I recently had a conversation with the CEO of a company I was consulting with and he asked me my opinion of branding and how his company should go about branding itself.

I told him that I was skeptical about the number of people and companies who are enamored with the need for “branding” or to “build their brand” in order to market their business.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I know that brands such as Coca-Cola, Colgate Palmolive, Kraft and most of the large companies have power and influence with Americans, but I’m not so sure that branding has much of a place with most small to medium-sized businesses.

Branding makes sense for these large companies and they spend huge amounts of money on building their image.  Brand name products almost always outsell generic products. 

Branding for a small to medium-sized business doesn’t create the profit necessary to survive the first few years of being in business.  You want to create sales immediately.   As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, there are many ways to create profitable sales. 

In my opinion, direct-response marketing of a product is probably the most effective way to create profitable sales.   Branding is the selling of the name of a company or product through general advertising, so that in the future, when the customer is faced with buying your product versus another one, they will choose the brand they are familiar with. 

I’ve written past articles about USPs…Unique Selling Propositions.   It’s not like branding at all. Most products and product lines will benefit from marketing that stresses the USP.  To find out more about what a USP is, please refer to the other articles I’ve written. 

Creating a USP and having it be a major component in the design of ,and sales copy in, your advertisements will have the effect of creating an idea in a potential customer’s mind that will have the same effect that branding has for large businesses. 

Therefore, branding to promote your USP can also work great in conjunction with whatever back-end mechanism you have created to sell more products to people who have already bought from you.  This is how most individuals with small and medium sized businesses should think of it. 

Once you have created your USP, which is defined as something that is unique, different, one of a kind, extraordinary, or rare, and you have implemented it into all of your ads, mission statement, and anything else that has your name in it, you will be branding your company without the high cost the larger companies have when they brand themselves. 

Remember, a USP is that unique advantage that distinguishes your business apart from your competition.   It really is the important characteristic of your business. 

Let me know what you think by leaving a comment below.

Technorati Tags: brand your business, Branding, business branding, Unique Selling Proposition, USP

Here are a few ways I’ve used to make my competition irrelevant. 

Focus on the moment of truth, the place or position that your products or services will be offered to the customer.  For example, if you have a retail establishment, this may be a wall display or a counter display.

On the internet this may be an on-line store, E-bay if you have an account with them to offer your products, or your own personal web site.  Sometimes the moment of truth may be in the form of a bid or proposal after several months of working to convert your prospect into a client or customer. 

The moment of truth is the moment that the customer has an option to make a purchasing decision, to buy your product, or to invest in your services.  This is the moment you need to put your best foot forward.

Each time you present something to your prospect or customer, provide a value proposition to them.  Your value proposition should be something that can be conveyed in three to five precise and succinct statements. 

A value proposition should contain the essential elements of feature, advantage, benefit, and offer.  This is a reference to a specific important feature of your offer, the advantage as compared to the competition and what’s in it for your customer. 

The other thing you can do is to differentiate yourself from the competition.  Common examples of differentiation for products may be size, speed, color, or accessories.  Examples of differentiation for services would be performance, quality, availability, or ease of use.  Show how your product or service is better than the competition.

In today’s world, our clients and customers are bombarded with so much information, advertisements, and commercials that it is sometimes impossible to keep the attention of your prospects focused on what you are saying to them. 

If you focus your methods on the Moment of Truth and create a differentiation, you will leave your competition in the dust.

Technorati Tags: differentiation, differentiation and positioning, differentiation of products, differentiation of service, value proposition, winning against competition

Whenever I go to a Chamber meeting or a networking function, I’m always astonished at the way individuals meet.  When I’ve gathered the business cards that were handed to me, they all looked alike and none of them jumped out at me.

The reason I’m writing about this, is that I just came back from a Chamber Networking meeting that was designed to put everyone in front of each other over an hour period of time.  You should have seen the “off to the races” scenario.  A bell rang every 30 seconds, so you only had 30 seconds to give your card and say something.

Everyone who gave me their business card told me their name and the company they worked for or owned.  None of them prepared an “Elevator Speech” to fit into 30 seconds. And, most importantly, none of them had their USP or Elevator Speech on the back of their business cards.

Look at your card and the cards you’ve gathering over the years.  Are any of them unique?  Do any of them motivate you to call them or to do business with them?

Within the hundreds I have accumulated over the years, they are all the same size.  Nothing is different about them.

