You have the business plan, the cool product or killer service. You’ve figured out your business model, your three core strengths. And you’ve got a phone (goes-without-typing essential) you’d love to be ringing off the hook with folks wanting to give you large piles of cashy money.

Next step: tackle that Marketing P known as Promotion. Or not.

I did an ad layout for an Atlanta small biz, and what hit me were the missing pieces I had to find for a basic print ad. Customers may not notice or comment when you have it, but they will notice if you don’t.

Things you can’t NOT have to market your business

Identity. It all starts here. A basic logo, some stylized treatment of the name that wasn’t created in PowerPoint with 10-year-old clip art.

It’s how you “brand” so do it.. just not comic sans. (Designers joke.) That investment shows you mean business, on your “still gotta have them” business cards, print materials, free coffee mugs and this newfangled thingy called the Internet.

Website. First, a counter argument. Rare is the business that with the right product (booze) and right location (intersection shopping center) can do fine and dandy, sans website. I was told, license to print money. True ‘nugh.. and EXCEPTION.

“Well what about Facebook?” whines the small business owner. Sigh. Are your customers active on FB or your own site or forums elsewhere? People are social creatures, the trick is finding where.

That said, your website is where YOU have control, a way to tell your story, where people can contact you with your ‘branded’ email. Domains are cheap, WordPress is free, websites still matter.

Images. Can you imagine visiting a website, flipping through a brochure or scanning a magazine without them? Bor-ing! Photos and videos breath life into marketing because they humanize your business.

If your product or service is your custom work, hire a professional for eye catching images. It’s an investment that will pay for itself every time you run an ad, share them on your website and Facebook page, submit them to a magazine for big, fat “free” publicity.

If you’re a reseller or installer, look to your vendors and co-op some marketing, use their product photos. When it’s a “generic” business without need anything custom, there are plenty of royalty-free houses for professional photos; for SMBs on a budget I’ve got two words: iStock account.

Story. Talk to your customers, talk with your employees, your vendors; hone your elevator pitch. You want that great website, that “free” double-page spread in the local living magazine think story, not sales.

Beyond talking points, ass-numbing bullets, your small business has a tale to tell. If you don’t know who and what you are, you’re in big trouble. What you do, how you help others, where, when, why do you offer extra services? W’s are right there, waiting for your answers to tell that story.

What’s another “can’t afford to skimp on” marketing essential?

Tags: Brand | Design | photography | website

Big names like AT&T, VW, Kia and more spent millions to produce and air the best promotions they could for the Super Bowl. For the sake of the brand.

What is a brand name?

“Define brand” can call up a ton of answers. Run it through Google and you’ll more than a few gagillion hits of blogs defining what “brand” means.

There is the brand and what it represents. Strong brands transcend their products and services. Two of my, everyone’s favorite examples of the brand promise are Apple and Disney.

Apple isn’t just about computers, smartphones and MP3 players. The Apple brand stands for elegant design, intuitive functionality, cool gadgets and so much more.

Walt Disney World doesn’t sell hotel rooms, meals and roller coaster rides. It’s about magic and family, those moments that stay with you. It’s about the experience that you want to relive each generation.

Transformers: from a brand to more, or less

More than a name. So-called genericide is when a brand name becomes the generic term for their industry, product. Kleenex, Zipper, Xerox, the marketing texts are filled with examples. Here in Atlanta, all sodas are Cokes; to me at least.

FedEx has become a verb to ship, to Photoshop is to assault unsuspecting pictures with strutting Leo photobombs, to Google IS to search, period.

When brand becomes a punch line. Valeria Maltoni referenced an old video about what would happen if Microsoft packaged and marketed the iPod. Had never seen it and all I can say is truth really IS funnier, smarter, truer, stranger than fiction. LMAO.

Two tweets caught me eye last week:

• “MSFT Entourage is the Ford Pinto of software.” - Urvaksh Karkaria
• “You’re the AT&T of people!” – Ryan Anderson

Right now, you don’t want your brand to be the Kenneth Cole of anything. UPDATE: You can add Groupon to the bad branding list, per their Super Bowl ads.

Your small business brand matters.

You’re the local choice, the Atlanta option. The “big names” may have size and awareness, you have adaptability, flexibility and drive. You’re the neighbor, the friend, the one with a relationship who gets their needs. Your brand is what what helps make your business different.

Agree, disagree, have a brand joke to share? Please do.

Photo credit: these unmotivational posters always crack me up.

Tags: Brand | branding | Marketing

Will the GAP logo, old or new, make you buy their clothes? NO. That’s what came out in the comments on Spin Sucks post about the GAP crowdsourcing their logo.

A logo–new or old, loved or hated–probably won’t move the sales needle all by itself. It’s about what the logo represents, the brand and its products and services. BTW The people–buyers, bloggers and other snarkers–have spoken. The GAP has gone back to the old logo.

Social media and marketing case studies, dime a dozen.

• There are stories on how well Dell Computers gets it.
• Plenty of articles and blog posts on how Ford gets social media.
• Tons of blogs and posts citing plenty of social media marketing success stories.

But I wonder how many people bought a Ford just because of talking with Scott Monty or reading a blog promoting the virtues of the Focus or Fiesta. I’m sure they’re out there, just asking.

There’s a disconnect between PR and Publicity as related to Marketing and Sales. Solution: bring PR into the board room, not as afterthought and have a plan for the publicity and how to turn it back into the marketing program for leads and sales.

