Branding 101 for Small Business Owners

Every business needs a brand, of course, but not every small business owner is adept at creating one. Fret not! We’ve outlined key small business branding elements to help you build or remake one for your endeavor.

What Is a Brand?

“A brand is what distinguishes one company or product from another,” explains Juily Gite, a design consultant for Staples® Design Services. “It is a promise to the consumer, communicating to the consumer what to expect when they buy from you; whether your brand is built on ‘fun’ or ‘easy to use,’ or ‘looking cool,’ it serves as a way to make the buying decision easier for a consumer faced with many choices. “A brand is the sum total of many activities and communications that communicate who you are, what you stand for and why you are different.”

What Are the Elements of a Brand?

• Logo: Your company’s logo is the most visible and consistent representation of your business and your brand, because it can appear anywhere from your front door to your Web site to your business card. Gite says it’s crucial to determine what your logo needs to communicate. “This will drive the design elements used, including graphic types, color and typography.” Then consider how you will use your logo. “Design is driven by usage. For example, if you’re printing the logo on the back of a package, you will want to make sure it reads well when reproduced on the packaging material and when small.”

• Colors: Colors influence people’s feelings and perceptions about your brand, so selecting the right hues is vital to branding your small business. “What kind of business are you in and are there colors that associate well with what you do?” asks Andrew Coulter, senior marketing director for MushKush Integrated Marketing in Kaysville, UT. Consider the feelings you want people to have about your business, like trustworthy, exciting, relaxed, luxurious, etc. There’s a color for every emotion. Adds Jon Baker, CEO of FodderTech in Sandy, UT: “Our systems use water to produce green sprouts, so naturally we chose green and blue.”

• Voice: Your voice is the “sound” of your business, a tone that resonates with your customers. “It needs to be based on who you really are, what your service or product really delivers,” Gite explains. “It needs to be consistent. You can’t try to build your brand on being easy to work with, and then have a complicated, hard-to-navigate website with a 10-question-long ‘Contact Us’ form.”

• Tagline: If it’s important to communicate what’s unique and different about you, you may want to create a tagline or slogan that quickly communicates with words how you’re different. “You immediately know which paper towel is ‘The Quicker Picker Upper’ and which coffee is ‘Good to the Last Drop,” Gite says.

• Messaging: Beyond a tagline, your brand message is a theme or two that drives your “story” and informs how you communicate in brochures, web copy, sales training, etc. “We sell a product that is both the same and different from what our competitors sell, so we’ve spent time building a message of ‘We have what you’re looking for and here is how we’ve improved it,’” Baker explains.

• Fonts: Typography reflects brand personality and can become iconic — think Coca-Cola or Disney. The fonts used in print and online materials should complement your logo while remaining legible. “Choose a font that’s easy on the eyes,” Coulter suggests. “I like to stick with fairly basic fonts. I had a former customer who insisted everything be done in the Papyrus font, but people get tired quickly of too much use of a novelty font.”

• Images: “The type and style of imagery are also important for communicating who you are,” Gite adds. Whether you use illustrations or photography, and color or black & white, will affect how consumers think about your brand. Distinctive images can also be a key differentiator in small business branding. Think about how different an Apple photographic image is from the Android cartoon robot, for example.”

What Branding Mistakes Should I Avoid?

• Working in a vacuum. Before you get too far along in developing your brand, get some feedback. “Reach out to friends and family who understand your business or product and the other options available in your market, and ask them if your brand communicates what they expect,” Gite suggests. “Use any informal research as a gut check, but don’t spend too much time or money on it.”

• Doing it yourself. Some things really are better left to a professional. “We’re engineers, not designers,” Baker laughs. That’s why he looked for a design partner to help with the company’s branding who “understands and is willing to get inside our business a little bit to understand what we want to accomplish. Someone who can articulate to us the rationale behind the design elements they used. And of course, someone who is accessible.”

• Neglecting your brand. Too many small businesses spend a lot on a logo, but neglect all the other elements that influence customer behavior. “Every business needs to be strategic and deliberate about defining what makes them different and why someone should buy from them. Otherwise, they won’t be successful,” Gite asserts.