Why not be creative. 

Let’s assume that you want your business perceived as being on the cutting edge.  What could you do? 

How about a business card that looks like a razor blade with your information on it and also your USP and/or Elevator Speech on the reverse side.

What could you do if you owned a restaurant?  How about an irregular card that looks like someone took a bite out of the corner?

For insurance agents, or really for anyone, create a free report.  You can get the facts on how to do this by reading a copy of ”How to Print Money Legally”.  You received a free copy if you recently bought my book, “How To Get Customers To Call, Buy & Beg For More”.  

Have the front of your card say the following:

FREE Report Reveals How You Can Protect
Your Family’s Dreams and Future.
(See back of card for details)
         Your Name
“Your Dream Protector”
ABC Insurance Agency
Address
Phone #

The back of the card could read something like this:

Dear Friend,
For many families, an unfortunate event, such as a fire,
earthquake, flood, hurricane accident, can wipe out
everything they now own…overnight!
Imagine losing your home, your car, your savings, your
business and having to start all over from scratch.
To help you protect yourself, your family’s dreams and
future against any unexpected disastrous event, ask for your FREE special report called “How to Protect Your Family’s Dreams and Future from Unfortunate Events.”

Call the 24 Hour Recorded Consumer
Awareness Hotline at 222-2222 Today.

Now, let me give you some more examples.

Here’s a message I created for an Accountant to put on the back of this business card. 

“How Much Money Would You Take Out of Your Business
If you Didn’t have to pay Tax on it?”

Or this one I created for my Loan Officers in the Banks I helped start.

“In the business of Friendly and Superior Banking Services
And Giving you Ideas on how you can Grow your Business
And Get more Customers.”

What do you think of that one?

With the next printing of my business card, here is what will be on the reverse side:

…helping businesses increase customer acquisition by up to 32.7% in as little as 3 to 6 months, and increase customer retention by up to 90%.

I’m sure that if you brainstorm long enough, you can come up with a unique design, for your business card, and make sure that your USP and/or elevator speech is included on the reverse side. 

And one more thing…make sure that when you hand the card to someone, it’s reversed where the back side is what they see immediately.

Technorati Tags: business card design, Business card marketing, designing a business card, marketing with business card

Question: How do I start blogging, make my message unique, and attract all the clients I want?

Blogging is the tool of today for serious marketers, writers, and others who need to communicate information to a selected audience.

Blogging is typically used as a public journal, similarly to a diary.  But it is also used as I’m using it…to provide specific help to subscribers of my blog.  By comparison, you can say that my newsletter provides general help, whereas my blog is used to give more specific help.

One of the great things about a blog is that it can serve for two-way communication when subscribers leave comments about the posts left by the blog post author.

You don’t have to do written blogs.  You can also do video blogs and podcasts (the equivalent of audio blogs).

But before you start your blogging adventures, you need to decide what’s the best way to use your blog to accomplish your goal of “making your message unique and attracting all the clients you want”.

And of course, before you can start that process, you have to get clear about what the unique message is that you want to spread.  See my blog post of 5/31/08 about creating a unique selling proposition.

Once you know what your unique selling proposition is, you are then ready to decide the best tone and tact to use with your blog.

An example is my blog.  I want to help my subscribers grow their businesses as quickly and as large as possible.  So I decided to create this blog that answers your specific questions to help you do that.

So decide what’s most important to your customers and prospects and build your blog around that.

Blogging Programs

There are two basic categories of blogging software: the type you download and install on your own web server, and the type that you use online in a parent website. The easiest type to use when you’re learning is the second type, and a perfect example of this is Blogger.com, where you open an account, fill in some blanks, and have a blog up and running in just minutes. Other blog software offering this service include LiveJournal, Facebook, MySpace, Open Diary, Windows Live Spaces, Xanga, TypePad, and WordPress.com. Blogger is the dominant dedicated-blogging site in this category.

If you’re ready to download and put blogging software on your own server – a difficult task if you are not experienced with blogging software – you can use WordPress, Drupal, Livejournal, Moveable Type, SimplePHPBlog, and Typo. Of these, WordPress is probably the most dominant, with thousands of themes available for free download and installation. I use WordPress for my site.

