It’s obvious that in order to make money, you need to get your name out there. You may have an amazing product, but if nobody knows about it, you’ll never be able to sell it. This isn’t news, almost every business owner or CEO knows it. However, you may not realize is how important it is to have a plan to execute your company’s marketing initiatives. If marketing is the process of communicating the value of your company’s products or services with the ultimate goal of selling, then marketing strategy is the road map to make it happen.

All too often, businesses choose to market themselves without a plan or means of tracking the success of their efforts. They may not have the time or just don’t understand how to go about creating a plan to spread the word about their products or services. It might just seem easier to throw an ad together here and there, or to send out a random email blast once a month than to take the time to research specifics about when, where and how to market themselves. It’s my goal with this article to help you understand how investing a bit more time on the front-end of marketing will lead you to more cost effective and rewarding marketing initiatives .

There are several key elements of a successful marketing strategy, and each should be carefully considered:

Establish your company’s goals and objectives for the coming year. Do you want to achieve a certain dollar amount in sales? Perhaps you want to expand your geographic area you are serving by opening a new office in a new location. Or perhaps you are offering a new service and need to get the word out. Whatever your goals are, be specific.

Determine your target market. Who are your ideal clients or customers? What characteristics define them: age, lifestyle, gender, income? This is a crucial step because you don’t want to be throwing money away trying to sell to an audience that is just naturally not interested in your product.

Identify your competition. Who offers similar products or services to yours and can be considered a direct competitor? How do their offerings differ from yours? How are they similar? What differentiates you from them? Why should a customer choose you over them? What are their marketing tactics?

Determine the most effective marketing channels to reach your target market. Consider all of the various means of sending out your message to the world: print advertising, social media, email marketing, press releases, television commercials. The list goes on and on. Take the time to consider what your target audience is most likely to respond to. For example, if your target audience is elderly, investing a lot of time and money into marketing on Facebook will probably not be the most effective choice for you.

Set a budget. Marketing is an investment. If you have money set aside specifically for it, you won’t find yourself in a pinch to gather funds for a new opportunity. Additionally, you will be able to come up with concrete numbers when determining how well your endeavors are paying off. For example, say you are running an online pay-per-click campaign, and you’ve set a budget of $500 per month in pay per click ads. After your first month of advertising, you look at the results and learn that you’ve made $1000 in sales that month off of that campaign. You can easily see you’ve made a 200% return on that investment. If you’re randomly throwing money out here and there, you’re not going to end up with solid results like that, and chances are you’ll be wasting a lot more money.

Constantly analyze the success of your marketing initiatives. Imagine you are inviting a date over for dinner, and you’re making a gourmet soup recipe to serve. As you’re cooking, you’re constantly tasting and adjusting the recipe to ensure everything turns out correctly. You wouldn’t just throw the ingredients together, stir it, serve it and cross your fingers that it tastes good, right? You want to make sure that you are following the right steps and that everything is on track for a superb final dish. Well, marketing isn’t much different. A hugely overlooked aspect of effective marketing is analysis. Businesses will throw money at an ad campaign, design a new website, or launch a social media campaign, but they fail to take the time to see if these endeavors were effective. Marketing initiatives must be constantly monitored and adjusted to make sure you are making the most of your dollar and energy investment.

Even if your company has never created a marketing strategy in the past, it’s never too late to start doing so. Café Noir Arts can assist you in developing a strategy to help your business achieve its goals. Through marketing strategy, graphic design and content development, we enable our clients to stay at the forefront of their industry. To schedule a marketing strategy consultation, please email us at info@cafenoirarts.com.

Website

Having a website is paramount to establishing a strong web presence. Often, it is your first introduction to a potential client or customer. How many times have you visited a company’s website before picking up the phone to call them or walk into their store? Consumers want to educate themselves as much as possible before making the commitment to connect on the next level.

Therefore, it is crucial to deliver a great first impression. Your website must instill confidence and trust in your potential customer. It must them feel safe to enter into any sort of professional relationship with your company, such as purchasing products or enlisting your services. It must be functional, branded and carefully planned and developed. A polished site shows that you care about your business and its image as well as your clients’ well-being.

When beginning the process of building your website, many factors need to be considered.

• It should be easy to navigate.

• Information should be arranged in a way that you can educate your audience about your products and services quickly and effortlessly. Customers definitely do not want to have to work to find information, and making them do so is a big turn off.

• Your site should also be branded, meaning it should communicate the experience of working with you or buying your products. Since it is often your first introduction to a new client or customer, it should give your visitor a taste of who your company is and what its values are.