Brand loyalty is one thing, personal tastes and preferences another.

I could develop a great relationship with a Dell blogger and Best Buy tweeter. I could read all the blogs, stories and articles about how Microsoft and the Gates Foundation is helping folks around the world. I can hear all the news about how Pepsi may spend $20 million on community service and Yay! for them but the fact remains:

• You can lead me to water, but you cannot make me buy a PC; I’m sticking with my Mac, even if Apple makes a hideous new logo.
• If it’s Pepsi on the menu, I order tea or water. I’m a Coke Classic drinker.. unless they try some crappy new formula again.

It comes down to social media marketing strategy.

Are increased sales the ultimate objective? Is it brand worth and value, higher stock prices? Are you rearranging deck chairs with a shiny new logo, but not fixing the product or services? Are you targeting the right people with your viral campaign and increased brand chatter?

The GAP doesn’t make clothes my size, so they didn’t win or lose my business with their recent changes. But the GAP did get me talking about them, and that’s something right?

Tags: Brand | Brand loyalty | Business | GAP | Internet Marketing | Marketing and Advertising | Public Relations | Social media

“Do you suppose they have an app for strategy?” Terrific and funny question, posed by Valeria Maltoni on her blog last week.

Many small businesses struggle with ideas for social media strategy, knowing the tools–Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs–but not how to use them, measure success or where to start.

The Pros Know

As a PR pro, I can tell you that social media can make your professional life better.

Social media experts have learned to share. Tips on social media, how to advice on setting up Facebook pages or Twitter accounts, the Ins and Outs of blogging for inbound marketing. You name it, it’s out here.

From the blogroll and beyond: I’ve got 10 posts (counting Valeria’s) this week on social media marketing strategy.

Got Game Plan?

• Beth Harte has a great outline for planning, to develop social media strategy that goes past falling in love with the latest shiny object like YouTube or Facebook.
• Here’s a blueprint of what a social media plan may look like, courtesy of Neicole Crepeau.
• Are you pro-active or reactive with your social media strategy? asks Jay Baer.
• Carol Philllips with five questions to test your social media brand strategy.
• Marc Hausman with three things he thinks are critical to social media success. Strategy is priority #1.

Think Global, Shop Local

If your social media reach doesn’t need to go viral–just around the corner–to get you ahead, there are plenty of strategies for using social media for local businesses. Four posts for marketing local, retail business:

• Gini Dietrich makes the case for using location based marketing… right now.
• Adam Vincenzini has five ways to step up to Foursquare.
• I loved this post on using social and being helpful for marketing greatness. Another gem from Jay Baer.
• Brand new and shiny is Shopkick, another location based “check in” smartphone app for retailers.

BTW: Shout out to PRWeb inspiring this post with this article on blogger relations strategy. Thanks!

Have a favorite blog post on social media marketing strategy? Please share it here.

Atlanta Public Relations, Marketing and Social Media

Tags: Brand | Communications | Marketing | Social media | strategy | tactics | Twitter

I’ve read so many great posts on the metrics of marketing, public relations and social media campaigns. This week Chris Penn had one of the simplest, smartest analogies I have read in a while:

“Diagnostic metrics tell you how the trip is going. Objective metrics tell you when you’re there.”

For more insights into ROI, I’ll refer you to the far superior wisdom of Conversation Agent from Valerie Maltoni and Olivier Blanchard’s The Brand Builder.

When it comes to results, what’s the endgame, where are we trying to go?

I am a sci-fi, fantasy drama fan. I watch Lost, Fringe, V and right now on Hulu, I am time shifting, multitasking and watching FlashForward.

The FlashForward premise: via some Rube Goldberg whosie whatsit, everyone on the planet blacked out and saw six months into their futures, two and half minutes’ worth. The next step, the bigger part of the story, is what they do with that foreknowledge.

Skip to the end of the story

Since I was a wee lass majoring in Advertising and PR at LSU–Geaux Tigers!–I’ve been a peek at the last page then work towards the center thinker. Why?

To oversimplify egregiously: Some formula of Product X or Service Y for Brand Z times the requisite Marketing Mix of Ps in the overall business plan kick starts your campaign. You advertise, you promote, you sell, you serve your customers, you measure, you follow-up, you watch and learn. Lather, rinse, repeat.

If the desired target for reach, frequency, all those promotional G-spots was a certain number, I always did my media planning from there and worked backwards. I worked the problem from both directions, met in the middle.

FlashForward your current projects or campaigns and think about what you see.

• Success. What’s the win, the grand slam, the brass ring? Sweeping successes of blog posts, Facebook fans and likes, gushing press coverage. Sounds good but it’d be meaningless if it also didn’t translate to increased sales, higher stock prices and greater brand value.

• Fail. If you don’t see success, then what? Now is your chance to change things, take your new foreknowledge and revamp your current campaign.

We don’t live in the TV world with snazzy clothes and perfect hair and beautiful people, so we can’t see the future. Or can we? I for one am a believer in research, research, research for clues to what he future may hold.

Small businesses cannot always afford the focus groups and panel studies, but they can still survey the field, look ahead to what they want, where they plan to be in six months.

Flash forward, work backwards, make it happen. Any deep thoughts on planning and strategy, share them here.

Tags: Advertising | Brand | Marketing | PR | Public Relations | small business | Social media