It’s time to get creative. It’s time to try sponsorships.

If you think sponsoring a program or an event is reserved for big companies, think again. An increasing number of small businesses are using sponsorships to get big results. Many organizations, such as Greater Louisville Inc. (GLI), have sponsorship opportunities especially tailored to small business needs.

Of all the marketing techniques available to businesses, sponsorships are one of the most under-utilized. It’s an effective way to get noticed in the business community and even target specific industries or companies. Selling IT services? Consider sponsoring a recognition luncheon for fast-growth companies. Developing a new environmental product? Sponsor an event focused on helping companies go green. Own a retail outlet? How about sponsoring a cocktail reception or a networking event?

One of the prime benefits of sponsorships is they can be customized to fit your company’s needs – and get your message out to an engaged audience. Consider the benefits that can be included in your package:

• Speaking Opportunities. Share with the audience information about your company and product. With hundreds of eyes glued to you at a podium, it’s a powerful way to deliver your message.
• Branding and Signage. Your company’s logo is included on marketing materials sent to hundreds of prospective attendees and is one of the first and most prominent signs participants see when entering the event. Often, you can also distribute materials or set up a table with information about your company – talk about product placement!
• Recognition. Event leaders take the time to publicly recognize your company and to thank you for your commitment to quality programming.
• Cross Promotions and More. Sponsorships lend themselves to a range of creative partnerships between your company and their organization. Ask the organization to find the right solutions to meet your business needs.

Sponsorships deliver a quality audience that’s hard to find in other marketing areas. GLI events attract business leaders and office decision-makers from a variety of industries. The audience is focused and interested in what the business has to offer. They attend events to learn and network, putting them in the right mindset to discover your product.

Sponsorships can help small businesses find solutions and target your audience in a manner and method that leads to success; so invest a few minutes of your time to learn about the possibilities. With marketing dollars scarce in the current economy, sponsorships are one of the best returns on investment you’ll make this year.

Services are now available that specialize in building media lists and targeted distribution of your news releases, increasing the likelihood of coverage and expanding your contact lists.

Media Intelligence Services – Are They Worth the Hefty Price Tag?

Media intelligence services have rapidly emerged as an impressive public relations tool not only allowing you to accurately target the recipients of your news release by media type, beat, market, demographics, etc., but also to track your company’s or client’s Internet, print and broadcast media presence, with limited effort on your part. While such services come with a hefty price tag (some services pack a punch of several thousand dollars), their effectiveness and efficiency could be worth the investment for large-scale businesses or public relations firms with many high-profile clients. Most media intelligence services create individual user packages which include the following tools:

• Media contact search and list development: Media intelligence services have extensive media databases, including the contact information for editors, analysts, freelancers, syndicated columnists, broadcast journalists and bloggers in the Kentuckiana area as well as the national level. With these services, you can create targeted media lists for your company and/or clients based on media type, beat, market or demographic. Some sites will even do this leg work for you.

You may have spent hours combing publication Web sites for editors or beat reporters to beef up your media lists. In many cases, the Web site directed you to a generic e-mail address for your news release. Depending on the publication, these e-mail addresses may go unchecked or the person checking the address may overlook your release amongst the many.

Having access to a vast directory of media contacts allows you to distribute your news releases on a much wider scale, but with the ability to stay targeted to your industry. Media intelligence services also often include the reporter’s preferred contact method, pitching tips and biographical information.

• Press release distribution: Many media intelligence services send your news release for you using each reporter’s preferred method of contact, cutting back on the rate of bounce-backs and bypassing many spam filters. Your news release will have a higher chance of being read. These services also allow you to track, analyze and report on your media distribution activities. Quickly learn which publications and reporters are the most responsive to your releases; compare which news releases received coverage and determine correlations between coverage rate and news release subject matter.
• Monitor print, Internet and broadcast media coverage: Often media intelligence services monitor your company and/or clients’ media coverage, leaving you free to work on other public relations efforts. Some of these services even offer to measure the effectiveness of your various media campaigns for you, based on coverage.

These services are subject to the media intelligence service you choose. Some well-known media intelligence services are Cision, Business Wire, PR Newswire, Vocus and Marketwire.

I’m Not a Big Fish. What’s Out There for Me?

“For a small company, free is definitely better,” said Laurie Dunlop, Web content writer, NetStrategies – an Internet marketing optimization company.

Many free services can be found on the Web, allowing you to post news releases. Laurie suggests checking out www.PRLog.org. Submission is simple and the site distributes all content to Google News and other search engines. If you have a Web site, be sure to create a newsroom where you can post your news releases along with press coverage for visitors. Search engines such as Google, crawl Web sites on a regular basis for content and will index the new information; thus, increasing your SEO (search engine optimization) and Web site traffic.

Laurie also recommends searching for industry-related or business directories where you can post basic company information. For a small fee, you can often enhance these listings. Check out www.JigSaw.com for an example of a free business directory. While you’re there, go ahead and upgrade your listing.

With new, popular forms of media emerging at an alarming rate (think blogs and Twitter) and the increasingly high turnover rate in print media, it continues to become more and more difficult to stay on top of your media contact lists. Whether you decide to take the plunge and purchase a package with the high-end media intelligence services or choose to make use of the freebies, these services will make your work easier and more effective.