• It should also coordinate with the rest of your marketing materials. If not, you run the risk of appearing scattered, disorganized and unprofessional. For example, say your logo colors are orange and green. Your business cards use orange and green, as do your product brochures. To keep your branding seamless, you wouldn’t want your website colors to be different, such as blue and purple. You want to keep your business identity consistent through all of your marketing pieces.(To learn more about branding, I suggest you read this article)

Another crucial characteristic of a successful website is for it to be SEO friendly. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. This means it is easily found by search engines, and therefore has a better chance of being listed on the first page of search results. An SEO friendly site includes specific text, content and code to improve search engine ranking. It’s almost pointless to have a website that is really beautiful and functional if a customer has no way of finding it.

Social Media

These days we are bombarded with talk of social media and online communities such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and many more. The media has even taken to quoting people’s tweets when reporting on events! As such, social media platforms have become integral parts of companies’ marketing efforts.

As of September 2012, it was reported that 91% of online adults use social media, and 70% of these social networkers shop online. 53% of active social networkers follow specific brands. 74% of brand marketers saw an increase in website traffic after investing just 6 hours per week on social media marketing. It’s quite easy to see, then, that utilizing social media as a means of marketing your company is an incredibly effective way of reaching a much larger audience. [Source: The Social Skinny]

Facebook is clearly the most prominent social network being used right now, and it is the number one social marketing tool for brands. 93% of online adults use Facebook, and a whopping 10.5 billion minutes (20,000 years!) are spent each day on it. It’s pretty obvious that there are a lot of opportunities to get your brand in front of a huge audience just by strategically using a Facebook fan page. In fact, in an analysis of more than 60 Facebook marketing campaigns, 49% reported a 5x return on investment, where 70% reported a 3x return!

Twitter is another popular social network, and it’s also a very useful tool in reaching out to new customers and clients. 79% of all US Twitter users are likely to recommend products or services from brands they follow, while 67% are more likely to actually purchase from these brands.

There are many more social media platforms that brands can take advantage of when improving their online presence. Apps such as Instagram and sites like Pinterest are being used more and more. The issue with using social media for marketing is that it is easy to get overwhelmed and over-extended. When just starting out, it’s much more realistic and beneficial to focus on the main two networks – Facebook and Twitter– and to execute those campaigns effectively than to try to have a presence on every network out there.

Blogging

When it comes to investing time in developing a web presence, small businesses often overlook blogging. There are many misconceptions about what blogging actually is, and many companies assume it’s a waste of time. It’s actually quite the opposite. The most common misconception about a blog is that it’s an online diary. Back in the 1990’s blogs primarily were online diaries, but over the past decade they have evolved into much more of a marketing tool, and they can be extremely effective.

One of the best ways for your company to establish itself as an industry leader is to present itself as an educator, and a blog is an excellent tool to share knowledge with your audience. By writing articles to help inform your potential clients about the services you offer or important information about your industry, you automatically establish your company as an authority in that area. Additionally, sharing information with new customers to make their lives easier once again emphasizes that you have their best interests in mind.

Another added benefit of maintaining a blog is that it is helpful in achieving higher placement on search results pages. Search engines such as Google reward sites with dynamic content that is updated on a regular basis. And, the more you blog, the more information is out there to draw customers to your site!

The internet is an ever growing entity, and it’s constantly providing new and exciting ways for businesses small and large to expand their reach. It’s a tool that is absolutely critical to leverage if you want to increase your company’s opportunity for success. It can be a daunting and overwhelming process at first glance, but Café Noir Arts will guide you through all aspects of creating a solid web presence to set you apart from your competition. Through marketing strategy, graphic design and content development, we enable our clients to stay at the forefront of their industry. To schedule a web development consultation, please email us at info@cafenoirarts.com.

Your brand is a somewhat nebulous concept, meaning it is not concrete. Yet it is a crucial part of your marketing and business success. Your brand is the promise that you make to your potential clients and customers. It communicates your company values, the quality of service or product that you offer, and the emotional experience your customer will experience when working with or buying from you.

Your brand permeates through everything you and your business do. It is how you present yourself to your target audience and it flows all the way through to your product or service quality, client interaction, and even workplace atmosphere.

A logo, on the other hand, is much more concrete. It is, simply put, the graphic symbol of your brand: a symbol that communicates what you and your company are all about. It is a constant reminder of your brand, but it is not the brand itself.

From the logo develops your company’s brand identity – this is the entire visual representation of your brand. It includes your logo, color palette, typefaces, text styling, and even the voice in which you communicate your message. Your brand identity is what creates consistency between all of your marketing materials. It unites everything from your business cards to your website to your employee handbooks.

