When it comes to the word branding, many small businesses mistakenly think that it is only important for larger companies. Branding is the true essence of marketing for all businesses. Until and unless you brand your company and product properly, you cannot expect to attract the right audience or differentiate yourself from the competition. And you also don’t need a big budget to start creating your brand strategy. Here are some tips to help you get started today:

1. Define Your Value Proposition

Give people a reason to buy your product. Highlight the unique selling points (USPs) of your business that makes it stand out from the crowd. It may be easier for businesses with bigger marketing budgets to develop a well-defined  value proposition based on primary research and focus groups, but that shouldn’t stop you. You likely have a good sense of who your customer and the competition is, and how you can position your business so that it is both different and compelling. Once you’ve defined your value proposition, use it generously throughout your marketing messages and materials. Reflect it in your tagline, elevator pitch, boilerplate, and the intro paragraph of your company description. This let’s people know right away why they should consider doing business with you. The value proposition also serves as a guage to measure your products and services against, so that if you are considering to add more offerings, you want to ensure it aligns with it.

2. Package Your Brand

From logo to website, to point-of-purchase materials, ensure your brand is visually clean and consistent across all your touch points. Adhering to this simple discipline will go a long ways to generating a positive and professional brand perception in the marketplace. You don’t need a big budget to do this, just a conscious effort. Create (or get outside help) a company brand book that outlines your value proposition, USPs, company description, key messages, correct logo usage, brand colours, and font set. Then, use it to guide anything and everything you message out to the market – this isn’t the time to get lazy with your marketing.

3. Use Multiple Marketing Channels

Public relations, social media, search advertising (PPC), SEO, event marketing/sponsorships, and  traditional advertising are all marketing channels available to you. Your annual marketing budget will determine which channels you can engage effectively. For most small businesses, traditional advertising like radio and print ads are expensive and hard to measure. My suggestion is to focus  your budget and efforts on these three channels before engaging the others:

Social Media (Twitter, blogging, LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook) – blog often, with information that your audience would find useful in the form of tips, how-tos, trends, and product updates. DO NOT use your blog for sales messages, or any social media outlet for that matter. Social media is a dialogue and when used correctly, can engage you with a growing audience potentially interested in your product. It can also help you be seen as an expert in your field. Use Twitter to share your blog posts, as well as any other helpful information consistent with your brand. Similarly, creates videos with helpful content and post it to YouTube where it can be found by others.  A study by Zoomerang suggests that out of 751 small companies surveyed, almost 89 percent are interested in investing their marketing budget in social media; while a quarter of them are planning to increase this budget up to 30 percent in 2011.

Public Relations – PR is often overlooked by small businesses, and yet, it is one of the most powerful brand building channels out there. Nothing holds more credibility in the business world than third-party credibility in the form of positive press coverage and word-of-mouth. Today, the average person is exposed to 5,000 advertising messages a day as compared to 500 messages in the 1970s. PR can help your rise above the clutter and help you be seen and heard.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Along the same lines of third-party credibility, having your company website appear in the top 5 position of page 1 on Google from an organic search, tells people that you are important, relevant and worth checking out. It also drives a lot of qualified traffic to your website at no cost. Implementing good SEO practices doesn’t have to cost you a lot of money. In fact, you can achieve some excellent SEO success with no budget at all. There are three key tactics to helping search engines find you – a clean website that Google can crawl, continually adding fresh content that includes your most important search keywords, and in-bound links to your site. The first two you have control over, while the last will come as a result of how well you do the previous ones. I recommend WordPress as your website platform. Out of the box it’s incredibly SEO-friendly, it’s easy to use, and it’s free!  For fresh content, blog regularly. The content you generate here can have a dramatic impact on your overall SEO.

4. Hire Service Obsessed People

Most people hire for skill, I hire for attitude. Skill-set is important, don’t get me wrong but it alone is not what makes for a great employee. Service and expertise are currency in business today. Sharing expert knowledge freely (through your website, events and social media channels) and delivering exceptional service at every interaction will get you a lot of new and repeat business. Having the right people to deliver that service is critical – getting customer service isn’t good enough, it needs to be a personal passion that drives the right behavior. This means don’t just consider the IQ of candidates, but also the EQ (emotional quotient). you can teach skill, you can’t teach attitude.

With the recent widespread availability of smartphones and tablet devices, digital mobile form submission is now a business reality – eliminating the costly, slow and error-prone paper form process. Online services like ProntoForms improves the accuracy and speed of reporting data from the field, and improves business tracking and reporting at the head office. It is reported that most companies save thousands of dollars a year per field worker by eliminating form printing and repeat data entry alone. The ProntoForms application is one of AT&Ts top-selling business apps, used by a growing number of companies across North America.