Check out ProMoter Inc.’s blog for more information and tips to upgrade your public relations and marketing efforts. http://promoterinc.blogspot.com/

Call out: This article is the second installment in a three-part series spotlighting the latest trends in public relations. Next month in Kentuckiana Business Forum, watch for a discussion of search engine optimization (SEO) – the newest catchphrase in public relations.

Public relations has grown up or matured, rather, with the dawning of the social media age. With the emergence of blogs, Twitter and social media networks, PR practitioners are looking at online communities as new and credible media for consumer dialog. Think keeping your eyes on your local newspaper or trade magazines is sufficient to stay on top of the conversation being generated about your business or product? Think again! Social media has opened the door for consumer-driven conversations online, which should be monitored and even fueled by your public relations efforts!

For years, public relations has been defined as the management of the flow of information between an organization and its target audiences with successful practitioners relying upon their established relationships with (or at least a list of) media contacts in your area or industry. However, in today’s virtual world, managing this flow of information has become increasingly more complex as new blogs, tweets and social networking sites emerge daily. Nevertheless, Web sites and applications exist to bring you into the new generation of public relations, reducing the growing pains your small business might be experiencing.

The Latest Trends

The Blogosphere – The New News Source

Building a relationship with local reporters and editors or trade industry writers has always been key in the public relations profession. However, there is a new type of journalist emerging that cannot be ignored – the blogger! Don’t be fooled into thinking bloggers aren’t viewed as credible sources by people searching the Internet for expert opinions. Often bloggers are viewed as the experts! Therefore, it is imperative that you reach out to this new field of journalism with arms wide open.

“Bloggers are now being recognized as a source for information and their voice is getting louder. You can ignore it or participate. As a business, why not embrace it and help it work to your advantage?” said Laurie Dunlop, Web content writer, NetStrategies – an Internet marketing optimization company. “You must keep on top of what people are saying about your company or product and become a part of the conversation.”

Check out www.technorati.com for an expansive directory of blogs, which will help you navigate the Internet and find the communities that are a fit for your business. This site operates like an Internet search engine combing through the Web for blogs that meet your search terms. Once you find a blog that is a match with your business or industry, become a member of the community surrounding that blog by participating in the online dialogue through post comments and subscribing to the blog via an RSS feed. RSS feeds essentially create a personalized online newspaper that will save you time and effort needed to regularly check blogs and Web sites for updates. (Don’t have an RSS feed aggregator? Sign up for Google Reader at google.com – it’s free!)

Many traditional media outlets in your area have jumped on the blog bandwagon. Learn who is in charge of the content for these types of blogs and add them to your media contact list. Such blogs attract a local audience, which may include your customers!

Note: Before you start pitching press releases to various bloggers, be sure you have established a noticeable presence in that online community by subscribing to the blog and regularly participate in the online conversation through post comments.

“If people are talking about you online, then use that opportunity to help frame the conversation,” said Laurie. “Use that as an opportunity to become recognized as an expert in your industry.”

The Power behind Twitter

There is a new and powerful social networking site that has caught the interest of public relations practitioners and for good reason. Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. While Twitter has been available since 2006, it recently has taken off with over five million visitors in the month of September. While Twitter provides users with a great tool to keep in touch with family and friends, it has also proven to be a meeting place for consumers to discuss products and companies.

You may have heard of the “Motrin Moms” kerfuffle that took down a multimillion-dollar ad campaign and essentially launched the need for corporations to monitor social media sites like Twitter in order to stay on top of the online consumer-driven conversation. The events of the Motrin Moms’ saga began on a Friday night in September when a Los Angeles blogger, Jessica Gottlieb, tweeted about her distaste of the new Motrin Mom ad campaign. As her angry tweet spread, more moms jumped on board and by Monday morning a furious community of moms had been created. Upon hearing the complaints of the disgruntled moms, Motrin took down their Web site, which displayed the ad, removed all of its advertising spots that were using the ad and sent personalized apologies to those affected moms.

Surprisingly (or not) this is not an isolated incident. Twitter has proven to be an effective platform for consumer-driven dialog in the form of complaints, queries and, yes, even praise of companies and products. Monitoring that dialog is essential for a public relations practitioner in order to stay on top of what is being said about your business – it is your first line of defense. Catching an angry tweet and personally responding with a method to rectify the situation may not only stop the tweet (and anger) from spreading, but you may raise that customer’s level of satisfaction in the process.

In the case of Motrin Moms, if someone in the marketing department had caught the initial tweet on Friday, efforts could have been made to quell the domino effect that resulted over the weekend.

You can navigate and organize your Twitter account with Tweet Deck, saving you time and effort. For more assistance on how to make Twitter work for you and your business, download this free ebook (http://www.financialaidpodcast.com/2008/12/24/the-twitter-power-guide-ebook/).

If you are waiting for the social media bubble to burst before delving into the medium, you are missing out on conversations and dialog spearheaded by your customers and putting your company at risk of being surpassed by your competitors.