The interesting thing about brands and logos is that the two rely heavily on each other to be relevant. Your brand needs a logo and a brand identity to communicate it to your potential customers. Yet a logo needs a brand to give it meaning. Otherwise, it’s just a pretty picture and it won’t leave a lasting impression.

If you’d like to learn more about branding, please read “What is a Brand, and Why Do You Need One?“. If you’re interested in developing your company’s brand, please contact us to schedule a consultation. We specialize in helping our clients develop a strong brand identity that sets them apart from the competition. Through marketing strategy, graphic design and content development, we enable our clients to stay at the forefront of their industry. To schedule a branding consultation, please email us at info@cafenoirarts.com.

Branding is equally crucial for small businesses and startups. It communicates to your target audience who you are, what your company values are, what you promise to offer, and what to expect when working with you or buying your products. Set yourself or your company apart from the competition and build trust and credibility among your target market.

A brand goes much deeper than just a slick logo or fancy letterhead. It goes deep within your company culture, from the ownership all the way down to the employees. For example, the baristas at Starbucks don’t just make you an espresso. They offer you the experience of enjoying a cup of coffee in a comfortable, relaxing environment. The way they interact with you reflects the company values, and you can see it even in the way they ask you “How is your day?”

There are 3 distinct elements of a brand, and strategic thought must go into developing each in order to earn trust and credibility among your potential customers. These elements are brand essence, brand identity, and brand messaging.

Brand Essence
Your brand essence is a focused statement that communicates exactly what you, your company, or your product is all about. It must immediately inform your potential customer what the experience of working with you or buying your products will be like. Keep in mind, however, that it is NOT a long statement addressing a laundry list of potential client desires. There are several criteria that a brand essence must meet to be successful:

• Your essence must be concise, maybe one or two words. Any more than that and you lose your focus.
• Your brand essence must be unique. It identifies you and sets you apart from your competition.
• It must communicate what the experience of working with you or buying your product will be. It’s not what you are selling, but the feeling you offer.
• The essence must be consistent. Beyond the words you say, you have to follow through to ensure the experience is what you say it will be. If you don’t, your credibility will go out the window.
• Your brand essence should be credible and well thought out, and you must be able to deliver on the promise you make.
• A solid essence must be timeless and scalable. The promise you make to your customers never changes, so be sure that it is something you can deliver as long as you are in business. Also, will it be able to grow and expand as your company grows?
• Your brand essence must be meaningful and pertinent to what your customer’s desires and needs are.

Identity
Your identity is the front line introduction to your brand. It includes all of the visuals that communicate your brand and its essence. This may be your logo, stationery, marketing materials, website, advertisements, etc. The application of your brand identity is often spelled out in a set of guidelines that identify the fonts, color schemes, layouts and other specifics that should be adhered to when developing any materials for your company.

One key part of your identity is your logo. It is crucial to note, however, that your logo is NOT your brand. This is a huge misconception. Rather, your logo is a simple mark that speaks to what your brand is. A successful logo is clear and understandable without having to be explained, and it establishes an instant emotional connection with your target audience. Your logo should be used throughout ALL of your company’s materials, from business cards and brochures down to HR policy packets and internal documents.

Messaging
Your brand messaging communicates to your target market who and what your brand is. It invokes an emotional reaction from your customer and inspires them to feel what it will be like working with you or purchasing your products. For example, Nike’s messaging delivers the concept of elite athleticism, and makes you feel that through the purchase of their products, you too can be a high-caliber athlete.

It is critical that your messaging be consistent. If you promote different messages in various marketing initiatives, you end up losing credibility and therefore customer trust. You’ll never see Nike go from marketing an experience to marketing a price point. They will never change from being a source of elite fitness to a bargain-basement athletic apparel provider. It is their consistent delivery of a high-end message that has earned them worldwide credibility over the years.

So, you can see how important branding is to the success of your business, even if you aren’t a large corporation. It develops credibility and trust among your target audience, and it sets you apart from your competitors. Once you’ve developed your brand, it must permeate through every aspect of your company or product, from your identity all the way to your corporate culture.

This may seem like a huge undertaking, but Café Noir Arts will guide you through all aspects of creating a solid brand. We specialize in helping our clients develop a strong brand identity that sets them apart from the competition. Through marketing strategy, graphic design and content development, we enable our clients to stay at the forefront of their industry.

To schedule a branding consultation, please email us at info@cafenoirarts.com