Nine Effective Marketing Tools for Small Businesses

Small businesses (SMEs or SMBs) need marketing as much as large corporations. The good news is that there are various cost-effective marketing tools around. These tools are a mix of traditional and new – together, they are highly effective.

1. Have your Own Website and Blog

Every business needs a website. Potential customers are searching online to find out what your business is all about. For branding and to position yourself as a leader, you also need your own blog. Blogs are easily created using Wordpress or Blogger - free of charge!.

2.Use business cards

It is still worth while to hand out business cards. A printed business card stays around, which is good for your branding. At exhibitions and at a first business meeting, business cards are still handed out.

Depending on your target audience, make sure that it has the correct format and language (e.g., Chinese at the reverse side of your English one. Pay attention to the format of your phone number; make sure to include the country code for clients abroad.

3. Brand your collateral

Use your invoices, receipts, proposals, price quotes, and order confirmations to brand your company. Put your logo, slogan, tagline, and contact details on documents that you send out.

4. Create brochures, flyers and PowerPoint presentations

A brochure, flyer or PowerPoint presentation will explain who you are and what you are offering in an appealing and easy to grasp way. Once you turn them into a PDF, they are easy to distribute by email and to post online (LinkedIn, website).

5. Create and update your own website

Potential customers want to check you out. They expect you to have your own website. Your business domain name is ideally the name of your company. In case you cannot register a .com, try .biz. Make sure that you update your website regularly and also check that is opens correctly in all major browsers.

6. Use Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

To reach potential customers, you need to be found. Online searches are the key; people search on search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing) and on social media (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, forums, blogs, etc.). SEO helps you to be found by potential customers that are searching for you or your product/service.

7. Use social media

LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are the main social media to reach your target audience. They provide a highly effective way to interact with your target audience. It is also easy to spread news about your company and announce special offers.

8. Provide freebies

People like to get free information and advice. One way of leveraging this, is by having your own blog and to post your own articles (e.g., on ezine) that provide useful tips to the readers. This not only positions you as an expert in your field, but also builds brand loyalty. Other excellent marketing tools are having a free download on your website for white papers and free webinars.

9. Make Yourself Visible

Attend seminars in your area, promote a cause your target audience care about or sponsor a charity event. People need to get to know you and your business. If your business is completely online, opt for a (humorous) YouTube video.

These nine tools provide a great way to promote your business - success! Please leave a message how if works out for you.

(Image courtesy of directory.ac)

Branding Rutland – a lesson in branding a small town

Branding is an art – it tries to capture the heart and soul of a product, service or organization, making it highly recognizable if not unforgettable. Brand loyalty is the key to successful companies such as Proctor & Gamble, Unilever, Coca-Cola, and General Motors (to name just a few).

Countries and cities are entities trying to brand themselves: “I love NY” and “What goes on in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas” are two slogans that made the cities they are connected to memorable.

Smaller cities and towns have a harder time to make an impact. That makes Rutland, in the US state Vermont, such an interesting branding case.

Rutland’s city officials, regional development officials and the local business community want to put the city (and region) on the tourism map. They are looking for a slogan that sums up the finest qualities of the city, its economic potential and the tourist attractions. It wants to emphasize that it is within easy driving distance (e.g., from the Tri-State area). However, the slogan must be short enough to fit on a bumper sticker.

Not so successful past attempts included:

• “The Crossroads” (which sounds like a rehab center to me)
• "The heart of the "Marble Valley" (which doesn’t make sense if one doesn’t know where Marble Valley is located)
• "City for Weddings" (isn’t that Las Vegas?)
• "Rut Vegas" (which doesn’t have a nice ring to it)

It’s tough to brand a city or town. When it comes to branding, being small and relatively unknown doesn’t help. Lack of substantial marketing and advertising budgets is another restraint.

To brand properly, we must first look at Rutland’s strong points:

• Downtown shopping, dining and theatrical opportunities
• Pastoral settings of the rural communities just beyond Rutland's borders
• Lakes, trails, rivers, ponds, ski slopes and other recreational fun within easy driving distance from the big cities
• Part of the highly popular Vermont

The branding guru taking on the Rutland branding challenge is Peggy Bendel, senior vice president of Development Counselors International, who worked on the massive "I love New York" ad campaign, pointed out that branding a small city like Rutland takes a different approach. She recommends that Rutland adopts a catchy slogan and logo that sums up Rutland's best qualities and is easy to remember. The idea is for the city is to change the way visitors – and residents – perceive the community.

She makes an interesting point by stating that small town branding only works if everyone from the Chamber of Commerce and municipal officials down to small business owners and the average Rutland citizen can identify themselves with the slogan and logo.

Branding comes with a hefty price tag - consulting fees, marketing expenses and advertising are roughly $100,000. Rutland can apply for a state grant to be reimbursed for the consulting costs. Needless to say, research into attitudes, impressions and associations with the community are essential for branding success.

Rutland organized a preliminary meeting between a consultant company and about 20 regional and city commerce and development officials, city officials, representatives from recreational nonprofit groups, business leaders and residents. No suggestions for a new slogan or logo were brought up, but the qualities of the community were discussed extensively along with some of the challenges it faces including concerns about overcoming what some perceived as the main public perception problem: the name of the city and county, Rutland, is perceived as unflattering. However, on the upside – it’s easy to remember and spell, which is in our current Internet/Google age a must!

