Building Brand Awareness

Brand awareness involves the extent at which consumers are familiar with a brand and associating it with a particular product. Combining a few marketing resources can create a winning branding strategy.

You need a winning online marketing strategy that can scream your brand to your targeted audience Brand recognition ensures your business is always present in your consumers mind.

A powerful local online marketing strategy should include knowing your competitors. This ensures you are able to differentiate your product from that of the competitors. To assure your brand stands out, leverage on what your products can offer customers that competitors cannot.

Utilize social media to help in building brand familiarity. Social media can help build a positive reputation. You can also maintain your brand presence by sending regular emails to your customer list.

Keeping in contact with your customers through emails and social media keeps your brand top of mind.

 

Why Your Small Business Should Have a Good Website

Because it’s expensive to run a business and your marketing dollars are scarce, you might be tempted to use a free website builder to create your business website. 

If you want your site to get found in search engines, then don’t use a free website for your small business. It pays in the long run to have a website created for you with your search engine optimized (SEO) words. Free or very cheap websites are often very difficult to fully optimize.

Your website is a sales tool. The main purpose of having a website is to attract customers and make sales. Having a website is like having a brick and mortar store where you can show the world your products. A website can help you sell your products and educate customers about your products.

What type of website should your small business have?

You should purchase a website that will do what you want it to do. One of the better and most popular website platforms is WordPress. This type of website will allow you, as a small business owner, to edit and make updates yourself.  You should also include a blog to your website. With good quality content, your blog can raise your website in online searches.

Free Ways to Advertise Your Small Business

 

Most small businesses would like to find free, and good, ways to advertise their company. Advertising can be expensive. Using a paid advertisement will definitely increase your company’s revenue. However, it will also increase your expenses as well.

Advertising is a tool for spreading awareness about your product or service, and to persuade people to purchase your product or service. Advertising is what keeps customers coming to your website and in the door of your physical store. Without advertising, cash flow can become a trickle.

Customers need constant updates of new products or services that solve problems in their lives. If you are solving a problem you are half way home with your product or service being a success. With the right advertising, a business will be able to increase revenue

Here are some ways to advertise for free:

Word of Mouth

There's nothing is as efficient as "word of mouth" advertising. Word of mouth is the least expensive and one of the most effective ways of advertising. Having your customer talking about your product or service to a friend is a great help to your marketing efforts.

This is where your use of social media comes in. Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest are so popular because people love to talk about what they do and don't like.

Your Email Signature

Use your email signature to promote your business. Include 4 to 6 lines of advertisement in every email you send, immediately following your signature. To get the maximum response, offer an incentive for visiting your website.

Press Releases

A press release is one of the best ways to receive a positive reception from potential customers. News outlets are always looking for a good story and are hungry to run one if it's compelling.

Easy and Affordable Marketing Ideas for Your Small Business

You own a small business and it’s imperative that you work within your marketing budget. There are easy and affordable marketing ideas that you could use for your small business.

Social Media

You can use social media to build and promote your business. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn are all free to join. Create a company page on all the social media platforms. Give people incentives to follow your page. Offer discounts or hold contests. Update your content or posts daily. It should be fun, informative and interactive.  Remember to keep it friendly and personable.

Local Goodwill

It is important that you generate a level of goodwill within your community. You can partner with a charity organization or sponsor a local youth sports team. You can have your name printed on their team shirts. By partnering with a charity or youth sports team, your business name is out in the community in a positive way.

Press Release

You can issue press releases about what’s happening at your business.  Have you hired new employees or promoted workers?  Are you launching a new product? There are many reasons to issue a press release. Your press release should be simple and straightforward and should your contact information and website.

Need help implementing any of these ideas?  Give Blue Dog Marketing a call….we can help your small business succeed!

 

Is Pinterest right for Your Small Business?

This year's biggest social media buzz so far has the amazing rate of growth of Pinterest. Many are saying that Pinterest is "the next big thing".

So just what is Pinterest?

Pinterest describes itself as "a virtual pinboard". On Pinterest, you can create different boards with names of your choice and "pin" photos of items that you find on the internet. You can also look at other pinners' boards and "repin" photos that they have pinned on their boards.

I think of Pinterest as browsing through my favorite magazines and ripping out photos of room designs, clothes, or recipes and putting them in a folder. I have an actual bulletin board where I keep pages I’ve cut out of magazines of kitchen designs I like for when we redo our kitchen. Well, Pinterest is much the same, only virtual.

How does Pinterest work for a small business?

The top retail pinners, according to Pinterest, include Nordstrom, Barney’s, Vera Bradley, Neiman Marcus, Gap and Urban Outfitters. The more images they put out there, the more they will be pinned and repinned - and orders for the items will follow.

So, if you are selling products that allow you to tell your story through pictures, then Pinterest is an excellent option for you. Wedding and event planners, crafters, bakeries, jewelers, vintage clothiers are all perfect businesses for Pinterest.

Other businesses can make use of Pinterest too. Salons can pin pictures of new hair styles. If you’re in the fitness industry, you could pin recipes of healthy foods or new classes you’re offering.  If you are an author, pin a picture of your book.

Pinterest is still by invitation only, but an invitation is easy to obtain or you can ask Pinterest to invite you. Join the “next big thing” online!

