Business Going Stale? It May Be Time to Re-focus, Re-think and Re-brand

By Montrie Rucker AdamsJuly 5, 2013 Blog branding, facebook, linkedin, marketing, rebranding, twitter

If you’ve been in business for a while and sales and service requests have dropped, it may be time to re-focus, re-think and possibly re-brand.

A friend found that her original business slowed tremendously. She started thinking about re-branding – starting with a new name. Her immediate concern was if people would know her by the new name. What if current clients couldn’t identify with her? After careful consideration, she decided to start a different company – with a new name – but providing the same services and adding on a few new ones.

After a few months of sharing this new identify on the Internet, specifically Twitter, LinkedIn groups and other group forums, she began receiving random inquiries. As time went by, her business has picked up even more.

Sometimes, you have to leave your comfort zone in order to focus. Sometimes, in order to be successful, you have to seek out other relationships besides friends and family members. One mutual friend, I’ll call her Dana, was able to experience a rise in new business – merely by changing her identify, re-branding and marketing herself to a different audience. Below are six tips she shares about the process:

Get out a piece of paper and write (yes, I said write) down your current business name on one side, draw a line vertically down the paper and put your new business name on the other side.
Under the current business – write down your products and services and other offerings. Then duplicate that under the new business. If there are any aspects of the current business that won’t be included in the new one, don’t write it. Under the new business, if there are new services/products you want to offer – include them.
Under the new business – write down Twitter and Pinterest. (Dana didn’t include Facebook or LinkedIn, but you may want to consider those as well).
Also under new business – write down several domain names. Keep them short and sweet so prospects can find you. It also makes your email address shorter and easier to remember.
Now, register for a new Federal Tax ID number and register with the state in which you do business. You can also revisit the SBA for opportunities you may have missed the first time.
Lastly, purchase your new domain name and hosting. Find a reputable web developer to design your new site.

If you’re in a business slump, it may be time to do what Dana did…look beyond your comfort zone – your hometown, friends, family and former clients. The World Wide Web is open 24/7. If your business is one that can take advantage of something new (and most are), then think about re-focusing, re-thinking and re-branding. You may be surprised at your results.

Updated FTC Guidelines for Disclosures

By Montrie Rucker AdamsMay 8, 2013 Blog digital advertising, ftc, marketing, promotional activities

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has updated their guidelines for disclosure in online advertising which prohibits unfair and/or deceptive acts and practices. It covers advertising claims, marketing, and promotional activities.

Entitled “.com Disclosures: How to Make Effective Disclosures in Digital Advertising,” the free document can be downloaded from here.

The guidelines provide information that businesses should use when developing ads for online media to ensure they are in compliance with the new law. Particular attention should be focused on the “proximity and placement” area of the rules, as well as “hyperlinking” the advertisement or endorsements.

Disclosure statements should be noticeable to all consumers. They should be sized, colored and include graphics when and where applicable.

Also included in the updated rules – use in advertising, endorsements, etc., when using space-constrained areas and social media platforms (i.e., Twitter’s 140character limit). If you share reviews on products and point a link to a particular product or service you are endorsing, you must follow these new rules.

If you are unsure how this affects your business and/or blogging activities, the guidelines provide 22 examples to assist you.

Click here for your guidelines and don’t get caught without them.

http://ftc.gov/os/2013/03/130312dotcomdisclosures.pdf

SlideShare Helps to Brand Your Business

By Montrie Rucker AdamsApril 29, 2013 Blog branding, marketing, slideshare, visual content 1 Comment

Have you struggled with company branding and securing business leads? A great way to do this is by using SlideShare. Most people think it’s used just to share business presentations, but you can also use it as a branding tool – to share information about your business, services and products.

With the rapidly growing use of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, more people are becoming bored with text-based content. People are visual. Hence, “a picture is worth a thousand words…”
One way to avoid the boredom is to create and share visual content. Similar to a Microsoft Office PowerPoint presentation, SlideShare allows you to develop and share creative visual content across the Web.

SlideShare is the world’s largest community for sharing presentations. With 60 million monthly visitors and 130 million page views, it is among the most visited 200 websites in the world. Besides presentations, SlideShare also supports documents, PDFs, videos and webinars.