The easiest way to install the WordPress software is to have a skilled freelancer do it for you.  Depending on the features you want, you can have it installed for as little as $150.  Some freelancers will install the program for you, submit your site to the blog search engines, and even make posts for you on a regular basis.  All you do is provide the content and they’ll post it for you, so you don’t even have to fiddle with the program.  Needless to say, the cost starts going up, the more services you add. 

How They Work

Blogging software all works in basically the same way: you post articles and entries, which your community is able to comment on if you allow it. You have widgets down the side that allow for other features like the weather, a list of blogs that the author commonly references or links to (blogroll), information about you, archives, documents, categories of blog posts on the site, and advertisements, etc.

One of the things to consider is whether or not you want to run advertisements on your blog. Some of the pre-hosted blogs will have ads run on them whether you want them or not, and you won’t get any of the revenue. Blogger.com allows you to choose whether or not to run advertisements. With WordPress you can do whatever you like with your hosted version of the software.

The most popular web-based blogging software appears to be Blogger.com; the most popular server-based blogging software is WordPress.

Building Your Blog

Once you have your blog “shell” (template) up and running, you’re ready to create a blog. Make your entries useful and/or interesting at the very least.  If you can make them entertaining, that’s even better.

Write an article for your blog regularly, at least once a week. If you’re publishing regularly, you are clearly a live blog, and Google will give you a boost in rankings. In addition, this has a variety of effects.

First, other bloggers who like your content will link to you, giving you valuable inbound links that will increase your Google ranking. Second, more readers will subscribe to you, giving you a reputation as a reliable expert in your field. It’s that expert status that you’re looking for. With this, you will be able to develop real online relationships with your audience, who are also your likely future customers. Keep your blog focused on its topic and on the relationships that form between you and the readers, and you will have done precisely what needs to be done with a blog.

Your tools for ranking high do not end with inbound links. You should also learn a little about using keywords, so you can optimize your blogs for the search engines as well as for people.

It’s also wise to start learning how social bookmarking sites works. Services like Digg.com, StumbleUpon.com, and more specialized sites like Slashdot, allow you to post links and short descriptions of your entries and articles, giving you valuable one-way links and guiding more interested traffic to your blog.  Of course, this takes additional time, so you might want to have a freelancer make those posts for you.

As you can see, there is much to this for the purposes you have in mind.  So this is only an overview. There are literally hundreds of strategies you can use when blogging to attract more clients and brand yourself.  The best thing is to start, learn, and add strategies as you go, one step at a time.

Technorati Tags: attract clients, attract customers, blog primer, blogger.com, blogging, wordpress

Question: I have been struggling for a while to come up with a USP, and my concerns are growth, retention and branding of who we are.

OK, the three important points to keep in mind as you develop a USP are…

1. Formulate your USP from your prospects’ or clients’ point of view. Your USP can’t be something only you think is so wonderful that people would be interested. It should be something the prospects or clients want.

2. Whatever USP you come up with, deliver on its promise or promises. Do not state something you can’t fulfill.

3. Define your USP in one or two short paragraphs (ideally less than 100 words) that clearly spell out the benefits – not features – your customers will get from your product or from doing business with you.

Let’s talk about point #3 in detail.

Your USP should clearly state the benefits and not the features of your product.

There’s a big difference between benefits and features.

Features are product characteristics, such as the car has a 450 horse-power engine, seats are genuine leather, and so on.

Benefits are the financial rewards, such as saving time or money, or both. Or they can be emotional rewards like protection, peace of mind, and the security which the customers get from an insurance policy.

Benefits answer the customer’s most important question, “What’s in it for me?”

Let’s go with the feature above. The car has a 450 horse-power engine, seats are genuine leather, and so on.

The benefits are: Heads will turn when you drive by, and the girls will rush to take a ride in your new (whatever make).

If any of you reading this blog are in the insurance business, here are some USP’s I created.

For example: Let’s take the features A-rated carrier and comprehensive coverage.

The benefit of the A-rated carrier is: The insurance company has strong financial strength and stability to pay all the claims.

The benefit of comprehensive coverage is: Complete protection for you and your family.

The names of insurance policies are usually features. For instance: Decreasing term, mortgage life insurance and keyperson insurance.

The benefit of a decreasing term-mortgage life insurance policy is: You’ll have the money to pay off the house if the wage-earner dies.

The benefit of a keyperson insurance policy is: You’ll have the money to keep your business going in case your key employee dies.

As you can see, although product features are usually easy to identify and describe, product benefits can be trickier because they’re often intangible.