Check out ProMoter Marketing Communications’ blog for more information and tips to upgrade your public relations and marketing efforts. http://promoterinc.blogspot.com/

Call out: This article is the first installment in a three-part series spotlighting the latest trends in public relations. Next month in Kentuckiana Business Forum watch for a discussion of online media databases as a means of building your presence in both local and national media, including print publications and Web, along with their power to help monitor your company’s media presence.

A month into the new year, small businesses are facing the stressful task of staying accountable for their list of resolutions to make their businesses more productive, efficient and downright successful in 2009. Are you struggling to change bad business habits while motivating your staff to pick up on the new way of doing business?

The Resolution

Tom Butler, co-founder of Right Angle – a Louisville-based business coaching and consulting firm – suggests New Year’s resolutions for businesses should directly link to the company’s annual operating plan.

“If the annual operating plan includes a 10% increase in revenue, then the business can develop several strong resolutions in sales and marketing that support this revenue increase,” said Tom.

By keeping in line with the annual operating plan, you can ensure that your resolutions are focused on your long-term business objectives and supportive in the efforts to achieve these objectives.

“Make sure you can answer the question, ‘Why are we doing this?’ because that is what your employees will ask. If you can answer that question and create buy-in from your team, you are on your way to achieving the resolutions,” said Tom.

Tom proposes that small business owners examine four categories to focus their resolutions for optimal results.

• Manage your cash flow by understanding what happened historically and develop projections for the next 30-60-90 days.
• Become more profitable by turning revenue into profits through examination of your operations and optimization of your processes.
• Attract business from competitors through focused sales and marketing efforts. (Because of the current business conditions and challenging economy, some of your competitors will lose focus on their current customer. Now is the time for you to reach out to them and offer a better product or service.)
• Improve the skills and productivity of each team member through team training. By augmenting the skill levels of your current staff, you can essentially do more with less, making your business more cost effective and efficient.

Once you have established reasonable resolutions, break the resolutions down into actionable items with responsibilities assigned to team members and expected completion dates noted.

“We have found that focusing on 90-day increments of time makes it easier for the team to understand, stay focused on the task and to celebrate successes,” said Tom.

Keeping your resolutions

No business resolution can be achieved without the support of your team members; therefore, implementing business resolutions must first come with a buy-in from your team. According to Tom, in order to facilitate the success of the resolutions, the boss or team leader must delegate effectively.

“The team leader must properly explain the activities, assign the correct people and get agreement on the due dates. Once that is complete, the most important role the boss or team leader can play is that of a coach – guiding, educating, motivating and keeping people on task.”

Looking for added team support? Incentives are a good solution for making improvements to your business through team members. However, the incentives do not have to be monetary. Think of other possibilities that would have appeal with your staff such as additional time off, recognition awards and opportunities for promotion within the organization.

“Creating a more team-focused, positive environment where people work together to achieve company goals may be all the incentive they need,” said Tom.

Are you determined to make your business resolutions stick in ‘09? Check out these tips to ensure you are successful.

1. Make realistic and measurable resolutions. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, often resolutions fail because they just aren’t achievable. Instead of aiming to increase your market share by 35%, shoot for 15%.
2. Create an outlined plan. Once a set of realistic resolutions is established, map out how you will strive to achieve them throughout the year.
3. Discuss your resolutions with team members. Make sure everyone is on board with your company’s business resolutions and ensure they know their role in supporting the success of the resolution.
4. Track your progress. Because business resolutions should be geared towards long-term results, it is important to keep track of each success in order to stay accountable and to ensure you are working to reach your goals.
5. Celebrate your successes. Did you get that new client you had resolved to snag? Well, celebrate! Celebrating the milestones will keep you motivated to achieve your larger, over-arching resolutions.

When you are looking at the “What Next?” question in your line item budget regarding marketing and sales support, avoid the headache. Start with the basics: research. The industry field for this is known as “competitive intelligence.” This term has spawned an entire industry of experts that know how to mine data and make sense out of it for targets and tactics. (www.scip.org) The strategic reasoning behind your marketing and sales objectives is crucial to meeting your bottom line sales goals. That’s why the competition must be observed, heard, and analyzed. This can be done live at tradeshows, for example, or in the content found on the web in a variety of formats from articles, to podcasts, to audio testimonials, to trade association listings, to social media such as people finder sites.

The definition of “competitive intelligence” is:

n. Abbr. CI A systematic and ethical program for gathering, analyzing, and managing external information that can affect your company’s plans, decisions, and operations.

CI is the process of enhancing marketplace competitiveness through a greater, ethical understanding of a firm’s competitors and the competitive environment. (Source: Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (scip.org))

Most small businesses would like to believe that anyone is a potential customer or client, but this is often not the case. In a business-to-business sale, the possible client list can get fairly defined and narrow, given the sales volume, locale, and level of management required for the sales transaction. This is actually something to celebrate. When you know where to aim your sales pitch, your company can make rapid progress and target market.

• It’s important to know:

– Who your clients are and the conditions affecting them;

– What your specialty is, based on the environment;

– What the market is doing globally, locally, regionally, nationally, and in international subsets;

– How other corporations, storefronts, web sites with similar missions are responding;

– Where industry trends may impact your decisions.

