer that would be the equivalent of “comfort food”?
- Are you a discount version of something people want? Discount stores are thriving!
- Can anything you offer serve as a distraction from all the economic doom and gloom?
- Can you be a sideline service for something that people won’t give up? (The food vendor at the team penning is a great example.)
What are the indispensable products and services even during an economic downturn? How can you hitch your business to that bandwagon? Remember that we’re not necessarily talking about physically indispensable products and services. Think about how your business can be emotionally indispensable, like a security blanket or comfort food.
In a recent post I talked about the dentist who moved his business to a truck stop, where his trucker patients “required” his services because they were so much pain. Whereas regular patients are skipping dental cleanings, truckers in pain can’t skip a tooth extraction. The dentist brought his business to where his services were a necessity.
How can you do the same for your business? How can you serve the equivalent of the team penners in your industry? Have some ideas? Drop me a line!
If you liked the humor or knowledge in this post, please share Digg it, email it, or share it with your buddies!
Tags: horses, recession, small business, team penning
Turn Your Small Business Model Inside-Out
Times of economic turmoil offer small business owners some of the best opportunities to see their businesses in a different light. Economic upheaval gives us an excuse (as if we need one) to examine our business model and, if need be, turn it completely upside down.
One enterprising small business owner, dentist Thomas P. Roemer, has done just that. While most dentists work out of traditional offices, Dr. Roemer works out of a building at the world’s largest truck stop in Walcott, Iowa. Roemer used to have a practice in the nearby town of Davenport, but recently decided to open up an office at the truck stop. Why? Because he has always gotten consistent business from long-haul truck drivers who were in pain and in need of immediate help. That gave Roemer an idea.
Go Where the Patients Are
While many doctors and dentists see their businesses shrinking as people try to save money by skipping regular checkups and dental cleanings, people in pain need immediate help. The truckers who call on Roemer need help now, and the truck stop gets 35,000 visitors per week. As Roemer puts it, “You have people walking in holding their jaws in pain. Treatment is not optional — they need to see a dentist, and they need to see me now.” Thus Roemer gets a steady stream of business from people who cannot opt for a cheaper solution because their pain is overwhelming.
Instead of attempting to bring patients into his practice consistently by scheduling regular checkups (a technique that doesn’t work well when people are reluctant to spend money), Roemer brought his practice to patients who are begging for help, no questions asked.
Can You Emulate Dr. Roemer?
Does this give you some ideas for your business? Does this spark ideas on how you might turn your business model inside out? Here are some questions you might ask yourself about your business and your customers:
- How can you go to where your customers are instead of trying to bring them to you?
- What are your customers willing to spend money on, no questions asked?
- When are your customers willing to spend money, no questions asked?
- Where are your customers when they might need your services?
- In what circumstances might your customers be more willing to hear what you have to say?
Can you pull a Dr. Roemer turnaround on your small business model?
Photo credit: Tooth-Brush
Tags: business model, Dr. Roemer, small business, small business in recession
Woof! Arf! Yip!
I am not ashamed to admit that I am a Chihuahua freak. We have two Chihuahuas and I love them both. I loved the movie “Beverly Hills Chihuahua,” especially the part where Chloe, the spoiled little rich-girl Chihuahua, gets lost in Mexico and ends up with a group of native Chihuahua dogs. These native dogs teach little Chloe, who can’t even yip to save her life, to find her bark. They teach her to express herself powerfully and in a way that is uniquely Chloe.
I love that part of the movie. I also know that “finding your bark” is one thing that many entrepreneurs and small business owners haven’t yet done. Your “bark” is your unique voice. It’s the way you express yourself and promote your business that makes you stand out from the crowd. In a time when people’s buying loyalty is at an all-time low, having a unique bark can help your small business not only retain its current customers but attract new ones.
The Man Registry
I recently stumbled onto a great website called The Man Registry. This website is devoted to grooms and helps them figure out what they need to do for a wedding. Truth be told, the website is for “stupid grooms,” a category into which many men fall. Unlike giddy brides, most grooms don’t get all excited about writing their vows, picking out items for the gift registry, or (heaven forbid!) doing the seating arrangements.
Nevertheless, grooms are required to participate in wedding planning in some form or fashion, and The Man Registry helps them do it with style and panache (and lots of humor). Here are just a few of the unique features offered on the site:
- Ask the Experts: Smart Answers for Dumb Grooms
- Groom 101: Stand Out
- How to Write Your Vows: A Game Plan
- Wedding Pranks: Get the Groom
- Wedding Night Sex: Hot or Hype?