How Does it Work?
Currently, the application is available for Apple, Android and Blackberry devices. The forms are created on regular computer using an online platform, and can then be activated on employees’ mobile devices. The data collected on the road is then transferred instantly to an online database, where managers can track operations in real-time. Tools are also provided for data treatment and analytics.

Who is This App Meant For?
ProntoForms is meant for big and small companies from florists to plumbers, to gas and oil exploration engineers, and pretty much every business type in between. If your service delivery involves inspections, checklists, field services, work orders, sales orders, invoices, or direct store distribution, you may find the ProntoForms app worth checking out.

750 million registered users on Facebook. Over 25 million on Google+. With so many people connecting and sharing their intimate details within these social networks, comes the risk of having your personal information being used for purposes you are unaware of. PEER 1 Hosting has released the latest in its infographic series – Facebook vs. Google+ Privacy: What You Need to Know. The graphic compares the privacy strength of both social networks, illustrates how your information is being collected and used within these networks, how it can be exploited by spammers and malware, and how to use the new privacy settings in Facebook to protect your information.

Created by PEER 1 HostingColocation Facilities

Myself and Chris Breikss, Co-Founder of 6S Marketing, will be speaking together at the 15th Annual Soho-SME Expo in a panel discussion on social media strategies for business.

The popular event organized by long-time serial entrepreneur and friend, Moe Somani, is being held on Friday, September 30th at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Vancouver. If you’re interested in attending the one-day event, you can register for free pass here. I look forward to seeing you there!

Did you know that more than 1.6 billion people now use the Internet? That figure in itself is pretty staggering, but even more staggering than that is the fact that well over half the world’s population now uses a mobile phone. This means that there is a vast mobile market, particularly as the capabilities of phones improve and more and more of them have excellent internet capabilities.

Despite this, comparatively few websites actually develop specific, alternative sites for use on mobile phones. The vast majority of companies still put all of their resources into developing and designing traditional websites, while paying little or no attention to the mobile site market. There are some signs that this is beginning to change, but there is still a need to focus more clearly on designing specific, separate mobile sites that are just as useful to consumers as regular websites.

Why Are Mobile Sites Important?

One reason is, obviously, the vast potential audience for such websites. More people are using their phones on the go and want access to the internet at all times. This means there is a need for comprehensive mobile sites, so users can find exactly what they are looking for.

This is, in turn, good for those companies who put resources into developing such sites. After all, if a consumer has a choice between using a mobile site that is properly designed and has been altered specifically to fit their device, they are more likely to have a positive feeling towards that company than if their mobile site was simply a very small version of their regular website. This is one of the biggest problems at the moment: mobile phones have increasingly good internet capabilities but regular websites simply don’t display properly on the smaller, more limited screens.

This shows why it is important that mobile sites are distinct and separate from the main site. In order to fit onto the screens and load without overwhelming users’ data limits, mobile sites need to be streamlined and functional. This can actually be useful for companies, as it means they have to think really carefully about what absolutely needs to go on the mobile site and what they can leave out to make sure it is as efficient as possible. This can, in turn, help businesses to streamline their main sites as they will have a better understanding of vital versus filler content.

Mobile sites also have to be different in terms of graphics, as there are fewer screen pixels to work with. Images, for instance, need to be made smaller so they can fit the most common screen sizes. The different mobile browsers also need to be taken into consideration as they might not all support a particular type of site. For example, javascript can cause issues on some mobile browsers, so developers need to be careful that they are not accidentally excluding a vast section of the market from viewing their mobile site properly.

All of this goes to show the growing importance of mobile websites and the reasons they need to be specifically developed for mobile phones. As time passes, more and more people will be looking to use mobile websites, and so companies need to be ready for when they do.

Going mobile with the right design and the right mobile website widgets is one of the easiest ways businesses can expand their reach with consumers, increase on-the-go sales potential and maintain a competitive edge.

The good news for those looking to have a mobile web presence- it isn’t as complicated or expensive as it may seem. In fact, companies like WixMobile are making it even easier for small businesses to mobilize their business by offering a simple way to create mobile websites for free. They offer easy to edit templates along with some of the top mobile web applications for business – such as click-to-call, a web widget allows them to instantly call your business with their smartphone, and GPS features, that will help customers find your location and even provide directions to consumers on-the-go.

Guest Author – Liraz is a content writer, blogger, and she runs the Partnership Program for Wix, an online tool for website creation. She is a crazy iPhonagrapher and a young mother to a 2 year old.

BIA/Kelsey released an update of its U.S. deals forecast, first issued in March. The firm expects U.S. consumer spending on deals (including daily deals, instant deals and flash sales) will grow from $873 million in 2010 to $4.2 billion in 2015, representing a 36.7 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR). In March the firm had pegged 2015 deals spending at $3.9 billion, with a 35.1 percent CAGR.