Finding the “right” research may involve any number of the following levels of digging before you have context for the content discovered online. For example, your firm may decide the best way to move forward is to ask your existing customers what they think through the use of a survey or one-to-one interviews. Another option may be to buy a trend or research report already made available on a national or international scale. Sometimes the best way to know what is going on is to simply read online the key journal articles in your field each month.

Having said all of this, there are web sites that provide you with ways to make sense of the data you find. Beyond typing in the Google search box, you can set up keywords in Google alerts to let you know when there are new articles on key topics of interest. Google analytics can assist you in finding out what activities on your own web site are having value for surfers and clients of interest. Many industry-focused web sites now offer mashups or maps, including Google Maps as a component, combined with other data that show you a view of a market. This is routinely used in real estate, for example, to show market pricing of houses in certain neighborhoods. Even media outlets use mashups, such as American City Business Journals (www.bizjournals.com) that show the first line of their most current newsfeeds from all of their key markets on a map.

For clients interested in specific subject areas, look to specific communities of interest like TechRepublic (www.techrepublic.com) for IT professionals and del.icio.us bookmarks on key topic groups that can be shared. Free news aggregation and link-sharing tools (i.e., the “my page” phenomenon) have become popular.

Innovations by communities online have created some interesting approaches to aggregated information for purchase. Some communities will not allow advertising inside their online borders, but they will let you extract data of interest for you or your clients. Sermo, a physician community, monitors sentiment regarding new procedures and drug protocols for a fee, which can be useful to pharmaceuticals, for example.

To build expert status for yourself in key industries or to capture the names of interesting parties in your field, you may wish to turn to people finder sites such as Wink, Spoke, Spock, and the like. Still, other sites are the professionals networking online for information such as LinkedIn, Plaxo, and XING. XING describes itself as a worldwide business platform for professionals, connecting know-how with know-who. With XING, you can find jobs, deals, and contacts with a click. Based on my own observations, Kentuckiana has embraced Plaxo and LinkedIn. XING has more of an international audience.

For companies and corporations with several offices selling various products and services, there are now tools that assist in aggregating a view of the web on their separate ad campaigns, issues, and other communications. These fall into a new category of “reputation management” software such as DNA13.com. If it is just social media, such as videos or discussion groups that you wish to monitor for surges in behavior and discussion sentiment, then tools like Collective Intellect, Inc. or Radian6 may be most useful.

Before you sign offline and go in search of information in person, don’t forget to go to your favorite trade association web sites, as well as to your trade magazines. Many times the web presence of these is extended from the print edition, offering groups of interest, online events, contests, data reports for signing up, and full trade member lists for contacts.

For those of you who do not pay to join, there are plenty of sites to explore for free contact information, including Jigsaw.com where you enter data and are able to take needed contact information from the system quid pro quo.

Before you begin your research, determine your questions. What do you really need to know? Hint: The first question is generally, “Who is our target audience for this or that product or service?” Consider that this question requires evaluation from year to year; as products and services evolve–so do economies of market and geographic goals. Identify your current top competition. And then, plan your unique selling proposition that leads to your branding campaign in your promotions and marketing activities. Go to www.aspectx.com and investigate the presentations posted on the site to assist you.

Our grand business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance,

but to do what lies clearly at hand. -Thomas Carlyle

Financial Intelligence sounds like a new industry buzz term, until you get to the root of what it really means. It’s a manifestation of the process that transforms a visionary into a success. In his new book “Increasing Your Financial IQ,” Robert Kiyosaki stresses his belief that those who take on financial challenges become smarter and thus, become wealthier. Similarly, for your business financial IQ to be high, you must possess in-depth knowledge of the systems that successfully generate new business and those that simply do not work.

Currently, how do you harvest, process and apply the information you take in for your business? Having a coveted top spot with the search engines won’t help you develop new customer relationships if you can’t or don’t know how to track, analyze and follow-up on all the inquiries you receive. You can do everything right: host networking events and webinars, attend seminars and luncheons, advertise locally and online, and publish books, newsletters & blogs. However, when the e-mail or phone inquiries begin, what then? If your business contacts an interested prospect, how is that contact task measured? These factors are part of what makes up your business financial IQ.

Virtualization Management – Knowledge at Your Fingertips

Every pun intended. As the fiscal year comes to a close, did you meet or surpass your January 2008 projections? If not, then you may consider the flexibility and innovation of Virtualization Management to improve your current situation. Most successful companies now look quite different than they did at inception. To achieve and sustain success, a business must take advantage of developing technologies to leverage their ROI. You can revolutionize your business operations and stimulate revenues with virtualization management systems. Let’s define how you can take the guesswork and frustration out of your strategic planning initiatives:

Imagine for a moment if your company could:

· Capture 100% of all prospective inquiries.

· Organize, track & measure the effectiveness of the sales/marketing efforts.

· Visually map out a planner for everyone in the company to utilize. All tasks clearly defined and monitored for completion and follow-up.

· Analyze and measure what tasks, actions, processes and responses work and those that don’t – needing immediate attention.

· Establish control over the individual departments and enable them to work together for maximum efficiency and ROI. Task management defines the steps toward desired results.