The Man Registry also offers the chance to win a jumbo 64 oz. flask when you create a registry on the site. Finally, the site has a blog where big shots in the wedding industry regularly post tips and trends that grooms will want to know about. The Man Registry clearly has found its unique “bark” in the field of wedding planning.
How Can You Find Your Bark?
How can you find your bark? There are all kinds of avenues. The Man Registry obviously uses humor to attract people, and then follows up with truly practical and useful information for dumb grooms. Sixty-five percent of their promotional budget is pitched toward men but the remainder is aimed at women who want their grooms to be halfway intelligent. So humor is one way to have a unique bark. Here are some other ideas:
- telling stories and offering real case studies
- making use of sarcasm and ridicule (check out Despair, Inc.)
- offering jokes and humorous videos
- giving out tips list (knowledge in bite-sized chunks)
- using a theme (one site uses all Jedi-terminology to sell consulting services)
- posting innovative photos and graphics (one site uses cat postcards)
Questions for Small Business Owners Who Want to Find Their Bark
One way to discover your bark is to ask yourself, “What is the base premise of my business?” For The Man Registry, the base premise is that grooms are not the most intelligent wedding participants. The humor for the site flows from that base premise.
What’s the base assumption for your business? What important problem does your business solve? What questions do your services answer?
Now can you find your bark?
If you liked this post, please Share It by clicking one of the links below. Thanks!
Photo credit: Chihuahua_02
Tags: finding your voice, small business questions, the man registry
I just read a great free report called “Get Outrageously Creative: Creative Tips for Saving Money and Growing Your Business” offered by Small Business Trends. The 23 page report contains tips, tricks, and advice on how to save money and grow your business offered by the readers of the Small Business trends blog.
As advertised, the tips are both creative and outrageous. Some of the tips won’t be anything new to small business owners but they might remind you of knowledge that you might have forgotten. For instance, one reader offered a tip about how creating a joint-venture marketing event at a gallery brought in a lot of traffic and resulted in win-win satisfaction for everyone involved.
Some of the tips boil down the plain logic. One online business owner did tons of credit card transactions and decided to compare rates among the different available card processors. After changing providers, the small business owner saw a 5% increase in net profits. Tips like these remind us not to assume that we are getting the best deal from our service providers, even if we got good deals from them in the past.
And then there are the tips that are truly outrageous and creative. One person chased down a prominent business guru in a mall to get an interview and ended up spending an hour chatting over coffee. Another got online and blogged about her company from day one and got help from some bigwigs just because she was willing to be open about where she was and what she was struggling with.
There are tons of tips in this free ebook – too many to cover here.
Get your own copy on the Small Business Trends website and enjoy!
Tags: cut costs, increase profit, small business trends
Solve Business Woes with the Entrepreneur Pill
Is your small business struggling in this recession economy? No problem. Very soon you will be able to pop a pill and rewire your brain so you think like the most successful entrepreneurs in the world. Imagine popping a pill and suddenly having Robert Kiyosaki or Guy Kawasaki in your brain. You’ll think like a business guru-no joke! Cambridge University scientists have announced that there may someday be an “entrepreneur pill” that will help people replicate the brain chemistry of the most successful small business owners. Would that be better business through chemistry?
Unfortunately the entrepreneur pill isn’t available quite yet. The bad news is that small business owners need it more than ever. Shrinking profits and dwindling customer traffic have many small business owners pulling their hair out. Luckily, they can take steps to gain a fresh perspective on their business, even if they can’t yet directly access the brain chemistry of small business guru.
If your small business is struggling, here are five ways you get a fresh perspective on your small business.
1. Give Your Business a Makeover
To give your small business a makeover you need new ideas and help from some experts. While you may not be able to afford the pricey consultants who do makeovers on major corporations, you can benefit from their advice without paying a dime. Check out Small Business Makeover section on the CNNMoney website. There you’ll find makeover case studies on all kinds of small businesses from carpet-sellers to bath-and-body stores. If you’re offering your products or services online, you’ll be delighted with their Website Makeover section.
2. Get Your Burning Questions Answered
If you want to get a direct answer to the burning questions you have about your small business, you can always submit it to the CNNMoney directly through their “Find Business Answers” form. There is no guarantee that your question will be selected to be answered, but there’s definitely no harm in trying. As a bonus, it still doesn’t cost you’re a dime. CNNMoney usually puts this form at the bottom of its articles. To locate one of these articles just Google for CNNMoney + “find business answers.” There is a form at the bottom of this page.
