Please join me and a very fun panel of small business branding pros on Wednesday, March 18th at 11am CDT for The Truth About Small Business Branding – using your small business brand to outsmart the competition – a panel discussion featuring practical branding tips and tactics from leading small business branding experts.

The guys over at the Knowledge @ Wharton Marketing Blog hit it straight on here when they talk about how to approach advertising your business during a recession.

“The first reaction is to cut, cut, cut, and advertising is one of the first things to go,” says Wharton marketing professor Peter Fader, adding that as companies slash advertising in a downturn, they leave empty space in consumers’ minds for aggressive marketers to make strong inroads. Today’s economy “provides an unusual opportunity to differentiate yourself and stand out from the crowd,” says Fader, “but it takes a lot of courage and convincing to get senior management on board with that.”

A recent Ad Rants article echos the same philosophy, and includes data from a McGraw-Hill Research Study, (which both articles quote):

“A McGraw-Hill study of 600 businesses found businesses that maintained or increased their ad spend saw higher sales growth during a recession and in the years following. In fact, the study found those who maintained or increased their ad budgets experienced a 256 percent increase in sales compared to those who cut their budgets.”

p2w2 (short for PeopleToWorkWith) helps small businesses and entrepreneurs find the right outsourcing partners to take their ideas to market faster and more profitably.

They recently wrote an article titled “Top 5 Reasons Small Businesses Fail” which lists the following:

1. No Viable Market
2. Poor Capital Structure and Cash Flow Crunch
3. Lack of Marketing Expertise
4. Poor Management
5. Out of Touch with Customers

An important take-away that can get overlooked especially in current economic times, “you need to market yourself”.

“Your customers won’t buy from you if they don’t know you are around. You need to market yourself. And do not make the mistake of treating marketing as an unnecessary expense!
Find effective ways to market yourself through advertising, direct marketing, trade shows and exhibitions. Set up your website and market yourself through internet media such as blogs, forums, email groups and even search engine marketing.”

I found this fascinating quote today:

 

It’s clear that display advertising, despite a lack of clicks, can have a significant positive impact on: – Visitation to the advertiser’s Web site (lift of at least 46% over a four week period) – The likelihood of consumers conducting a search query using the advertiser’s branded terms  (a lift of at least 38% over a four week period) – Consumers’ likelihood of buying the advertised brand online (an average 27% lift in online sales)  – Consumers’ likelihood of buying at the advertiser’s retail store (an average lift of 17%)

A VC, Dec 2008

 

You should read the whole article.

This is a great list, many that I haven’t seen before, enjoy!

http://www.thegetsmartblog.com/2009/02/the-best-business-communities-networks-and-forums/

When you think about brands that stand apart in your mind, for example Virgin, Absolut Vodka, or Target it really isn’t only about a kick-ass product or great customer service. The perception you keep in your mind about a brand is the sum of all messaging you’ve come across from that brand. That billboard you saw on business in New York, the email you received, the funny ad you saw in one of your favorite magazines, and the experience you have when interacting with said brands customer service in aggregate create a personality and connection to the brand beyond their product or service. This connection is an emotional one. It’s a feeling that a consumer has about a brand which is more personal. They may take away for example, that beyond Absolut Vodka being a spirits company, they have a sense of humor, they are creative, hip, worldly, innovative, cool, and that can make for a split-minute purchasing decision at the supermarket or one’s local watering hole.

For more on this topic, read Martin Lindstrom’s article Building Emotional Ties to Your Brand

You probably heard the news that the latest Conde Nast glossy publication to crumble is Domino, the home decor magazine. This comes after House & Garden went under in 2007, as well as the closing of Men’s Vogue and the lesser known DNR (men’s fashion). While the recession is certainly at play here, the other underlying trend is that advertising spending is going where people are, online. Recent reports announce that magazines took an 11% drop in sales in the second half of 2008 versus 2007.

A number of Federated Media Publishers and HP have partnered to create a new site, the Small Business Marketing Guide.

Marketing experts and bloggers, John Jantsch, Guy Kawasaki, Anita Campbell and a handful of others will weigh in with marketing tips, strategies and marketing advice geared towards the Small Business Marketer.

Here’s the excerpt from the about page:

SMALL BUSINESS MARKETING GUIDE, BROUGHT TO YOU BY HP
The Small Business Marketing Guide is a one-stop, do-it-yourself resource here to help you grow your business. This guide is your source for tips, inspirational real-world examples and how-to articles by small business marketing experts as well as helpful resources for designing your brand identity, creating marketing materials, launching direct marketing promotions and building an online presence.

Anita Campbell compiled an extensive list of 75 tips and tricks for saving money while continuing to grow your business. Lots of creative, out of the box ideas:

http://smallbiztrends.com/2009/02/creative-tips-saving-money-business-growth.html

All marketers have found ourselves there at one time or another. You take a step back and think about new ways to effectively market your service or product. But you don’t know where to begin testing unexplored marketing channels. Perhaps your approach has always been to reach your customers through email marketing and Google Adwords, but not much beyond that. Or maybe lead generation and affiliate marketing has worked for you, but your customer base has plateaued through those avenues. If you’re asking yourself what other marketing vehicles should you be testing to grow your business, there couldn’t be a better time than now to test online banner advertising.

Why?

It’s simple, online banner advertising prices are going down. According to a recent article ,”the AdPrice Index shows a significant decline in Q4 2008 online display ad pricing compared to Q4 2007 for all sizes of websites and all vertical categories, underscoring the fact that the U.S. economy is in a recession and that the online advertising sector is not immune to it”. Read the full article here href=”http://http://www.pubmatic.com/news/PubMatic_AdPriceIndex_Shows_Drop.html.”>