“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.”- Dale Carnegie

Get SMARTs

How would having this knowledge make you feel about the future of your business? With virtualization management systems, your business could reduce acquisition costs, decrease lackluster performances and capture all daily inquiries. Knowledge is power, so how well are you using your business SMARTs? SMARTs are the vital components which empower you to obtain the results you seek:

S – Salesforce has to be effective to generate revenue and grow your business. In other words, no customers, no business, NO MONEY.

M – Marketing gets your message out; branding your business brings in the desired results.

A – Accounting is extremely crucial to the business itself. How do you invoice your customers? Do you know the lifetime value of your customers? How much does it cost to acquire a customer? How many inquiries are captured? How many are converted to actual clients?

R – Research & Development-What are you actually selling, a product or a service? Could it be something more? Do you know how the numbers work? What works and what doesn’t?

T – Team or staff – departments, outside vendors and your marketing staff. Do they work together for a common objective? Are you able to track their assignments? Do you see when they follow-up with the inquiry?

S – Systems that work together to maximize your return on investment. Are you able to organize, follow-up, assign tasks, see the results and then analyze the best solutions? Are you just hoping it gets done?

Sharpen Your Business Financial IQ

Knowledge of your business and its systems and processes is vital; otherwise, how do you know you’re not going out of business? Companies today face the unfortunate results of not bringing in more customers than their rates of attrition. The only way to manage attrition is to measure and improve retention while encouraging steady growth. Virtualization management accomplishes these goals and arms you with the data – knowledge – you need to make critical financial decisions for your business.

Your business financial IQ is directly linked to your knowledge of customer value. The value of a customer is determined by their contribution to revenues and purchase frequency. If you can’t determine a customer’s value, you can’t improve it. Therefore, you can’t improve your attrition rate because you don’t know what it is. For instance, someone who has purchased from you already and is expected to do so again – this is how you determine the value of a customer.

Perhaps you feel confident knowing that 80% of your revenues are generated by 20% of your customers. Understanding who that 20% represents is extremely important. However, the ability to identify and frequently contact that other 80% could lead you to discover a huge untapped market within your own infrastructure. The easiest sale tends to be someone who has previously purchased from you or utilized your services. Generally, some attention may be all they need. Knowledge of what they want is the missing link. The challenge is for you to make that determination and then deliver it. Each time you are able to accomplish this, your business financial IQ increases and your revenues follow suit.

With the state of the economy in flux and no clear answer as to when the market will bounce back, many small businesses are looking to tighten their budgets and lay low in order to weather what Alan Greenspan has called a “once-in-a-century credit tsunami.” However, there is no time like the present to launch back-to-basic marketing tactics to strengthen your sails and coast through this economic storm.

Lawren Just, owner and president of Persimmon Ridge Golf Course and principal broker of Persimmon Tree Realty, has felt the effects of the down-turning economy first hand with a slump in her property sales at Persimmon Ridge. However, Lawren remains optimistic about the future of the economy and Persimmon Ridge and is maintaining her marketing efforts in order to stay top of mind with her target audience.

“While we have had to decrease our marketing budget somewhat, we need buyers to still know that we have product available for sale,” said Lawren. “We are keeping our name alive in the marketplace and letting buyers know we still are vibrant and eager for customers!”

Lawren’s efforts should pay off in the long-run according to the Strategic Planning Institute whose recent study found companies that maintained advertising during an economic downturn increased market share by an average of 1.5 percent while companies that cut budgets gained only 0.2 percent (from weaker competitors dropping out during a recession).

During a down economy, sustaining your small business while developing new customers and clients requires creativity, relationship building and an understanding of your market. Follow these back-to-basic marketing tips to maintain your small business during this down turn and emerge ahead of your competition when the economy recovers.

• Recognize the purpose of advertising: Advertising is often viewed as an expense with the sole purpose of delivering immediate sales. However, your advertising budget should be deemed as an investment in the future of your company, not only for short-term sales gains, but also for developing a stronger name and brand in your market place. With this in mind, you should think twice before eliminating your advertising budget.

• Re-evaluate your advertising budget: While you shouldn’t eliminate your advertising budget during times of constraint, don’t feel as if it is completely off limits either. Look at a down economy as a time to trim the fat off of an inflated budget. Look into what advertising mediums were effective and those that did not produce results. Also, take time to investigate alternative media options. Particularly look into those avenues that have a high reach with your target audience and where you can buy high-frequency advertising.

• Know your message: Put forth a clear, consistent message of yourself and your business, highlighting your unique selling points and the value of your product. Don’t muddle the message with heavy industry jargon or mixed messages. It is also imperative that your message reflect an economy-driven attitude shift.

• Know your audience: When budgets are tight, you don’t have the leisure to experiment with broadening your market reach. Focus on your best customers to ensure they continue to use your product or services.

• Don’t ignore past clients: During a slow economy, past customers may be your best chance for business as it is often easier and cheaper to get returning business from them than to get business from new prospects. Therefore, maintaining contact with previous clients is as important as attracting new ones. Create a customer database and contact them on a regular basis through monthly e-mails, birthday or holiday cards or phone calls to keep your name, phone number and service on their mind.