With that amount of visitors and page views, and the free and paid features offered, using SlideShare as a branding tool could be the right answer for your business.

Just think… your SlideShare presentation can be viewed, shared, and embedded by thousands of people.

Take a look at this example of how you can use SlideShare.

Why I love slideshare from Jesse Desjardins – @jessedee

Try it out…and let me know what you think.

Spending Your Marketing Dollars on Branding

By Montrie Rucker AdamsApril 22, 2013 Blog branding, build you website, developing your website, entrepreneur online, karen leland, marketing, websites

Have you ever gone to a website to look up a product and the website was just awful? The company may have a great product or provide excellent service, but their website is not reflective of either.

Marketing expert Karen Leland, contributor on Entrepreneur Online, shares tips on why you should hire the best people to do the job.

She gives the example about websites. Skimping on your website can cost you more in the long run, so spend your marketing dollars wisely. Price is important – but don’t sacrifice quality for the sake of the dollar. If Designer One is more expensive but provides a better deliverable – then hire them. Don’t select Designer Two because he’s cheaper, but you know his/her work isn’t as great as Designer One. Do not short change yourself.

Your website should be a reflection of you. Everything you would say to a prospective client should be on your website.

Click here to view a short video. You will save money by not having to make up for what the company messed up.

Three Tips for Branding Your Growing Business

By Montrie Rucker AdamsMarch 27, 2013 Blog branding, entrepreneur, marketing

Branding…the new buzz word for business.

What does it really mean to “brand” your business?

There are a lot of ways to brand your business. In this video from Entrepreneur Online, Branding Specialist Erika Napoletano offers advice on how to get your customers to see you and your business as the solution to their problems.

Her three branding tips don’t talk about logos, taglines or colors. She says,

Know why you do what you do
Know who you would never work with
Stay true to yourself and be you…everyone else is already taken

These are all easy for me. I started Visibility Marketing Inc. because I enjoyed doing exactly what the tagline says, “making you more visible.” It may sound like a cliché, but it’s true. It began simple enough, with writing positive feature articles. The feedback I received let me know that there was a hunger, a market out there where people wanted a reprieve from the negative stories they often hear and read about. They wanted to read about the positive people and the positive things there were doing to make this world better.

Early in my career, one of my first customers was the epitome of number two. I learned a lot from him. Most importantly, I can now easily identify the people I will never work.

Lastly, before I signed the papers for VMI, I read about, paid attention and listened to many entrepreneurs. I still do. I am a lifelong student of business and will always be. However, I know that though I’ve learned a lot from others, I can never be like them. I can only be me. It’s the only me I can be. I’ve learned to be dynamic, with the ability to change when necessary, make critical decisions and a lot of mistakes. As in life, business is cyclical, it has its ups and downs. Hang in there long enough and you will experience more ups in your entrepreneurial journey.

Big “ups” to you as you continue to forge your way to branding you.

Your Advertising Legal Responsibility

By Montrie Rucker AdamsMarch 4, 2013 Blog advertising, children, children's online privacy protection, consumer protection business agency, coppa, endorsements, enviromental marketing, federal trade commission, ftc, ftc.gov, green guides, health claims, marketing, online advertising and marketing, telemarketing

You are in business and now need to develop marketing materials and a marketing and advertising campaign. There are rules that must be followed when marketing your services and products. Below are snippets of useful information from the Bureau of Consumer Protection Business Center under the Federal Trade Commission.

Whether a business is an established global brand or a start-up, effective advertising and marketing can be the key to its success. All businesses have a legal responsibility to ensure that advertising is truthful and not deceptive. No matter where an ad appears – on the Internet, on the radio or television, in newspapers and magazines, in the mail, or on billboards or buses – the same truth-in-advertising standard applies. Additional standards apply if you use telemarketing in your promotional efforts.

Advertising and Marketing Basics

Under the law, claims in advertisements must be truthful, cannot be deceptive or unfair, and must be evidence-based. For some specialized products or services, additional rules may apply.

