Much like Groundhog Day and the old belief that if the little critter sees his shadow there will be 6 more weeks of winter, business owners are trying these new marketing trends hoping they will lead to more clients.  But, for a small business or sole proprietor testing these new trends can exhaust resources quickly.  Ten minutes on Facebook leads to hours and the cost to maintain Blogs and other social media sites with creative content that supports your brand and brings customers closer can be challenging.  So, do you refuse to participate and hope that the reports about companies growing their business with the help of these trends is all a crazy superstition like Groundhog Day? Or, do you join in the fun and get some help from professionals who can help you to decide the best way for YOUR business to use the tools without wasting time or additional money?

Well, I just heard on the news that the Groundhog saw his shadow and we will now have 6 more weeks of winter.  Hard to believe with the mild weather we have had in Massachusetts this year, but that is what they predict.  And, the prediction about the latest and greatest marketing trends is also that this is how businesses will continue to gain customer loyalty and sales.  So, if you are reading this Blog and you still haven’t created a strategy for how to work all of this in to your marketing portfolio, please contact Purple Diamond or another marketing/social media specialist.  Purple Diamond specializes with small businesses and helping them make some sense of all the new things that come their way.

All my best to your success!~Charlene

“Success wears the Purple Diamond!”

So, how do you know if you are using your tagline effectively? First, check your website,

Purple Diamond Tagline

email signature, business cards, letterhead, creative ads, and all other marketing material and see which ones have your slogan or tagline.  Is the line listed 100% on all materials or is it MIA [missing-in-action]?  Next, when you are doing a 30 second elevator pitch do you end your pitch with the tagline for your business or slogan for the product you are promoting? This is another way of knowing how effective your tagline is. You should be comfortable saying the line and using it consistently.  Finally, do all your clients and many of your prospects know your tagline?  If not, you are missing one of the key ways to help your target market identify with your business with a simple phrase.

And, if you are still someone who is not sure of the importance of having a tagline for your company and wonder if it will have a great impact on marketing your business consider the lines you  have heard from local businesses and from national ad campaigns that use theirs consistently.  “Melts in your mouth, not in your hands” for M&M’s ,”Just do it” for Nike, “You’re in good hands with Allstate” for Allstate Insurance are just a couple of taglines that  I quickly remember.  My own tagline for Purple Diamond, “Success wears the Purple Diamond!”, tells my clients that our brand is “success” and that when they choose to work with Purple Diamond either as an advertising agency or marketing coach we are committed to helping their business achieve greater success!

All my best to your success!

Charlene

“Success wears the Purple Diamond!”

What is a brand and why does your business need to have one? The brand of your business is how you appear to others.  It is your identity as a business and with it you are able to shape how your audience sees you through your business name, color combination, logo, slogan, advertisements, and anything that stands out to help identify you from your competition.  Your brand offers the personality of your business or product and allows the market to know your business and what it stands for.  And, yes, to the question of if your business needs a brand!

My own brand came from my decision that I wanted to focus on “SUCCESS”! Success can be defined in many ways, but Purple Diamond’s focus was to help business owners to realize their own idea of success and work with them to develop a marketing strategy to reach that goal.   The name Purple Diamond LLC came before the branding strategy was created, but I knew that if I wanted business owners to hire Purple Diamond to help them with their branding they needed to see strong branding from my company.   As many of you know, branding is not created overnight and it takes much dedication and strategy to have it become a strong identification for your business.  To support my  brand,  I worked on taglines that would use the word “success” in a way that was easy to remember and one that I would use on all my marketing material.  Though I liked the tagline: “Quality rocks with Purple Diamond”, I knew that I was more than just offering “quality”  and that every business owner related to the word “SUCCESS”.   So emerged the tagline that my son created: “Success wears the Purple Diamond!”.  It had the company name in the tagline and it created an image of wearing purple diamonds which are very rare and expensive stones. But, more importantly, the word “success” dominated the tagline and offered a clear understanding of what Purple Diamond does and does well.  Finally, I used the color purple as another symbol of success since in ancient times the color purple was worn by royalty and since the hue was expensive to make it was seen as another symbol of  great wealth.  This color dominates my business in that I choose to use it on all my marketing and I also wear purple clothing and jewelry Monday through Friday and carry a purple briefcase and purple iphone and give purple diamond paperweights to my clients as a reminder of our commitment to their success.   Why is it important for me to share with you what Purple Diamond does to consistently promote the brand and image of the company? Because branding is more than just coming up with a clever name and tagline and other eye catching advertisements.  The most important element of a brand is that you remain consistent and that you never stop promoting it in your messaging.  This brand must be part of you. Something that your business believes in and lives each day in how you deliver services and offer your expertise to your clients.  If you have a tagline or slogan and you can’t remember what it is or never see it on your marketing material and don’t use it when speaking with potential clients, then you are not supporting your brand and chances are it is as good as not having a tagline or slogan.  Branding takes time and effort and a commitment to allowing your targeted audience to catch on to the identity of your business.