Building and maintaining a strong brand is key to building a sustainable business. “You can’t sell without having a brand,” Gite concludes. “Whether or not you put in the effort to create and manage your brand, your customers will have a perception of you — if you leave it up to them to decide on their own what your brand is and what you stand for, you’ll have no control over your brand promise.”

by Margot Carmichael Lester, Staples® Contributing Writer

Send the Right Message with Your Business Packages

You’ve thought of everything: business cards, signage, web design, even apparel all bearing your logo and brand colors.

Well, almost everything. Whether you do a lot of mailing and shipping or just a little, don’t overlook the opportunity to reinforce your brand image with every package you send.

“It's a nice way to say a deeper thank you to the folks who choose to give you their hard-earned money,” says Amy Weirick, president of Weirick Communications, Inc., in Columbus, OH. “Customers have so many choices, so it really helps to create loyalty by setting yourself apart from the fray by making a more personal connection with them.”

Dawn Kasper Gibel, owner of Inspired by Dawn, a women’s accessories shop in Fox Chapel, PA, agrees: “Small businesses have to work a little harder to try to carve out a distinct niche for themselves, and that niche can be reinforced through their packaging. It's another opportunity to further define the brand for your customer.”

Here are some excellent examples of small businesses using packaging to send the right message. Try one or more to strengthen your brand.

1.    Custom Packaging. Royce Leather uses branded boxes and packing tape to impress customers and deliver a marketing message even as the package sits on a desk or front step. “We pride ourselves on distinguishing ourselves from the rest of the pack,” says William Bauer, managing director of the Secaucus, NJ–based company. If branded boxes will bust your budget, spring for custom packing tape, which serves the same purpose at a lower price point. “Branded packing tape is the epitome of executing a first impression with class,” he notes.

2.    Labels and Stickers. Give your logo additional exposure by sealing interior packages with branded stickers or seals. And use exterior mail/ship and return labels that also bear your logo to indicate the package is from your business. “We use customized labels on hand-delivered and shipped goods,” says Kristina Cox, owner of Houston’s Celebrate & Communicate. The label bears the company’s logo, website and return address.

3.    Tissue or Filler Paper. Establish a cohesive look with the tissue or filler paper that wraps or cushions items. Royce Leather uses papers with logos, but if money’s tight, use a plain paper in your brand colors. Either way, this attention to detail strengthens brand awareness by matching the colors found on your website, hangtags, stickers, etc.

4.    Samples. Get additional branding oomph with a small product sample. Katherine Shorter, owner/baker at Memphis’ Creating Awesomenessity, includes a couple of extra cookies with each package she ships. The gesture is an extension of her business values. “Adding something extra, even something small, lets customers know that companies are willing to give back and that the relationship is just as valuable as the purchase,” she says. “I think that more than ever, the values of a company are important to sustainability of the brand. Consumers tend to trust and prefer companies that operate ethically and with sincere intention for their customers.”

And while we’re talking about sending the right message, don’t forget to send a more literal message by including a thank-you note in each package. A branded notecard or preprinted thank-you card shows you value the business. At the very least, make sure your packing slips and invoices offer a message of gratitude for customers’ business along with your brand logo and colors.

“Packaging doesn't have to be expensive, but it does have to represent your brand,” Gibel says. “Branding is about consistency at every customer touchpoint. Without branded packaging you're missing an opportunity to bring your brand alive for your customer in their home or business. Pennies per package can set your company apart from the competition and build brand preference.”

By Margot Carmichael Lester, Staples® Contributing Writer

3 Ways to Build Creativity into Your Company Culture

The notion of "thinking outside the box" has become a cliché that business owners and managers often pay lip service to. Unfortunately, simply talking about creativity in the abstract or including it in your mission statement doesn’t make it part of your company's reality.

But there are many companies that have actually found ways to encourage a more creative atmosphere. The following are three principles that can guide you to do the same:

1. DON'T OVER-EMPHASIZE EFFICIENCY

One paradox about business is that your profits largely depend on productivity and efficiency while, at the same time, these values are not necessarily conducive to creativity. When you're at your most productive, you are usually using methods and procedures that you have already mastered.