Compared with the earlier forecast, this update indicates only a slight increase overall by 2015. However, revenues for 2011 have been revised upward significantly to $2 billion from the $1.2 billion originally estimated in March.

“Even as more consumers sign up for deals programs and awareness grows and new markets are entered, we see a ceiling on how many deals consumers will buy, and their overall interest level in deals,” said Mark Fratrik, BIA/Kelsey vice president and chief economist. “With that said, a strong foundation has already been created in the promotional ecosystem of this young industry. We believe daily deals reinforce other advertising and that related services, like instant deals and flash sales, will significantly boost income for key players.”

Among the factors underlying this revised forecast are:

• A bigger increase in the number of registrants for deals services. Market leaders Groupon and LivingSocial have expanded quickly and many more participants have entered this arena, including vertical sites and local media companies (either in cooperation with Groupon and LivingSocial or through white-label firms)
• Growth in the number of registered users who are “active” (e.g., buying coupons).
• Greater specialization of deals sites (both vertically and by neighborhood), better targeting capabilities and continued marketing of these services will lead to more activity by registered users.
• Increase in the average number of transactions, resulting from more efficient providers of these services and expansion of the types of products and services being offered (e.g., more travel deals).
• Rise in the average price per transaction, owing to general inflation and the attempt by some providers to offer more valued services at higher margins.

Groupon and LivingSocial continue to lead a growing marketplace of 600-plus players, which include destination sites, white-label providers working with local media such as directory companies, newspapers, and radio and television operators; vertical players; mobile/location-based providers; flash sales sites; exchanges; and aggregators.

“It’s worth noting that the deals market continues to grow, despite the recent departure of Facebook and others that may not have been well-equipped to invest the time and money necessary to participate in such a crowded market,” said Peter Krasilovsky, vice president and program director, Marketplaces, BIA/Kelsey. “We expect to see local media companies leverage their existing promotional, sales and other local assets to play a significant role in this industry, alongside today’s deals leaders Groupon and LivingSocial.”

Deals at DMS ’11 and NAB Radio Show

BIA/Kelsey analysts will highlight details from this new forecast at DMS ’11: The Small-Business Advertising Summit, Sept. 20-22, Denver. Day 2 of the conference features a session titled, “SMBs and Deals: The Next Wave,” which will include SMBs discussing their deals experience. The event is being sponsored by BIG Marketing for Small Business. More information about DMS ’11, including the complete agenda, list of speakers and companies attending, is available at their website.

In addition, BIA/Kelsey’s Fratrik will present the forecast to attendees of NAB Radio Show tomorrow during a panel discussion titled, “What’s the Real Deal with Daily Deals.” His presentation will focus on specific revenue opportunities related to deals for broadcasters in small to midsize markets.

Setting up a website is the foremost part of initiating an online business. Once the website is design and deployed, its success or failure depends on several factors, including how well you have maintained it. An efficient website is one which does not only attract customers, but also engages them on the page and to travel deeper through your website. It influences the buying behavior of customers and persuades them to engage your call-to-action to make a purchase or submit their contact information.

If your website is not attracting enough customers, it means that your website has failed to define its goal. And a website without a proper goal will not generate online sales for your business. Time to analyze and review the efficiency of your website.

No matter what the purpose of your website, whether it is aimed at some call-to-action such as filling out a lead form so that your inside sales team can contact them or to sell a product through your shopping cart, there are some key performance indicators (KPIs) that inform you of the efficiency of your website. Basic KPIs to review the efficiency of your website are:

Number of Visitors

One of the best indicators to check the efficiency of your website is to track the total number of people who have visited your website. The ideal month to check this efficiency could be when you are not doing any unusual offline promotional activities. Take it one step further, and track unique visitors. Page views are fine as a general indicator, but unique visits are more telling of your audience reach. If you’re getting lots of page views but a high bounce rate, you could be driving the wrong traffic to your website.

Bounce Rate and Page Views per Visit

This leads to the next metric – bounce rate. Bounce rate is a way of understanding the type of traffic that is landing on your website, as well as, how engaging your website is for visitors. A high bounce rate of 70+ percent on your home page or an inside page tells you that viewers don’t find your content worthwhile, and leave immediately without going deeper into your site. Lowering your bounce rate while increasing your page views per visit indicates your site visitors finds your content engaging and are willing to spend more time on it.

Conversion Rate

Just because lots of people have visited your website does not mean that your website is efficient. There should be something interesting that could engage visitors. The process by which the number of website visitors who engages in a measurable and meaningful call-to-action (like submitting a lead form or making a purchase through your website) compared to the total number of visitors is known as your site conversion rate. For example, if 10,000 visitors visit your website or landing page during the month, and 50 out of them make a purchase, then your conversion rate is 0.5 percent. If your call-to-action is a lead form rather than a purchase, track the conversion of total website visits to leads. You can then further track the conversion of leads to sales separately.