The benefits of an insurance policy usually are: (1) financial rewards like saving money and time, and (2) emotional rewards like protection, peace of mind, and security.

While it’s fine to talk to your prospects about the features of a policy, remember to always tell them what benefits they’ll get from the features.

Here are some questions to ask yourself:

• What advantages do you offer your prospects and clients?
• Do you offer them the best policies?
• Do you give them the largest selection?
• Do you provide them with more service, advice, and follow-up than all your competitors?
• Do you offer them the fastest service?
• Are you open evenings and weekends, seven days a week, to better serve your clients?
• Can clients reach you after business hours?
• Do you educate your clients with special reports, newsletters, brochures, information hotlines, or other services to help them improve various aspects of their lives?
• Do you offer a guarantee?

Listen, even though you’ll need time to think about these questions carefully, answering them will allow you to create a compelling USP that’ll knock your prospects’ and customers’ socks off.

Another suggestion I would give you is to take advantage of gifting my book, “10 Marketing Mistakes That Steal Your Cash,” to all of the business people in your town. Then call on them and show them how you can benefit them. If you missed this FREE offer I made in a previous blog post, you can go to www.kenvarga.com/report.php to learn more about how you can use the book to differentiate yourself from your competition and grow your business.

Regarding “Retention”, I gave suggestions in prior blog posts. Review the posts I made on May 23, 2008 and on May 28, 2008. One post is titled “Customer Retention”; the other is titled “How To Create Lifelong Customers”.

As far as branding is concerned, remember that what people think of you and your brand is everything. Don’t ever think that because you are not Coke or Nike that you don’t have a brand. You ARE a brand.

Your brand is not your advertising, your logo, or your product.

Your brand is owned by your customers, the people you work with, and anyone else who has an impression of you. Your brand is other people’s perception of what it is like to do business with you or work with you.

You transfer a customer four times to different departments and they never get their problem solved. That’s your brand.

You put a telephone customer on hold for over a minute. That’s your brand.

A repeat customer for many years comes into your place of business and no one greets them by name. That’s your brand.

I can go on and on.

It takes an on-going commitment on your part, to take your personal brand to the highest level. Brand becomes the way you do everything, almost without thinking.

Remember, it is all about keeping promises and creating great experiences.

Technorati Tags: Branding, Unique Selling Proposition, USP

Here’s an interesting question:

“I’m a personal lines insurance agent, and I would like to be able to have a 95% closing ratio, high retention, and a great system for getting my clients to give me referrals.”

All I can say is WOW.  When I was in the insurance business, I created ways to prospect that were not normally done within the industry.  Of course, back then, we also did not have compliance departments breathing down our necks, as most of the insurance agents have today.

Any of my readers can massage the suggestions I’m going to give here to fit their own industry or business.

The first thing I did was to create a prospect list.  I started with 100, and then increased it to 1000 individuals whom I wanted as clients.

Then I accumulated articles and any other free information I could locate, and kept in touch with them over a period of at least one year.  My thoughts were that if after one year, they still didn’t want to do business with me, then color me gone and out of their life.

By doing this, I developed a relationship with them.  Of course I also created unique letters to send them with various forms of GRABBERS.

For instance, I created a letter like the following where I sent a shoe with the letter.

Jeff…Now You Can Increase Your
Net Worth By $1,000,000.   Effortlessly!
            (Include one Right shoe with your Letter)

Dear Jeff,

As you can see, I’ve sent you a “right” shoe with this letter.

I did it for two reasons:

First, because what I have to share with you is so important, I needed some way to make sure this letter got your attention.

Second, because I want us to start off on the right foot, I thought sending you the shoe was a good way for me to get my foot in your door.

Anyway, here is what this is all about…

(Continue with the rest of your offer)

Think of ways to adapt this letter to the product or service you are selling.

Another thing you can use is to offer my book, “10 Marketing Mistakes That Steal Your Cash” to your prospect and clients. Go to www.kenvarga.com/report.php and take advantage of the free book offer.  It’s free and will bond you with your customer.

In prior blog posts, I gave you suggestions to the last two items of your question…high retention and a referral system.  Refer back especially to the last post on “How To Create Lifelong Customers”, and to the post on April 26, 2008, “Growing Through Referrals”.

Technorati Tags: Closing Ratio, Getting Referrals, growing referrals, Referrals, retention, retention rate