For example, if your company’s main product is Widget X, you will naturally want to find ways to make more of these widgets in less time. A truly creative approach, however, might involve developing a Widget Y, which could represent a radical new breakthrough.

That’s why it’s important to balance productivity and creativity. You certainly don’t want to undervalue efficiency—it's essential for keeping up with demands. But at the same time, you should always be examining your assumptions and remaining open to alternatives.

There are several ways to actively encourage a creative atmosphere in the workplace. For example, Google encourages engineers to spend 20% of their work time on creative projects of their own devising.*

Another unconventional practice that Google has instituted is Google Talks, where speakers from authors to musical performers like Lady Gaga are guests. These guests may not know anything about technology or much about what Google is working on, but they can inspire creativity and new ways of looking at things.

From a conventional business point of view these practices seem counterintuitive, as they have nothing directly to do with productivity or efficiency. But Google realizes that the key to long-term success is innovation and creativity, so they implement strategies that foster these values. This principle can be applied at much smaller companies as well.

2. HOLD REGULAR BRAINSTORMING SESSIONS

If you want to encourage creativity, you have to take proactive steps to make this a part of your company's culture. In a way this is another paradox. Creativity is usually considered spontaneous rather than planned, but you can indeed do everything possible to make conditions ripe for innovative ideas. One way to do this is to schedule meetings that are more like creative brainstorming sessions than traditional meetings.

IBM—usually considered traditional in most respects—is a company that sees the value in brainstorming. The company is known for its Jam events where employees are encouraged to come up with creative ideas. This tech giant once held an online brainstorming session where more than 150,000 people from more than 100 countries participated.

You don’t need to have such a mega-event, though, to get the benefits of such practices. In fact, a good argument can be made that smaller brainstorming sessions are more likely to encourage real creativity.

You could, for example, hold brainstorming sessions on broad topics that affect your company. Depending on the size of your business, you could mix up the makeup of the teams to encourage more diverse communication and thinking.

3. TURN PROBLEMS INTO QUESTIONS

Asking the right questions is one of the most powerful ways to spark creativity. This is sometimes a matter of reconceptualizing a problem as a question. This may seem like a subtle distinction, or merely a matter of semantics, but it can make a huge difference.

For example, suppose you are behind schedule for releasing a certain product or update. Focusing on the looming deadline and the various problems that may have contributed to your situation is not the best way to inspire a creative solution. Instead, you might ask questions like, "What are some ways we haven’t yet considered to speed up production?"

A similar approach could be taken when talking with an employee who is having difficulty in a certain area, such as fulfilling target goals for sales. Rather than giving the person a lecture or pep talk, you might pose a question that motivates him or her to seek new ideas that would lead to better performance.

Asking open-ended questions gets people’s minds into a problem-solving rather than problem-focused state. The power of questions is that they automatically provoke listeners to begin searching for answers. That's why they can be such an effective tool for encouraging greater creativity.

These are just some of the ways to foster an atmosphere of creativity at your company. If you place a high value on creative solutions, you should always be on the lookout for new and less obvious approaches in every area of your enterprise.

*Editor's Note: Google eliminated its "20% time" policy in August 2013, but other companies offer similar programs.

by Yan Revzin is the cofounder of Fortune Cookie Advertising, a non-traditional and experiential marketing company selling advertising space within fortune cookies at Chinese restaurants throughout the United States. He is also a member of the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world's most promising young entrepreneurs. Follow him @fortunecookiead.

6 Tricks to Optimize Your Site for Search Engines and Real People

In his book Success Secrets of the Online Marketing Superstars, Mitch Myerson introduces you to 22 innovators who have redefined the developing landscape of online marketing. Learn how to master proven strategies, avoid costly mistakes and grow your business. In this edited excerpt, contributing author and founder of Backlinko.com Brian Dean describes the six easy steps you need to take to create a site that's optimized for the search engines.