• Obtain referrals: Don’t hesitate in asking for a referral if you know you’ve done a good job for a client. And the best time to ask is during the transaction – six months later is too late. As an incentive for clients to give referrals, offer a discount on your services or products for the next time they work with you.

Bad economic news does not have to mean bad news for your small business. Use these back-to-basic marketing tips to weather the storm. When the clouds break, your small business will see the results.

Traditionally, basic marketing has taught the “four P’s,” Product, Price, Promotion and Place (distribution). When our economy was based on product producing companies, this worked well and those companies which practiced these basic principles were among the leaders in consumer products.

However, the world has dramatically changed. In an expanding consumer-driven economy, the “four P’s” were the key, but today things are dramatically different. Today’s is a service economy with a mature consumer base and limited opportunities to expand that base within the country. Increased brand volume can only be found through increased brand share, and competition is greatly intensified. As a result, margins are thinner and the search for additional consumers more expensive.

In such a market, customer retention is typically far more profitable than customer acquisition. Today’s marketers must focus on building enduring brand loyalty – a relationship with the customer. How do the four P’s work in this arena – not very well? Today, it is a fifth “P” – People, which has become the most dominant factor in marketing success. What people? Our Employees!

It is our People who touch the customer and determine, by their interactions, whether our business thrives or not. Our “customer facing employees” may be the most powerful marketing resource available to differentiate us from our competition and build those key customer relationships.

A Gallup study of more than 6,000 consumers (performed in 2003) tested the impact of employees (People) against the other “four P’s” of marketing. The result, whether in automobiles, fast food, retail, electronics, airlines, banking, or long distance telephone service, it was the Employees rather than location, price, or even product quality that brought customers back.

What are the implications of this research? While product quality, pricing and location all remain relevant factors, it is our employees and the relationships they build with customers that provide the greatest differential advantage. So, what are you doing about those interactions?

Do you recognize employees as a marketing resource? Are they recruited and managed as the brand builders (or, at times, destroyers) that they can be? Does your customer service system and training create those critical abilities to connect with the customer?

Employees are far more difficult to control than pricing or promotions or even product quality – and that’s critically important when setting out to assure a consistent customer experience. Customer-facing employees are by far the most difficult customer touch-point to manage to assure consistency of experience. Still, it is because this difficult-to-manage resource isn’t an easy solution that it has proven to be such a powerful one for companies ranging from McDonald’s to Southwest Airlines.

In this summer’s Olympic Games, we had the opportunity to watch basketball teams from around the world compete. These teams devote massive amounts of time to practice and are coached in their performance, both individually and as a team. Too often in business, this just doesn’t happen. We expect employees to work as a team and to accomplish our goals, without training, coaching or practice. Each individual is left to improve their own set of skills.

A Louis Harris Poll of the American Workforce five years ago found that only 19% of the employees in an average company even knew what the organization’s goals were. Of those, only half understood how their work contributed to those goals. Can you imagine a basketball team where the majority of players didn’t know where the goal was or how they fit into the game plan?

Instead of coaches, in business there are managers. Managers should know how to coach, but many do not. Coaching molds a person’s attitude, behavior, and skills. Instead, too many managers seek to control and direct, many using punitive means to gain performance improvements from those they are responsible for developing. Others just leave it to the employee to figure it out and wonder why the results are not coming.

When it comes to customer service, this has not proven successful. Building a real customer service organization requires both systems and training to bring every employee to a level of understanding and performance that differentiates the business from its competitors. It starts from the very top of the organization and must permeate throughout. Only when every executive, manager and employee has the same consistent understanding and approach can the business truly thrive in this new economy.

The holidays are approaching, and so is your chance to build your brand by putting your company name back in front of past clients, reach out to current clients whose business you’d like to keep, and to say “thank you” to all of the associates who help sustain your small business throughout the year.

Essentially, brand building refers to creating a set of customer expectations which your company fulfills, how you differ from your competitors, and what you can offer a client that is unique. When building your brand, you are creating higher standards for your company. The client gift provides for a personalized customer touch point – a chance for you to get your company name in front of the client. Whenever you present yourself to clients in the form of a touch point, you must ensure that it is done so in a premeditated and impeccable manner. Therefore, client gift giving isn’t as easy as sending a box of chocolates to your client list. It takes thought, reflection and planning – so get an early start! Gail Iwaniak, president and chief stuffologist of Presence Incorporated, meets with several dedicated gift giving clients as early as summer’s end.

“We review the previous year, their budget parameters, their client/employee list and then I go to work,” said Gail. Gail opened Presence Incorporated in 1989 and has helped business owners find the perfect holiday gift to market and build business relationships ever since. Presence Incorporated’s online catalog contains over 900,000 corporate gift and promotional items.

The List

Because most small business budgets don’t allow you to play Mr. Kringle by giving every business contact a handpicked gift item, you must carefully choose those business relationships that are essential to acknowledge in order to further your brand. So let’s begin by creating your gift-giving list.

Your list should include:

• Former clients you haven’t worked with in several months. Not every past client should make the list. Consider what type of work you did for this client and the duration of this business relationship. Can you think of ways you can help this client in the future through your services? If so, by sending them a gift with a personalized note, you can help them remember your business and its services and ways you can help them profit in the new year.