Getting hyper-focused on increasing the volume of visits while increasing your conversion rate is the way to drive up the performance and optimization of your website.

What to do if Your Website is not Efficient?
If your website KPIs are under-performing, take the necessary steps to begin optimizing it. Focus on:

• Add Content to Drive SEO Results: Identify keywords and key phrases popular for your product/service category and write content around them on your website. Also, use the power of blogging and social media to publish content as most search engines like Google give higher authority to it. This will increase the ranking and visibility of your website in organic search results or SERPs.
• Design for Conversion: Re-design your website to not only be attractive, but to drive conversion. Large call-to-action buttons like “Buy Now” or “Contact Now” or “Chat Now”, clean layout, majority of call-t0-action and unique selling points above the fold – these are just as important as the look and feel. Implement regular testing in your website management like A/B testing to see which version of a certain landing page converts better.
• Faster Performance with No Dead-Ends: Use a good and reliable hosting provider and ensure none of your on-site customer journeys lead to a “dead-end”. Every journey should lead to a call-to-action to convert. Continually monitor and test these journeys through your website.

With these basics, you can quickly increase the performance of your website and optimize it as you move along.

A new study by BIA/Kelsey on American SMB spending suggests that small and mid-size businesses will continue the recent trend of shifting their marketing budgets to digital advertising, performance-based platforms and customer retention business solutions over the next five years. This trend creates an increasingly large market opportunity for businesses serving SMBs and developing SMB tools.

BIA/Kelsey will present its new US SMB Spending Forecast to attendees of its upcoming conference (sponsored by BIG Marketing for Small Business), DMS ’11: The Summit for Small-Business Advertising Solutions, September 20-22 in Denver, CO. DMS ’11 is focused on how marketing services and solution providers can increase their penetration and profitability with SMBs.

The study goes on to say that by 2015 SMBs will allocate 30 percent of their marketing budgets to traditional advertising (down from 52 percent in 2010), with the remaining 70 percent going to digital/online media (mobile, social, online directories, online display, digital outdoor), performance-based commerce (pay-per-click, deals, couponing) and customer retention business solutions (email, reputation and presence management, websites, social marketing, calendaring/appointment-setting).

“With the advent of daily deals to drive customer acquisition, SMBs are now increasingly focused on leveraging technological solutions to engage, grow and retain a higher percentage of their customers,” said Neal Polachek, president, BIA/Kelsey. “As this trend accelerates, these SMBs will turn to outside providers — media companies as well as pure-play technology providers — to harness simple tools, which will enable them to maximize the long-term value of each new customer they acquire.”

BIA/Kelsey’s U.S. SMB Spending Forecast is derived from the firm’s US Local Media Annual Forecast and its proprietary Local Commerce Monitor study, which tracks the advertising and marketing spending habits of SMBs. The forecast’s key findings include:

• Overall, U.S. SMB spending on media, marketing and business solutions will grow from $22.4 billion in 2010 to $40.2 billion in 2015, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12 percent.
• SMB spending on traditional advertising will be essentially flat during the forecast period, experiencing a 0.6 percent CAGR, from $11.8 billion in 2010 to $12.1 billion in 2015.
• SMB spending on digital/online media will grow from $5.4 billion in 2010 to $16.6 billion in 2015 (24.9 percent CAGR).
• SMBs will also increase spending on performance-based commerce and transaction platforms, from $1.7 billion in 2010 to $4.6 billion in 2015 (21.5 percent CAGR).
• Spending by SMBs on customer retention business solutions will grow from $3.5 billion in 2010 to $6.9 billion in 2015 (14.6 percent CAGR).

“Our forecast clearly indicates that the allocation of SMB advertising and marketing dollars for acquiring and retaining customers will both shift and grow over the next five years,” said Mark Fratrik, vice president, BIA/Kelsey. “Traditional media companies and new upstarts that are actively building products and solutions in the areas of digital display, SEM/SEO, email marketing, calendaring, and other acquisition and retention tools will be in a good position to take full advantage of this substantive change in the overall SMB landscape.”

The DMS ’11 program sponsored by BIG Marketing for Small Business, features more than 50 senior executives from across the small-business marketing solutions marketplace, including headliners Rita Fabi, head of market solutions, global customer marketing and communications, Facebook; Joe Walsh, president and CEO, Yellowbook; Clare Hart, CEO, Infogroup; Pat Hays, vice president of global search and display services, Microsoft; and Ben Smith, founder, MerchantCircle.

For more information about DMS ’11, including the complete agenda, list of speakers and companies attending, visit www.biakelsey.com/DMS2011.