• Branding Your Business - Why It Matters
• Email Marketing Secrets Revealed
• What Does Your Site Really Say?

Branding Your Business - Why It Matters

If you’re a small business, you may think that branding is just a luxury that only the “big guys” have. But even the smallest of businesses must have consistent branding in order to be successful, and it’s not really a luxury but more of a necessity if you want your business to thrive and grow.

Branding your business does not have to be expensive, either, although it’s a good idea to invest in having some of the basic elements designed by a professional, such as your logo and your web site. Beyond that, the most important branding that you can do is to be consistent with every piece of communication you touch. For instance:

• Put your logo on everything – business cards, letterhead, your web site, invoices, advertisements, email signatures, and every piece of marketing collateral that you produce.
• Stick with a consistent color palette – if your corporate colors are shades of blue and gray, don’t send out something that’s lime green and orange just because it’s trendy.
• The same goes for fonts – make sure your company name and information always appears in the same font. Save the fancy fonts for headlines or other parts of the marketing piece.
• The quality of your marketing materials (business cards, web design, etc.) is a direct reflection of the professionalism of your business, so don’t attempt to “do-it-yourself” unless you’re sure the result will be credible.

Another key element to successfully branding your business is reinforcing your message through all of your business communications. A slogan or “tag line” can help with that. (For example, if you need to buy insurance, where will you be “in good hands”?) Make sure that the tone of your writing conveys the underlying message you want to send, and is consistent with the overall impression of your business that you want the public to have. If you are “the company that cares,” say so in all of your communications across all channels.

Establishing your brand is a necessary part of building your business, no matter how big or how small it is. Branding will not only help people remember your business, but also make it easier for them to understand the nature of what you do and why they should pay attention. Branding is your corporate identity, so make sure your brand sends the right message to the right people in everything you say and do for your business.

Email Marketing Secrets Revealed

Ok, so the title made you keep reading, didn’t it? Often, it’s the simple adjustments you make to your email campaigns that produce the best results. Here are five easy ideas you can use to improve the results of your next email marketing campaign:

1. Write strong, attention-grabbing headlines. Use great titles to get your readers’ attention, and let them know that the information that follows will be interesting, useful, and worth their time.
2. Send “positive” news whenever possible, or at least present negative information in a more positive light. Of course, you must still be accurate with your information, but strive to give some positive balance to the negative subjects.
3. Be consistent and follow through. If you are sending out a regular newsletter to your clients, then you better commit to a schedule and plan for this as part of your regular marketing activities. Sticking to your commitment validates to your customers that you are reliable and trustworthy.
4. Lighten up. Don’t overly design your email piece, and remember that many email programs have images turned off by default. This means that not only will your beautiful graphics not be seen, but many email spam filters will stop your email from being delivered to the recipient’s inbox in the first place.
5. Keep your subject line short and to the point. Email programs can display only a limited number of characters anyway, so try to keep your subject line to less than 50 characters.

Everything on your web site conveys a message about your business. Everything. The colors, fonts, images, layout, and especially the content, all work together to represent your business on the web. So what does your web site really say to visitors?

On every web site, there are both direct and indirect web site elements at work, and they are continually sending out messages about your business. Direct elements, such as the text or writing on the site, is pretty straightforward. Your copy should be tightly written, have no spelling or grammatical errors, and should include lots of headlines, bulleted lists, and navigation cues to lead visitors through the site. The indirect elements, however, can be a little harder to identify, since they are more like “non-verbal” cues that are often subliminal. As you consider your own web site, think about what each of these elements currently says about your business:

• Site design – it’s not as subjective as you might think. Eye-tracking studies have shown that people prefer clean, uncluttered web sites with simple navigation. Readers typically scan for the main points only, and are guided by headers, subheads, bulleted lists, and white space.
• Photos and graphics – these elements should present information, not just be decorations on the page, or readers are likely to just skip over them. Readers also respond better to photos of actual people rather than models, especially when the photos are of happy, friendly people.
• Site copy – make sure you write specific, benefit-oriented copy on each web page and keep it to less than 1000 words, if possible. Also, use interesting, attention-grabbing titles and headlines.
• Site navigation – can visitors find information easily on your site? Is it consistent among all of your pages? Is your contact information available (or linked) on each page? Can users find their way back to the home page if they get lost?
• Fresh content – outdated material or old technology is a big red flag to web site visitors! Make sure your site is well maintained, and pay attention to anything that will make your business appear to be “behind the times.” You’ll lose your credibility, as well as potential customers, if you let your information get too old.
• Search engine friendliness – can your site be indexed by the search engines? Are you listed in the search engines? Are you included in local search results? Most consumers today use the web FIRST when they’re ready to buy, whether it’s purchasing online or just researching prices or looking up locations. Make sure customers can find your business instead of your competition.

As you probably know, Five Sparrows is also a small business (like many of our readers), and we care very much about what our web site says about us, too. That’s why we have been working on a total re-design of the Five Sparrows web site, which should be going live within the next week. The new site will feature a cleaner, simpler design and several new customer-focused elements such as an RSS feed and blog, which will give visitors access to the latest marketing tips and information in whatever format they prefer. We are confident that our updated web site will not only better serve our clients, but will also provide all of our site visitors with a better web experience overall.

Five Sparrows values your privacy and will never share, sell, or rent your information to anyone, and you may unsubscribe from this publication at any time.

Copyright 2007 Five Sparrows, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
3889 Hartland Hills, Hartland, MI 48353
www.fivesparrows.com