• Current clients who have a substantial financial impact on your business. Your biggest clients should receive special attention year round, and the holidays are no exception. These gifts should be thoughtful and build on the relationship you already have established.

• Clients whose business you’ve had for many years. Those long-term clients that helped get your business going in your start-up phase should be thanked for sticking around. Chances are that you’ve learned a lot about this client over the many years you have worked with them, so use this holiday gift as a way to highlight that relationship. Are you aware your client loves baseball? Perhaps give them a personalized Louisville Slugger baseball bat.

• The support staff that keeps your business going. Don’t forget your accountant, lawyer, public relations firm, etc. when giving gifts. They help you with the necessities of your business that you don’t have time (or expertise) to handle. The holiday season is a great time to say thanks!

“Everyone loves to feel appreciated during the holiday season, especially employees and clients,” said Gail.

The Gift

Once you’ve made your list and checked it twice, you now must focus on the type of gift you will give to each client. You don’t want to send a gift that is too expensive, as it may appear extravagant and may make the receiver feel uncomfortable; yet, neither do you want to come off as a Scrooge.

“Food gifts continue to be the most popular during the holiday season. With food gifts, there is no guessing as to whether the recipient will like the gift or not; everyone likes food. Other best sellers include leather tote bags, leather garment bags, crystal or glass ornaments and wine accessory sets,” said Susan Baker, president of Tastefully Yours, Inc. With their early beginnings in the gift giving industry specializing in corporate gift baskets, Tastefully Yours is approaching their 10-year anniversary. Today, Tastefully Yours’ main specialty is gift items with company logos.

When choosing a gift, think of these themes as options:

• A gift that relates to the project you undertook for the client. This gift will then serve as a reminder of the many ways you facilitated the project’s success.

• An addition to a collection. By building strong business relationships with your clients throughout the year, you can learn many interesting tidbits that can help you during the gift purchasing process – take note of them. By sending a gift with personal meaning, your client will know that you took the time to learn about him/her and value the relationship.

• A gift that can be inscribed with your company’s logo. Because the holidays are the perfect time to build your brand, send practical gifts inscribed with your logo such as desk sets, clocks or paperweights. For those with a tighter holiday budget, choose wrapping that includes your logo and company colors.

• A gift that the client can use during their day-to-day activities. Practical gifts stay in your clients’ offices longer, increasing the duration of the gift’s impact.

• Foodstuffs that can be shared among the entire office staff. Instead of sending each office member a gift, think about sending a fruit basket or cookie tray. This will keep you within your budget and show an entire office that you appreciate their business or the job they do for you.

Still unsure of what to present to your clients? According to both Gail and Susan, the biggest trend this year has been the environmentally friendly gift.

“We’ve sold environmentally friendly USB drives, organic cotton shirts, organic cotton bags, travel mugs from recycled materials, corn-based ink pens, water-powered clocks, holiday cards that can be planted to grow flowers … the options are endless with the eco friendly,” said Susan.

Timing

“Some clients prefer to give their holiday gifts at Thanksgiving, while others choose to give them as New Year’s gifts. This way, they don’t get lost with all the other gifts being received during the month of December,” said Gail.

The Wrap-up

While you are brainstorming gift ideas, put some creative muscle behind your holiday greeting card as well. ProMoter helps clients build their brand by designing specialized messages and images that take center stage in clients’ reception area displays.

You can also order cards specific to certain industries. For example, Cardphile Inc. (www.cardphile.com) offers notecards, calendars and greeting cards for constuction-related businesses.

As a small business owner, the importance of branding is great; in fact, it is your livelihood. While many other obligations are running through your head during the holiday season, it is important not to miss out on this convenient opportunity to build your brand while showing your appreciation to clients. So this holiday season, be sure that a snowman isn’t the only thing you build, and work on building your brand!

Despite what many entrepreneurs believe, building a company brand is much broader than developing a logo, tagline, web site or a brochure. Building a brand also involves the employees, customers, the media and even the general public.

Strong brands bring together many elements of marketing, all of which are important. These elements include customer interactions, corporate culture and values, employee communications and marketing. If these elements do not work in unison and work consistently to reinforce your brand, customers can become confused and dissatisfied. A negative perception can dramatically affect the business revenue, current employees, potential customers and media relationships.

We have all heard about customers who share a negative experience much more frequently than a positive one. Therefore, branding must be consistent throughout all levels of the organization to help drive organizational growth and prosperity.

Strong brands can:

o Drive and increase sales.

o Attract more profitable customers.

o Attract and retain the best employees.

o Demonstrate value to vendors who may want to increase business.

o Establish and/or grow collaborations and partnerships with other firms.

Brand building is just as important to businesses that provide goods and services to other businesses (B2B) as it is to business to consumer (B2C) activities; however, it is often overlooked by business owners.

Use Company Culture to Build a Brand

Develop your company culture by reviewing your mission, vision and values. The culture is driven from the top down, by C-level management, particularly the CEO, who is often also the founder. This requires more than a poster in the break room or a page on your web site. Only through CEO leadership and sharing of a clear vision can a company culture be adopted by each member of your team. This commitment to the company culture must be demonstrated and reinforced continuously and passionately by the leader.

