Business Expert

Most business owners start with hiring a logo designer to work on their business image, and whilst this is right, it’s important to be clear on what your brand ethos will be before ink hits paper…or with modern design methods it’s more like ‘before mouse hits screen’.

If you aren’t clear on what important messages you wish to present to your customers, you will end up marketing an all together ineffectual image for your business – resulting in reduced impact on your target market and hence less sales.

Whilst it’s very important to utilise the services of a high quality logo designer to ensure the success of your business through proper brand design, your brand is about more than just your business name or logo design.

An effective brand tells potential customers what you do and who you are. In addition your brand image is how your business is perceived by it’s customers. Brands are in the minds of customers and nowhere else, and you need to make sure you develop the correct brand image by engineering it deliberately.

A good logo design should however be your starting point for developing a firm footing for the brand development of your business.

Good quality brand development, and indeed your logo design itself as the icon behind this branding, will give you the edge over your competitors, and despite the fact that most small businesses won’t have unlimited funds for branding campaigns, they do have several methods available to them for developing a high quality brand and in turn benefit from the perception of the value of that brand.

It’s well known that customers will happily pay much more for goods and services provided by ‘brand name’ companies, and your sales team will find it easier work converting customers who have already heard of your company through your brand marketing and exposure of that all important logo design image linked to this.

A high quality logo design and brand will allow you to introduce new products and services to your customer base and expect a better reception for them, than had you presented yourself as a new unknown brand and a good quality logo design is the image that customers will link with your brand and use to ‘visually remember’ your brand.

If your customers can’t remember you, you’re in trouble. I’m sure you can now understand why a good quality logo design to link to your brand image is so important.

Before you commission a logo design decide on your ethos;

What are you values? What sets you apart from the competition? Once you are clear on that ethos you can work to ensure that you and your team reinforce it with everything you do and say.

Evidence to your customers that that they can trust in your brand to deliver what it always delivers them…that they can always rely on your company to provide this particular quality of products and/or service.

You might have heard that banner advertising is dead. Nothing could be further from the truth! If you can find a

banner exchange that gives you a decent ratio you can begin branding of your site, and branding may be the one thing

you MUST do to get and keep business.

Banner ads and banner exchanges are great tools for branding your site. Even better, most banner ads can be shown for free through banner swaps. It isn’t necessary to purchase ads to have a successful branding campaign.

You must however, remember the most important part about using banners for branding –The Brand! Never create a banner, button, or other graphic to submit to any exchange be it banner ads, reciprocal links, etc., that does not have your name, logo, or tag line (Slogan) on it.

Try to get two of the three on it if you can, and always have a call to action on the banner; such as, “Click Here!”, “Sign up today!”, or “Limited Time!” to get the viewer to click on the link and visit your site.

Whether they purchase or not is not important – well, not the main thing — getting your brand (Site, name, product, etc.) in front of the potential customer is the goal for a first time viewer of your banner.

The whole idea behind branding is getting your name or face out there over and over again so people who are surfing see you everywhere they go!

Are you more likely to purchase a product from someone you have never heard of or someone you know has been around a long time because you remember their name, logo or tag line? “Surely they must be legit, or I would not see them advertised everywhere!” is what you want people to think whenever they see your ad or are at your site and getting ready to make a purchase.

The biggest mistake people make is expecting a huge click through rate on a banner the very first time it is put out there and then quitting when that does not happen. Don’t think of banner ads as a one-time thing. People rarely click on a banner the first, second or even third time they see it.

Think of a banner ad as your big golden arches. The first time you see it you ask, “What is it?”

The second time you see it, you remember, “Oh yes that’s that hamburger place.”

And maybe the third time you see it you say, “Hey, I think I will try one of those hamburgers!”

Hopefully, by the third, fourth or fifth time someone sees your name or logo on a banner ad they will “Try your burger” too!

Here are some resources to give you a head start in branding yourself using banner advertising:

Banner Exchanges: This list updated 4/16/05

The main one I recommend is BannersGoMLM. (http://www.bannersgomlm.com)

They give you a 1 to 1 ratio and you can earn banner exposures based on the credits earned by people who sign up through you.

Some others you can try out are:

BannerSwap (http://www.bannerswap.com)

Offers a 1:2 ratio and supports following banner dimensions: 468×60; 500×350; 160×600; 88×31; 468×60 Flash Banners

Exchange-it (http://www.exchange-it.com) Offers a 2:1 ratio; 468×60 banners

WorldBE ( http://www.worldbe.com)

Offers the top 50% performing members an exchange ratio of 1:1. The next-best performing 25% of members receive a 4:3 exchange ratio while the last 25% receive a 2:1 exchange ratio.

123Banners: (http://www.123banners.com) Offers a 2:1 ratio; 468×60 banners

Link Buddies: (http://linkbuddies.com) Established in 1997!

Click Through Ratio* Exchange Rate Top 1% of all LinkBuddies Members 1:1 Top 10% of all LinkBuddies Members 4:3 Top 25% of all LinkBuddies Members 3:2 Top 75% of all LinkBuddies Members 2:1 Top 90% of all LinkBuddies Members 5:2 Bottom 10% of all LinkBuddies Members 10:1

All LinkBuddies member needs to achieve 100 impressions within two weeks to be eligible for sliding exchange rates.