3. Access Online Training from the SBA
The Small Business Administration has recently begun offering a number of online courses on “Surviving in a Down Economy.” The new courses include:
- Strategic Marketing: How to Win Customers in a Slowing Economy
- Down-Shifting in a Slowing Economy: Business Planning Guide
- Raise new capital / Refinance exisiting debt – How to Prepare a Loan Package
- Diversify with federal contracts – Business Opportunities: A Guide to Winning Federal Contracts
4. Look for a Geographic Cure
If you run a bricks-and-mortar business maybe you’re not located in the right place. To locate your business at the right place at the right time, check out the top 100 places to live and launch a small business by Fortune Small Business. These include the 7 tax-free havens for business (Wyoming, Nevada, Florida, Texas, Washington, New Hampshire and Tennessee) plus the six best towns where technology thrives (Bellevue, Portland, Boise, Blacksburg, Bethlehem, and Folsom). The list is nearly endless and may help you decide if it’s time to move your small business because the grass is greener on the other side of the state line.
5. SCORE Big
SCORE is a non-profit group of 11,200 retired executives who mentor small business owners across the country for free. According to their website, “SCORE offers free and confidential advice to small businesses: face-to-face counseling, online counseling, online workshops and more.” You can post your questions to their website and get an answer, usually within 48 hours. Best of all, SCORE is an unlimited resource. You can ask as many questions as you want plus access their huge library of small business resources.
So what’s the bottom line for small business owners? While you may occasionally feel hopeless you are definitely not helpless. This list is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the inexpensive resources at your disposable to keep your small business afloat. So until that entrepreneur pill hits the market, get going and get help.
Have you been using any other small business resources that have proven very successful for you? Do tell!
Photo credit: Pills
Tags: business makeover, recession, SBA online training, SCORE, small business
Posted by Stephanie on Mar 11, 2009 in
Small Business Strategy 
What If You Get Hit by a Beer Track Tomorrow?
This question may seem silly to you because you may think that any self-employed individual is also a small business owner. Technically this might be true but the difference in mindset between someone who is self-employed and someone who owns a small business is BIG. So what’s the difference between these two?
Leverage.
If you are self-employed you do everything for your business by yourself. You produce the product, make the sales, handle the accounting and finance, ship out the packages, and handle all the customer service issues. You are the company and the company is you. If you get hit by a beer truck tomorrow then your company goes down the toilet. It’s a bad scenario.
Small business owners, on the other hand, don’t do everything in the business by themselves. They leverage the efforts of other people in multiple ways.
Small Business Owners:
- hire employees
- outsource tasks like accounting, payroll, marketing, and order fulfillment
- partner with other compatible businesses to share marketing and promotional expenses
- leverage investment funds from business partners and/or banks
- hire managers to handle daily administration
In other words, small business owners are like general contractors: they pull together the resources necessary to operate the business but don’t necessarily spend a lot of hands-on time in the business. If an employee becomes unable to work or an outsourcing company fails to fulfill their contract, the business doesn’t die overnight. Other employees can be hired and work can be outsourced to a different company. Best of all, the business can continue to generate revenue and profit for you, the small business owner, on a continuous basis.
Have you taken a look at the way you run your business lately? Are you operating from the self-employment model or the small business owner model? The self-employment model means you are a slave to your business and can never leave to go on vacation. Being a small business owner means you can come and go as you please, depending on the extent to which you have leveraged other resources to run your business on a daily basis.
MLM as Leverage
One way some people have chosen to move away from self-employment and into small business ownership is to leverage the power of MLM, or network marketing. With MLM, the parent company handles product production, order fulfillment, accounting and finance, and often even worldwide promotion. As a business partner you only handle direct marketing and sales, using marketing methods of your choice, and get a check for your efforts. MLM is a very inexpensive way to move into small business ownership because you can leverage the power of a very large parent company for a small investment.
Having said all of that, I have to insert a word of caution here: it’s still possible to run an MLM business from the self-employment model. If you try to handle all the sales and marketing yourself you will still be self-employed. Unless and until you bring in new business partners underneath you in your network who will also do sales and marketing, you haven’t created the maximum leverage in your business. Think about it. If you handle all the marketing by yourself and you get hit by a beer truck tomorrow, your income still goes down the toilet. On the other hand, if you get hit by a beer truck but your business partners are still out there marketing, you still get a check. Again, it’s all about how much you can leverage the efforts of others for your small business.
Photo credit: I Love Hitachino Nest Beer
Tags: self-employed, self-employment, small business, small business owner