Below are a few examples of company values that feed the company culture. Identify which company values apply to your business, and incorporate other values as you develop your message:

· Clearly defined mission.

· Family friendly work environment.

· Empowered employees.

· High level of integrity.

· Strong leadership.

· Effective operational systems and processes.

· Performance-based compensation.

· Customer focus throughout the entire organization.

· Commitment to professional development for all employees.

· Accountability at all levels of the organization.

· Commitment to innovation and continual improvement.

Align the characteristics of your company culture with an action plan that has been developed with input from team members impacted by that plan. This will ensure buy-in from the team and commitment to superior customer service and a stronger brand.

Your Team

The person who answers the phone, sales associates and customer service representatives are integral in communicating the message and the value of your brand. Any of these team members may be the first and only contact with your customers. Do you feel comfortable with that contact? If not, invest in professional development for all of your team members, particularly those who have daily contact with your clients.

Your Logo

Your company logo should be, first and foremost, immediately recognizable and unique to avoid confusion with another brand. Yet, the logo should have elements that inspire familiarity and reflect your company culture. Seek professional help from marketing experts to develop or update your logo.

Visual Identity

If you have an outside sales force and/or delivery drivers, you may use company-branded apparel or uniforms and delivery vehicles. It is important that all apparel is worn consistently, is in good, clean condition and fits properly. Your staff should be able to provide input on any required apparel, since the team has to wear the apparel and most likely wants to take pride in their appearance. That pride will show if you pay attention to this important branding tool. Vehicle appearance, both outside and inside, should be immaculate. Maintain company logos and decals on the vehicles.

Note: Impress upon your team that when wearing or displaying your brand, they should be diligent about proper behavior. After all, anyone wearing the company-branded apparel or driving the company van reflects your brand and your reputation.

Your Web Site

Due to the increase in online research and purchasing, internet marketing is crucial to all businesses. While web design can be done inexpensively, your brand will be represented to the entire world on the internet. This is not an area to look for the least expensive option, as this will affect the impression of your brand. As mentioned above, seek professional help in developing your web site.

Your domain name should be the same as your company name. If that is not possible, then the domain name should identify your key product or service. Also, the domain name should be as short as possible so that your customer can remember it easily. When considering your domain name, get input from professionals who can provide insight into the impact of your choices.

You do not have to offer a complicated, multi-page web site in order to create a positive brand image. A home page with your mission statement, values, a description of products or services and contact information is a good start. Your web site can be developed more fully as you increase your marketing budget.

Your Printed Marketing Material

Printed marketing material should consistently reflect your brand. If you are creating a brand, get a second and third opinion as mentioned above. Speak to a printer about how your logo will look on printed material. Some business owners find that after choosing a design, they have limited themselves with a brand that is too ornate to be used consistently in smaller or larger forms. Will your logo look equally well on promotional items, stationary and apparel?

Printed marketing material includes placing your logo on letterhead, envelopes, return address labels, flyers, brochures, direct mail, signage, apparel, etc. The paper, card stock and any other product on which you print your brand should be chosen carefully. People notice the quality of the materials. However, you do not have to always go with the highest priced products to reflect quality. A good strategy is to collect other business material to review options. Use the samples you chose in discussions with your designer and/or printer.

Your Advertising

There is a difference between advertising and marketing; all advertising is marketing but not all marketing is advertising. It is common for small businesses to cut the budget, particularly in tough times, but without marketing, how will people see your brand?

In order to choose the right advertising for your business, conduct market research and ask these questions: Who are your customers? How do they choose the products and services they purchase? What do they read? What is their age? Where do they spend money on products and services? How can you effectively reach your customers?

The answers to these and other questions will help you identify where you DO NOT want to advertise, which is as important as where you do want to advertise.

Contrary to a popular belief from the Dot-Com era, the print medium is not dead. Depending on your research, print may be the best resource for presenting your brand to your customers. But do not eliminate web-based marketing opportunities, which can be more effective and less expensive in reaching a large audience.

Note: Marketing is subjective. What you might find amusing or intelligent may backfire when presented to your customers. When it comes to communication, impact – not intent, is what your audience remembers. This is particularly true with web sites, marketing materials and advertising.

Protecting Your Brand

Creating and building your brand is vital to your business. Protecting your brand and the time and resources spent in building your brand is also important. How do you accomplish this?

Establishing a trademark for your brand is an integral part of protecting it. If applicable, trademark your logos, names, tag lines and packaging. Search the internet to see if a logo, tag line, etc., which is very similar to that which you use, is being used by another organization. Great resources for this process include www.USPTO.gov, the Secretary of State web site or the Yellow Pages web site. Intellectual property attorneys can help you with this process, and those same attorneys can ensure that no one is infringing upon your brand.

Conclusion

A brand includes your logo, web site, company culture, your team, marketing activities and more. Building a brand is a long process and will require an investment of your time and money. Because your brand may be your most valuable business asset, find professionals who can help you build your brand properly, and then continually monitor your brand and protect it.