Many small business owners wonder – do I need a brand? They may say “I’m not huge and don’t have that many clients, so I don’t need one.”  But every business should have a brand, even if you are a one person company. Why? In order for consumers to make a purchase, they need to feel an emotional trust in your product or service. Below you’ll learn how to create this perceived trust and loyalty from your customers.

Know your audience

Who is your target market? What do they do for a living? What do they read or watch? How old are they? What is their personality? These answers will help you figure out what your brand personality is and in turn how they like to be marketed to.

Know your competition

How do you differentiate from the competition? What makes your product or service better? Why should a customer choose you over your competitor? The answer to these question, should lead you in the correct direction of how you should promote yourself.

Provide Value & Vision

Create a company mission statement that describes your future goals and values. If you wrote a business plan, you can pull the mission statement from there. If you have not written one, now is the time.  A brand must provide a practical value in order to be trusted. Every piece of marketing collateral should follow it, as well as all employees.

Create credibility

Have client testimonials. Are you a start-up? Partner with a known company that has the same target market. This will help create trust from the customer. Look professional – have all of your collateral online and in print match. Be a guest writer on other blogs and publications to position yourself as the authority.

Be Consistent

Use the same logo, color palette, fonts and images in all online and print promotion. If you are flipping through your local business journal, does your ad match all of your other branding? If you hand your business card to someone at a networking event, does it match your other materials? Does your website match your business card? Consistency over time creates trust.

Logo & Name

While having a great logo & name is only one part of a brand, it will be the one item that repeats itself the most. Does it send out the message you want? Does it appeal to your target audience? Is the name easy to remember? Does it stand out from your competitor?

Have great customer service

Return every phone call, email and social media message. Make sure all of your employees are promoting you properly. One rude person can lead to many lost customers. Remember people are quick to tell friends about a bad customer service experience, so one lost customer can lead to many. Business is in its essence is about relationships and you always want to encourage building them no matter the form of communication.

Use social media

Where else can you interact with your current and potential customers daily? Social media is all about building trust online. Make sure your blogs and messages are directly related to your goals and keywords. To learn more about keywords, read 10 ways to increase your web traffic.

Monitor your brand

Set up keyword alerts to monitor what people are saying about your brand. How? Sign up with Google Alerts. It works like this – If someone writes your company name anywhere online, you will receive an email. You can also monitor what is being said on Twitter about your company through Hootsuite or Tweetdeck. Anytime some types “Your Company Name”, it will alert you. Pretty cool! Respond appropriately to each. If someone is having an issue, try to correct it immediately.

Following these steps you will be well on your way to creating your own small business brand. Remember, if customers trust your company they will buy your product or service. Do you have any questions about your own brand? Comment below or contact me at becca@bauerhaus.com

Are you a small business or start-up that is stumped on how to get people to come to your site? Increase your web traffic by following these steps.

Google Analytics

First, make sure Google Analytics is installed on your website. With this free program you’ll be able to watch your web traffic increase. If you don’t know how to do add Google Analytics code, contact the person who created the site and have them install it. This free program is great for not only tracking the amount of visitors, but also finding out the details of your visitors, such as: Where did they come from? What keywords did people type in to find you? What page did they exit on? How many people came to your site when you sent out an email newsletter?

Have an online marketing strategy

Before you tackle the below, figure out what is your goal. Is it to increase traffic? Brand awareness? Have people sign-up for your email newsletter? Buy a product? Make sure you keep this goal in mind while you do the following. To find out how to create your own, read “How to create an online marketing strategy.”

Keywords

Make sure your keywords are listed in the copy on your site. If you are a photographer in St. Louis and do not have the text that says “St. Louis photographer” your site will not show up in search engines when people search for “St. Louis Photographer”. If your entire site is in Flash, again, it will not show up in search engines. Why? Because Flash is all images, not readable text that search engines can scan. So, how do you find your top keywords? Look at Google Analytics. They list your top keywords that people entered in their search to find your site.

Have a blog

If you are new to blogging, make it a goal to post on your blog weekly. Then, once you become more familiar with blogging, post 3 times a week. The more keywords you mention in your blog that relate to what you are promoting, the higher your search engine ranking will be. Talk about what inspired you to make your product or tips for using your product.

Have a Facebook fan page

Think about this: your clients are not going to log onto your website everyday, but more than half of all users log on to Facebook in any given day. That is over 175 million people you could potentially reach with a daily status message talking about your product. For more reasons why you should have one, see my recent article: Why your business needs a Facebook Fan Page.