Provides you an easy-to-use three step wizard to create up to ten banners. 468×60 banners

Online Banner Creation Sites:

Free:

Here are some places you can create banners (and buttons and other linked graphics) “on the fly” so to speak. The ones I have listed here are free, there are tons more that have annual fees. Some of the ones below also offer a “for fee” version. Be sure to read all of their rules for using their services and finished banners – usually called “Terms of Service”.

Creative Connectivity: (http://www.crecon.com/banners.html)

The original one I have used for years until I got the nifty little software program from Xara.

Banner Creator: http://www.bannercreator.nu/ main page the banner generator is here: http://www.bannercreator.nu/banner-maker.html

Banner Forge http://bannerforge.com All the standard sizes plus a 120×240 vertical size.

Fee:

These sites charge an annual or per banner fee, but you usually get a larger choice of graphics and a better customization service. Some are do-it-yourself and others are professional services that have graphic artists create your banner for you.

Be sure to read all of their rules for using their services and finished banners – usually called “Terms of Service”.

http://www.quickbanner.com Nice looking banners of all sizes. Flash and other advanced banners starting at $14.95.

You can still get some .GIF banners (468×60) and buttons (88×33) for free.

Cool Banners: (http://coolbanners.com): Fees range from $50 for smaller button-type banners to $300 dollars for interactive html banners.

Strategic Solutions: (http://www.ss-banners.com/ ) Standard size banners (486×60) as static, html, animated or flash. Prices range from $75 – $300 plus a “rush fee” of $200 for 24 hour turnaround.

Where to Place Your Banners:

You know where to start, now you have to decide where to put those banners you are swapping. It is better to link to a sub page than your homepage so target the offers on your banners (Not leaving off your logo or name though!) to specific pages on your site.

Do you offer a newsletter? Great! Put that information on a banner and link it to your sign up page.

Do you sell software? Put that on a banner and link it to your software description/ order page. And so on until you have people coming in from all over.

If you have created your site correctly with links to all the other pages easily accessible on every page, then visitors will find your other content even though they did not come in from the “front door”.

NOTE: Don’t forget to put a sign up form on every page for your newsletter and a link for swapping links or classified ads. If you do not know how to do this or don’t have a newsletter or swap links page set up find the tutorials you need to set them up at http://treefreepublishing.com/articles/.

Once you have your banners out there, don’t slack off! Go back to the exchanges you joined and see how the banners are doing. If you have one that is doing nothing and it has been up for awhile (giving it a chance to be seen several times by surfers) pull it and put up another one instead.

Try animated against non-animated, bright colors against flashy fonts, etc., until you find that perfect set of three or four banners that work well for you consistently.

Once you have your select banners, rotate them amongst the different exchange services. A banner that isn’t new on Banner Exchange A can be swapped to banner Exchange B and start out new again!

After that, move it to Banner Exchange C, until you rotate it back to where you started- and guess what? Enough time has passed that you can use it in Banner Exchange A again and it is fresh all over again.

Ok, now that you are all ready to brand yourself- get out there and start submitting your banner!

Company image is a big deal. Thousands of small businesses have not looked twice at how the public perceives their company, yet big companies spend millions of dollars per year on public relations. Customers mean sales, the better your image, the more trust that is created, the more sales are made. Focusing on your PR can be much more beneficial than just the short term publicity.

Small businesses have to do pretty much everything themselves, from marketing, to putting through sales, leaving most business owners thinking, that they do not have the knowledge or the time to deal with their own public relations(PR). But PR is more than fundraisers and charity spots. PR deals with advertising; focuses on promotion, marketing and following up clients. Small business owners are already working on their own public image without knowing it, and usually following the lines of big business, use one of two areas vital areas of marketing, branding or direct marketing.

So what is right for you, branding or direct marketing? If you have ever listened to your local radio, you will almost always hear direct marketing, with hundreds of businesses telling you to come in and buy their product right now. Very few use branding. Branding is advertising your brand or product without a call to action or sales talk; you will often see this with new products launched by large corporations. Branding together with distribution is a very popular tactic in industries such as the beverage industry. A client’s trust means a lot, but you will not get it by telling them what do to all the time. Many small businesses never become large businesses because all the advertising produced is direct marketing to their targeted audience.

Of course, in special cases, it is appropriate to use direct marketing without any branding, for example, selling and e-book or a program online. Using a single page sales letter in this case is completely appropriate, because branding would not significantly influence sales. That is, unless you wrote another e-book, or another program. Then branding may be appropriate.

Corporations and big companies use branding to launch new products and subsidiary companies. You will often see new products advertisements on TV, without them telling you where to get them, how much they are or sometimes even what they are. This is a great example of branding, the approach is creating trust around the businesses name, logo and if applicable, slogan.

We come back to the question, what is right for your business? Branding is for companies or businesses that are just starting out and what to create awareness of their service. Direct marketing will create sales. Depending on your marketing and promotion strategy (pay per click strategy for online businesses) you may choose either one. If creating sales, then gives you the money for branding, you might want to try that, but if you have got a little bit of capital, branding first will create trust for your direct marketing campaign, making more sales than without branding. The marketing strategy you choose will determine what the best is for your company.