Finally, you will know when you have branded successfully when you walk in to a networking event, a client’s office, or possibly a new prospect who heard of you and they already know your tagline, recognize your logo, and they tell you how impressed they are with the branding you have done with your business.  This is the success I have had with Purple Diamond and the success I want to share with business owners who are committed to making this happen for their own business.

All my best to your success ~ Charlene

“Success wears the Purple Diamond!”

The results of traditional marketing have long been tracked and no one questions that having a creative TV commercial for your business that runs during a popular show or on a sports network during an important game gets your message out to the masses rapidly, but where are the profit margin numbers for Facebook or Twitter?  We can track clicks on many on-line banner advertisements and the traffic to our websites and blogs, but unless you are paying for an ad on Facebook you are left with only the weekly report of how popular your business page is, so how do you know?  The truth is that right now you actually don’t know for sure other than the incredible testimonials that small businesses with no advertising budgets have shared with others on how they have grown their business from a grass roots campaign on Facebook and Twitter.  My own company has had great success through social media marketing and I am presently helping many of my clients go boldly forward with adding this to their marketing mix.

When I hear from local businesses that they do not have time for social media marketing or they doubt the impact of using Facebook or Twitter, I am reminded of the early years of my selling TV commercials in the local market to the owners of car dealerships.  I had  a tough time convincing the owners of car dealerships to consider running TV ads on the local cable channels like CNN, USA and ESPN because they were convinced that all they needed was a newspaper ad since they saw many of their customers bringing in the ad when looking at cars.  How could a customer  carry the TV commercial in the door to prove the effectiveness of television advertising to the car dealership owners?    I needed to help them see that an ad with  “site, sound and motion”, that didn’t cost more than what they were spending in the papers,  could be very powerful in helping to sell cars.  Do you remember in 1998 when Volkswagen reintroduced the “Beetle”, they used television ads that moved people and got them excited again about the VW Bug which had tremendous impact on selling a retired old brand of automobile in a new fun way!

So, like the local auto dealers years ago who struggled with taking some of their advertising dollars from the newspapers and boldly buying commercial time on ESPN, USA, CNN and other great networks, today you have to ask yourself why you have not jumped in to using social media marketing with your traditional advertising.  If you need to have years of statistics to prove that this will enhance your brand and ultimately help you to sell more of your products, then you may find that you miss your window of opportunity to get out ahead of your competitors and gain market share.  And, by the way, the local car dealers who moved quickly years ago in buying cable TV advertisements saw that they did significantly better than the ones who only used the newspaper.

All my best to your success!~Charlene

“Success wears the Purple Diamond!”