Use Twitter

Twitter is a great tool to find more customers. However, don’t just tweet about your blogs. Also, tweet about what interests you. Social media is all about building trust. People buy from people and businesses they like. To find people interested in what you sell, go to search.twitter.com and type in your keywords. Follow the people that are looking for what you provide or are in your target market.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

This plugs in your keywords, so search engines can find you. A client or customer doesn’t see these words, they are in the background source code. For example, a St. Louis photographer would have words such as “St. Louis photographer, photography for newborns, St. Louis, wedding photography, etc.” Pretty much any words you can think of that describe what you do. If you use Wordpress, a great tool to do this yourself is the All-in-One SEO plugin.

Advertise online

There are many options online. The most popular being Google Ads and Facebook Ads. The good news is that ads starts as low as $1 per day, so it is easy to try an ad for a month on both and see which works best.

Comment on Blogs

When you comment on blogs, this provides a link back to your site. The more links to your site, the higher your rating with Google will be. Make sure you leave genuine feedback.

Have an email newsletter

In your email newsletter, promote your website with links to a particular story, product or blog post on your site. Also include links to your Facebook fan page and twitter account, so people can pick which way they prefer to follow you.

Give away something for free

Hold a contest for subscribing to your email or Facebook fan page. Or give away a “white paper” – free tips from your industry. Promote with print advertising and online on your blog, Facebook page, and Twitter.

Did you enjoy these suggestions? Do you have any more? Feel free to leave them in the comment section.

Do you need help in setting up any of the above? Contact me at becca@bauerhaus.com.

Here are the top 10 ten things I took away from his book:

1. Customer service is first. A business will fail without this. The CEO originally was against using non-fat and low-fat milk in his latte’s, because in his opinion whole milk tasted better. But, by listening to his customers and witnessing an actual customer walk out the door for another coffee shop, he changed his tune.

2. “Success should not be measured in dollars: It’s about how you conduct the journey, and how big your heart is at the end of it.” Each employee, or partner as Starbucks calls them, gets 24 hours of training – not just on how to brew coffee or latte’s, but also on how to treat customers.

3. “Success is sweetest when it’s shared.” Howard Schultz grew up poor in the Brooklyn projects. He witnessed his Dad never making more than $20,000 per year working two or three jobs. All the while, his Dad had huge contempt for his employers, as he was never given any respect as a blue collar worker. Howard decided as a kid if he “was ever in a position where he could make a difference, he wouldn’t leave people behind.” He showed this by having all employees, including part-time, be eligible for stock options and health insurance.

4. “We keep our look fresh with colorful banners and posters to evoke specific moods during different seasons, enriching the Starbucks brand with visual impact and interest.” Customers like the posters so much, that they have often gotten requests to buy extra prints of the posters.

5. “Authentic brands do not emerge from marketing cubicles or advertising agencies. They emanate from everything the company does, from store design and site selection to training, production, packaging and merchandise buying.” One of the things that creates adds to the Starbucks ambience, is the music playing in the stores. In the beginning they repeatedly got requests from customers to buy the music that was playing in stores. Starbucks in turn listened to the customer and released “Blue Note Blends” and sold $75,000 copies before going out of print.

6. “It takes a fresh outlook to reinvent an age-old product.” One of the people that Howard met along his journey was a immunologist, Don Valencia, that while sitting at his kitchen table one morning developed an extract for imitating the flavor and aroma of coffee. The timing wasn’t right to hire on Don, but they kept in touch. Although Don wasn’t a traditional pick for heading up the in-house research and development facility, Howard had a feeling about him. Don in turned captured that Starbucks flavor into a wide range of new products, including coffee-flavored beer, coffee ice cream, and ready-to-drink bottled beverages.

7. “Don’t be threatened by people smarter than you. Compromise anything but your core values. Seek to renew yourself even when you are hitting home runs. And everything matters.” Howard constantly hired people that had more knowledge than him. He noted that many entrepreneurs want to put on this image that they are all knowing, but he realized early on he needed to hire experts that had the knowledge of running a national chain.

8. “If you want to build a great enterprise, you have to have the courage to dream great dreams. If you dream small dreams, you may succeed in building something small. For many people, that is enough. But if you want to achieve widespread impact and lasting value, be bold.”

9. “Starbucks represents something beyond a cup of coffee,” says Schultz. “While we are a coffee company at heart, Starbucks provides much more than the best cup of coffee – we offer a community gathering place where people come together to connect and discover new things. We are always looking for innovative ways to surprise and delight our customers.”

10. “Risk more than others think safe. Dream more than others think practical. Expect more than others think possible. Care more than others think wise.”