In the early days of SEO, “on-page SEO” was synonymous with keyword stuffing, hidden text, and robotic sounding copy. But like everything else in the SEO world, on-page SEO has undergone a renaissance. Today, the goal of on-page SEO is three-fold:

1. Strategically embed keywords into your pages so Google can easily understand the topic of that page.

2. Create a site design and user experience that encourages people who find your site to stick to your site like superglue.

3. Post awesome content that gets people to share your site on social media and, more importantly, link to it. Now it’s time to show you how to create pages that are optimized for search without over-optimizing your site or turning readers off.

Step 1: One page, one keyword. If there’s an on-page SEO mistake I see over and over again, it’s trying to cram 10 keywords into a single page. I come across a lot of small-business websites that have title tags that look like this:

Boat Rental Miami | Florida Keys Boat Rental | Charter Fishing Trips Florida | Scuba Diving Miami

And when I look at their meta keyword tag (which Google doesn’t even use anymore), it’s the same story:

Fishing miami, florida boating, boats, charter boats, boat rental . . .

You get the idea. Think about it for a second: How can your page—especially your homepage—be about renting boats in Miami, charter fishing in Florida and scuba diving?

Obviously, it can’t. And because Google has no clue what your page is about, it doesn’t rank it for anything.

What’s the solution? One page, one keyword.

Remember that Google wants to show users highly relevant results. Which means they would much rather show someone searching for “Boat Rental Miami” an in-depth article about the best boat rental locations in Miami than a keyword-stuffed homepage “about” ten different things. So if you’re looking to rank for ten keywords, create ten top-notch pages around each one.

Step 2: Include your keyword in your title tag (once). Your title tag is like your page’s headline. It’s by far the strongest signal that you can send to Google about your page’s topic. Ideally, you should work your keyword into a title that’s also compelling for readers (that way, you’ll get clicks from people who are browsing the search results).

For example, if you wanted to rank for “Miami Boat Rental,” you could use compelling titles like:

• Miami Boat Rental: 5 Things You Need to Know Before You Go

• Why Miami Boat Rental Makes Sense for Your Next Company Event

• 7 Ways to Save Money on Miami Boat Rental This Summer

These describe what the pages are about to humans and include your target keyword without looking spammy.

Step 3: Mention your keyword in the beginning of your content. To make your page’s topic crystal clear for Google, you want to sprinkle your keyword into your content. Keep in mind that this isn’t keyword stuffing (which can get your site penalized). It simply means you want to mention your keyword a few times. And the most important of those mentions is at the very top of your page.

Think about it for a second: Let’s say you came across an article on CNN.com about a new presidential candidate named John Smith. The journalist behind the piece probably wouldn’t hesitate to mention words like “presidential,” “John Smith,” and “running.” It makes sense that the most critical information kicks off any web page. That’s why I recommend mentioning your keyword in the first 100 words of your page.

After that, it’s just a matter of sprinkling your keyword into your copy once or twice more. You can mention your keyword more than that if it makes sense for your content. But it won’t help you from an SEO point of view.

Step 4: Make your site loads lightning fast. Google has confirmed that it uses a site’s loading time as a ranking factor. Although a sluggish site won’t make or break your SEO campaign, it makes a difference. And considering how competitive most keywords are nowadays, every little bit helps.

You can evaluate your site’s current loading speed using two free tools:

1. Google PageSpeed Insights: Gives information that you can use to significantly improve your site’s speed with changes to your HTML and images.

2. WebPageTest: Actually loads your page with a virtual browser. Also provides insights that you can apply right away.

If you work with a web developer, I highly recommend working with them to boost your site’s loading speed. If not, there are several WordPress plugins—like WP Smush It! and W3 Total Cache—that can help.

Step 5: Create outbound links to trusted sites. Google and other search engines want to send people to hubs of helpful information, and that means sites that regularly link out to quality resources on other websites. When it makes sense, include a few outbound links to non-competing pages in your content.

Step 6: Create internal links to important pages. Internal links help users find more information on your site. But those internal links also help search engines get a better idea of which pages on your site are most important. The way search engines look at it, the more often you link to a page, the more important it must be. That means you want to a) identify pages that you’re looking to rank and b) send a few internal links their way.

by Mitch Meyerson, Speaker, Author and consultant