Business Card Mistakes You Might be Making

At Blue Dog Marketing, one of the services that we’re called upon to provide is business card designs for our clients.  We’ve seen so many poorly designed cards.  Here are some of the mistakes we’ve seen:  

#1 No Name on the Card – Yup, we’ve actually come across this one.  The purpose of a business card is to leave your information behind.  This person had their card designed by a printer.  Enough said.  Use a marketing expert for something this important to the success of your business.

#2 No email/web address or bad email – Yes, we’ve seen this too. This lowers your credibility.  

#3 Small font size – Don’t cause eye strain for your vendors or potential customers.  Make sure your card is easily readable.

#4 Light font color – If your font is too light, you make it difficult to read.  You need contrast.

#5 Design inconsistent with you website –It’s called branding!  Your card should reflect the look of our website. You can create more recognition of your brand if all your marketing materials are consistant.

#6 No links to social media sites – If you blog or use Facebook or Twitter to attract people to your business, you should include links to those sites on your business card. It’s a great way to encourage more fans and followers simply by letting people know how to find you.

#7 Printed on poor quality paper – One of the first impressions people have of our business is your business card.  If you use cheap paper, people are less likely to feel you’re a quality business.

#8 Include no tagline – Every small business should have a clear and compelling brand promise. It quickly tells your prospects what you do.t

#9 Use back of card – We believe this a “blank billboard” that most people don’t use.  If you have many products or service offerings, list some of them on the back.  This can be a conversation starter or can jog someone’s memory of a conversation they had with you.  Leave plenty of white space on your card (front and back) so a prospect can make notes if they want.   

At Blue Dog Marketing, we enjoy creating business cards for our clients that are successful and  promote their brand.  Give us a call!

 

2 Tips for Successfully Marketing Your Small Business

 

Overwhelmed with all the shiny new ways to marketing your business? Not sure which ones, if any, you should be using?  As a small business owner, you’re not alone.  Here are some tips to help you successfully market your small business without being overwhelmed:

Tip #1:

Create a clear marketing message.  Social media is a great tool to get your message out to your clients and prospective clients.  But, they are only tools you can use to help grow your business.

Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter can take up a great deal of your time, if you’re not careful. Schedule some time each day to work on these site and stick to your schedule.  Don’t check out other Facebook sites or you’ll end up spending more time than you scheduled.  Your time is valuable and best spent selling your products.

Tip #2

Keep your website up to date.  This may require an overhaul or redesign. Having a great website is critical to creating a successful business. The first thing potential customers are going to do is check out your website.  If your website is dated or doesn’t speak to them in 3 seconds or less, you’ve lost them and they won’t be back.

You don’t need to have flash animation or fancy graphics. What is most important is the content.  The message must speak to your potential clients.

Content Marketing: Creating Your Best Content Ever

Content Marketing has always been important in online marketing.  Putting great content on your website or blog, and distributing it to all the right places, gets you exposure, leads, and sales.  Without a content marketing strategy, neither your SEO or your social marketing efforts will be successful.

A successful marketing strategy will allow Google to find your product or service.  First, you need to do some keyword research to determine how your potential clients will search for you. 

Once you have a great article or recording, you can easily create a video, PowerPoint presentation, or blog. Put the content on your website and post the information on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google+, and any other social networks you participate in.  You want to distribute your content to as many different places as makes sense for your niche.

This strategy will help you create your best content and get it distributed to places that have their own built in traffic sources.  This takes time.  With a planned strategy, you can create content each week for your blog and social media sites to raise your website to the top in online searches.

If you don’t have the time to create and implement such a marketing strategy, contact a marketing firm, such as Blue Dog Marketing, for help in creating and posting SEO rich content.

 

Building Brand Awareness

Brand awareness involves the extent at which consumers are familiar with a brand and associating it with a particular product. Combining a few marketing resources can create a winning branding strategy.

You need a winning online marketing strategy that can scream your brand to your targeted audience Brand recognition ensures your business is always present in your consumers mind.

A powerful local online marketing strategy should include knowing your competitors. This ensures you are able to differentiate your product from that of the competitors. To assure your brand stands out, leverage on what your products can offer customers that competitors cannot.

Utilize social media to help in building brand familiarity. Social media can help build a positive reputation. You can also maintain your brand presence by sending regular emails to your customer list.

Keeping in contact with your customers through emails and social media keeps your brand top of mind.

 

Advertising Vs Marketing: What's The Difference?

Which are you, a marketer or an advertiser? What’s the difference?

An advertiser spends a lot more money than they need to. The promotion campaign of a product or a service could be termed as advertising. It is a marketing activity that involves telling potential consumers to buy that what you’re selling. Advertising mainly influences the end user.

Advertisers are talking to that potential client at the bottom of the sales funnel and spending money to have that conversation then.

Marketers build strategies. Marketers talk to that potential client at the top of the sales funnel, where nobody else is talking to them... where they'll engage with you. 

Advertising is proved to have a positive outcome on sales turnover, in simple words, the more a product or service is marketed the more it is sold. When you engage your potential and current clients, you'll find that your leads go up, your opportunities will increase, and your closing ratio will go up.

Advertising is a must for increase sales outcomes, an intelligently planned campaign that covers all loopholes may lead to returns well beyond the imagination of speculators and sales forecasters.

You want to be a marketer. To do this, begin by developing a marketing plan. Figure out what your target client needs and start engaging your potential client there. Start talking to them and you will get more leads, more opportunities, and more sales.