Children

If you advertise directly to children or market kid-related products to their parents, it is important to comply with truth-in-advertising standards. (Questions about kids’ privacy? Check out the FTC’s resources about COPPA, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.)

Endorsements

Do you use endorsements or testimonials in your marketing? Do they meet the standards of the FTC Act and the Endorsement Guides? Find out more by consulting FTC compliance resources.

Environmental Marketing

Companies are offering consumers an ever-growing assortment of “green” options. Whether your environmental claims are about the product or the packaging, you will need competent and reliable scientific evidence to support what you say. Find out more by consulting the FTC’s revised Green Guides. Have you spotted what you think might be a deceptive claim or practice? Contact the FTC at green@ftc.gov.

Health Claims

Companies must support their advertising claims with solid proof. This is especially true for businesses that market food, over-the-counter drugs, dietary supplements, contact lenses, and other health-related products.

Made in the USA

Do you promote your products as “Made in the USA?” Under the law, some products must disclose U.S. content. For others, manufacturers and marketers who choose to make claims about the amount of U.S. content must comply with the FTC’s Made in the USA policy. Is your company up-to-date on what’s required?

Online Advertising and Marketing

The Internet connects marketers to customers across the country and around the world. If you’re thinking about advertising online, remember the rules and guidelines that protect consumers also help businesses by maintaining the credibility of the Internet as an advertising medium.

Do you have questions about children’s online privacy? Read about the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.

Telemarketing

The FTC’s Telemarketing Sales Rule helps protect consumers from fraudulent telemarketing calls and gives them certain protections under the National Do Not Call Registry. Companies must be familiar with rules banning most forms of robocalling. If you or someone working on your behalf is telemarketing products or services, know the dos and don’ts before planning your strategy.

Visit their website for more in depth information on each area – http://business.ftc.gov/advertising-and-marketing.

Seven Ways You Can Stand Out from Your Competition

By Montrie Rucker AdamsFebruary 20, 2013 Blog branding, competition, competitors, marketing, niche, target audience, website

Hopefully, you have figured out your business niche. If you haven’t, please take some time to do so. You may sell widgets, but do you sell educational widgets, children’s widgets or healthcare widgets?

Now is the time to find your competitors with the same or similar niche so you can determine how “you” will stand out and apart from them. What will you bring to the table that they don’t? What can you do better?

I’ve chosen seven ways you can stand out from your competition:

Identify your competitors. Do they provide the same services/products?
Identify what makes you unique…then identify what your competitors say makes them unique.
Compare strengths and weaknesses. What do you do better? What do you think they do better? Be honest in your observations, then make any necessary adjustments that will set you apart and make you stand out.
Who is your intended buyer…your target audience? Do you target a specific age, gender, business type or geographic location? Are your competitors targeting the same audiences? Also, look for reviews. Are their reviews backing up there “greatness?”
How do your competitors use social media? Are they actively and consistently engaged on social media? Are their followers interactive and responsive to them and… if so, is that activity “real” activity. Do they receive a lot of complaints, praise or compliments?
Do your competitors advertise online? Have you seen advertising for your competitors on other websites? Do you see others advertising your competitor?
Have you visited your competitors’ website? Do you think it’s better than yours? Are there positive things about their site that you should incorporate into your website? Does your website have positive things missing from their website? Is their website easy to use and navigate? Does it have all the informational elements about your business you think your “niche” market should know?

The above are questions you should ask yourself. There are certainly more ways to differentiate yourself when building and branding your business.

Now that you’ve gotten started, can you think of others?

Smart Ways to Market a Service Business

By Montrie Rucker AdamsJanuary 16, 2013 Blog entrepreneur, marketing, product-based company, service-based company

If you’re a service-based business, marketing your company isn’t that much different than if you were a product-based company. There are three key things you must do to stay visible:

Know! Your ideal customers and connect with them.
Share! Videos, white papers, information on Facebook and Twitter.
Brag! Use case studies, testimonials, Facebook “likes” to let your audience know your skills and worth.

Entrepreneur’s Diana Ransom talks with small-business advisor Marie Forleo to find out how successful small companies market their services.

Once you’re finished, let me know what you think.

Branding…the new buzz word for business.