There are so many marketing tools, it can be a daunting challenge. Once the brand is established, do you:

• build your website?
• create a trade show booth?
• send direct mail?
• refine your presentation materials?
• produce a series of print ads?
• rely on social media?

The answer is…whatever will bring you cash in the door fastest.

Clients sometimes forget that marketing shouldn’t cost them money, it should make them money. There will always be some low hanging fruit, and that should be picked first, it will:

• help with cash-flow
• have the highest immediate ROI
• have ‘legs’…and can be re-used again
• set the foundation for future marketing efforts

The old saying about eating an elephant one bite at a time is true with marketing, too. We just like to start with the tastiest bite first.

You may have heard this one before, but this old adage essentially means that because the shoemaker is so busy making shoes for his customers they end up having no time for to make them for their own children. And so it often goes for marketing agencies and their own marketing collateral especially virtual agencies without a large staff.

We’re trying to buck that trend here at Spoke and you’re looking at phase one, a redesigned Spoken Whirred blog. The design of this caused me to reflect on how we got here and the branding process in general.

Defining Brand

Branding derives it’s meaning from ‘branding a mark onto something’ or what you would see cowboys do with a hot branding iron to cattle in older Westerns.¹ This term has evolved into modern marketing parlance to define how a business or product makes a mark on their target audiences mind. Today branding encompasses a wide variety of things including:

• the logo and type treatment.
• the key messaging you use to define your business and the voice you use to communicate to your audience.
• and of course the visual elements – color palettes, graphic design, illustration and photography you use in advertising, website and other marketing collateral.

Since your company’s brand includes all of these elements it evolves over time, usually starting with a logo and messaging and then bigger brand “anchor” pieces like your website, corporate brochures, trade show collateral and advertisements. Each subsequent marketing tactic is adding another layer to your brand, and contributing to what a potential customer will view, hear or read when making a purchasing decision about the business.

The Invisible or Inconsistent Brand

Problems with brands usually creep in as part of normal business operations:

• You do an one-off brochure before a big product launch or tradeshow
• You create your own PowerPoint design based on a template
• You let the magazine or newspaper take your logo and make an ad (with inconsistent fonts and messaging)

The next thing you know, you have a inconsistent brand. These inconsistencies aren’t things potential customers will consciously notice or point out, but taken together your inconsistent use of fonts & colors, the changing corporate tone and voice and having different version of your logo on each thing they see will give them a less favorable opinion of your business and can lead to lost opportunities or business.

Become a Brand Bully

How do you avoid this…? As a business owner you need to define your brand, know that it will change over time and remain vigilant about keeping strict standards about how your business is represented (or shameless plug time – better yet, outsource to an agency like Spoke to do it for you).

What does this have to do with this blog? Well, the design we originally used for this blog no longer fit Spoke’s brand as it evolved, so we decided to redesign it and get it back on track.  This is the first step in a brand refining process that every company needs to go through… Even cobbler’s occasionally need to make shoes for themselves.

For most companies, this is the only time of the year that they send their clients anything besides a product or an invoice. And for many of them, it pops up on the radar around November.

I can almost hear the internal conversations:
- let’s be religious…
- let’s be secular…
- let’s be funny…
and of course…
- let’s include a team photo

All of these are great topics to discuss, but there are two major problems with this scenario:
- it’s a month away
- they are discussing a ‘one-off’ marketing piece

Your clients are the lifeblood of your business, and even the very best Holiday card in the whole-wide-world can’t do it all. “Dear client, your business means a lot to us…and here is a bunch of other stuff you should buy…”

If you think you might fall into this category, here’s a suggestion; before the new year, make a resolution to create a marketing plan.

• Who were your best clients this year? How can I get more like them?
• How did you get their business? How do I repeat this?
• Consider industry events and seasonality when you plot the frequency and timing of your messaging.
• Make a budget.

It doesn’t have to be perfect (because it will most-likely change), but it does need to help you consistently deliver your message throughout the year.

Think about how you use email and networking. Write articles in industry publications, speak at events, try new tactics…but most importantly have a plan!

Then, next November…instead of panicking about a Holiday card, you’ll be improving your plan for 2011.

It’s no surprise that newspapers are dying, they report on it themselves fairly regularly. But…I’m really confused why they’re throwing gas on their own fire? Wherever I turn (actually, it’s usually when I turn to page 3) publishers are teasing me with story headlines, and then telling me to ‘read this story online…’.

Um. I’m holding the paper (paying for it, even). I don’t WANT to read your publication online.

I get it. It’s cheaper to publish some of the content online, plus the (hypothetical) ad revenue from the limitless pixels to pawn off might make web-only content alluring….but they’re wrong.

And they’re alienating their customers.

I like to read the newspaper…you know…the actual newspaper. Sure, I read news snippets and short articles online, but to really ‘read’ a story, I prefer the printed page. Heck, if there’s a long article online, I print it out to read (yes, I know that’s really stupid, and yes, I do recycle).

I’ve even proven to publishers that I’m willing to pay for the privilege of the printed word; we get 2 1/3 newspapers delivered weekly (I’m being charitable and counting St. Louis Post Dispatch as a third), and stacks of magazines.

Why then, do they force me online to read their content? I can barely tolerate the new format of the new Rolling Stone (a much, much smaller “more traditional” format rolled out Oct 30 of last year), but I like it a helluva lot better than reading online.

I guess I’ll have to learn to read online (like you). Or buy a better printer…