Two regions to the north and south of Rutland have successfully launched rebranding campaigns.

Burlington reintroduced their 1980s slogan "The West Coast of New England." It resulted in a high volume of downloads of the rebranding toolkit, complete with logo, slogan and other materials, coupled with T-shirt and sweatshirt sales bearing the rebranded imagery. The positive feedback from the public is also a sign that the rebranding is successful. The Chamber of Commerce stated that it only paid $30,000 for the consulting fee and left the advertising left to grassroots efforts.

The Green Mountain Regional Program (in the south of Bennington County) successfully concluded it grassroots efforts by introducing its "The Shires of Vermont” brand. According to the group's regional marketing coordinator, the slogan comes from Bennington County's unique designation as the only county with two shires that served as judicial districts in colonial times.

It will be interesting to see how the rebranding of Rutland will unfold.Until then, I would like to finish with a great quote from Bill Baker:“A brand is a promise - whatever you project, you must deliver on it and you can't have variations with everyone doing their own thing. The message has to be the same."

Having fun with EMV - emotional marketing value

During a market research for EMV migration of payment terminals (EMV stands for Europay, Mastercard, Visa; the smart debit cards), I hit on a completely different EMV.The Advanced Marketing Institute developed an Emotional Marketing Value (EMV) score.
It analyses the impact that a headline has on its readers.
It’s a tool for copywriters to check what the impact of a specific headline has on its readers.
Needless to say, I was intrigued.

The tool analyzes the words in the slogan or headline as follows:

• Intellectual impact
  Words which are especially effective when offering products and services that require reasoning or careful evaluation.
  According to AMI, intellectual impact words are best used to attune copy and sales messages aimed at people and businesses involved in the fields of education, law, medicine, research, politics, and similar fields.
  While not restricted to these groups, by giving presentations which are weighted with intellectual impact words, your clients and customers will be more positively influenced and you are more likely to attain a more favorable response.
  
• Empathetic impact
  Words which resonate in with empathetic impact often bring out profound and strong positive emotional reactions in people.
  According to AMI, empathetic impact words are best used to attune with people and businesses involved with care-giving.
  For example, nurses, doctors, and counselors all tend to respond easily and favorably to empathetic words.
  Women, and especially mothers, are very strong in their use of empathetic impact words in the language.
  While use of empathetic impact words does not have to be limited to these groups, we've found that by selecting m ore words with empathetic impact delivers desirable conversion responses from those types of market segments.
  
• Spiritual impact
  Words which have the strongest potential for influencing people by appealing at a very deep emotional level.
  According to AMI, spiritual impact words are best used with people and businesses desiring to make an appeal to some aspect of spirituality.
  This does not mean religion specifically, but any product or service that resonates with “spirituality” oriented markets is appropriate.
  The clergy, new age, health food and related markets all respond favorably to sales copy heavy with spiritual impact content.
  Women and children also respond strongly to words in the spiritual sphere.
  Marketing documents with strong spiritual impact content can make for the most powerful presentations in the marketplace but must be used with considerable skill.

Again according to AMI, the English language contains approximately 20% EMV words.Most professional copywriters' headlines will have 30%-40% EMV words in their headlines, while the most gifted copywriters will have 50%-75% EMV words.
A perfect score would be 100%.
According to AMI, this is rare unless your headline is less than five words.

I played around a bit with the tool and try to find a top score in each category.
My first challenge was to create a headline with a strong intellectual impact.
I decided to zoom in on Apple’s new iPhone, and came up with the headline:“iPhone best technology”.
It scored 66.67% in both intellectual and empathetic impact, which does make sense.
Orpak’s “fueling your business for success” has a 20% spiritual score.
A slogan I once coined for a high-tech company “your power to communicate” scores 50% on the spiritual scale.
Not bad, considering the company was active in broadband-over-powerline (BPL or PLC).
By repeating words, the score goes up.
“Profit, profit, profit!” scores a cool 100% on the empathy scale; "free, free, free!" also scores 100%, but strangely enough on the intellectual scale.
"Opportunity, opportunity, opportunity!" even scores 300% in all three categories.

I also had a look at strong and successful slogans to see how they scored.
The US Army’s famous “we want you” scores 100% in all three categories.
Philips's new slogan “sense and simplicity” only has a 33.3% intellectual score.
May be it is too close to Jane Austen’s novel title for its own good?
Unilever’s “feel good, look good and get more out of life” scores a measly 10% in the intellectual category, which I didn’t expect. I was sure it would do well in the empathetic and spiritual categories.
Bobcat’s “we are closer than you think” scores a nice 50% in all categories, despite it being slightly stalkerish.
Holmes Place (the global fitness center network) “One life. Live it well” doesn’t score at all. It is 0% neutral, although I expected it to score nicely in the spiritual category.
Nokia’s “connecting people” has as strong 50% score; but in the intellectual, not the emotional categories.

How reliable is this tool? I have my reservations, but it is definitely fun to use!