The key to marketing is to help people remember YOU and to connect what you do with something they need or want!  A picture in the business section of the newspaper, a press release or an ad in the paper is just a small part of the strategy that smart business owners employ.  It is the additional press that comes from strategically using Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and other sites to bring that one article or photo to the attention of others in a way that shares a story about your business and why doing business with you is special.  Never over look the power of having business friends via Facebook or Linkedin who share your message and recommend your work.  Just by stating that they are a client is their own endorsement of your brand! And, the newspapers understand this and that is why they have created their own “Fans or Like” pages on Facebook and have set-up on-line articles that can be shared quickly and they encourage their readers to post their own views and comments.   On-line banner ads that link directly to a business website and the new commercial video ads are starting to get the attention of the business community and their potential clients.  Newspapers, once thought of as a thing of the past, are stepping up by using the internet strategically to get the attention of both the readers and the business community.  If you have not been in the paper lately, perhaps it is time to consider submitting a press release with a photo or taking out an ad that will be seen in both their paper version and on-line site.

All my best to your success! ~ Charlene

“Success wears the Purple Diamond!”

Like dieting, you understand the importance of taking care of your health and maintaining a healthy weight and eating right is all part of that.  Blogs are the same, they can have a tremendous impact for the health of your business in that it allows you to communicate and build a loyal following to the brand of your business without spending money on advertisement that most consumers are trying to avoid.  The blog gives you a voice and also consistent traffic to your website that could lead to more business and it also helps your site with popularity ratings which improves your status or ranking with on-line searches.  However, not everyone is blogging or those who are may not be consistent and this reminds me of dieting [something I have done most of my life without too much success].  Right after the New Year you meet so many excited dieters who have dreams of fitting in to a smaller bathing suit by spring or losing some weight and feeling healthier. The local weight loss groups are standing room only and the advertisement on TV is filled with the latest and greatest diets and exercise equipment that will bring you instant success on the road to being healthy, or so they claim.

Does everyone fail at diets or having a blog? No! The key to being successful at both is to develop a system that will work for you in that you incorporate the new activity in your daily life.  This blog post is being written at 5am and if I went to the athletic club I know I would find people working out before they are heading to work or at the end of their busy work day.  For the serious blogger and dieter, finding a time that works for your schedule to include the new activity helps you to be successful.  You have to plan for blogging even though the activity does not require much preparation other than having an idea to write about and access to your WordPress account or whatever program you are using for your blog.  However, please know that I have seen many serious minded business owners vow to post regularly on their blog and when I check their sites the last entry is far from current because it just has not become the priority to the day to day operation of their business.  To blog consistently you have to be willing to schedule time to write the post much like eating healthy or working out at a health club.  Unless you have been writing your entire life this new activity will be challenging on days that you are busy [what day are you not busy?] and on days when you are handling big projects with lots of added stress that inhibits your ability to come up with a new blog topic to post about.

The one thing I will say to those who have started a blog and now realize that you just are not cut out for blogging or do not have the resources to hire someone who will write your blog for your business, ask your web designer to remove the active link or tab on your home page to your blog.  Having your website indicate that there is a blog and allowing people to click on to the site and see the last entry was 6 or 8 months ago is not helping your business.  And, for those who are reading this and want to have a blog you have to know when you will have time to actually write the posts. You may love to work out in the early mornings which shows you can keep to a schedule and are committed to remaining healthy, but when will you write your blog posts to keep you business blog healthy and up to date? The key to success in blogging is having time in your schedule to commit to blogging or being willing, as I do, to get up early in the morning or work later in the evening to create a new entry to my blog.

All my best to your success!

~Charlene

“Success wears the Purple Diamond!”

How memorable is your business? When you attend a chamber event or reconnect with someone via the phone or on-line do they remember who you are or do you have to remind them of where you met? Can they say your tag-line or identify your brand from a few times of meeting you? Do you get phone calls, website visits, or orders after you have launched a marketing campaign? Though some of us prefer to remain private in our personal life  being memorable as a business is the core element to success.  You need to share the story of your company in a way that prospects will remember you. The best TV commercials or radio jingles are the ones you hear others recite from memory. When I walk in to a business function and several business owners recite my tagline of  “Success wears the Purple Diamond” and they comment on my purple outfit and then ask me about my marketing coaching services or the latest TV campaign I have done for a client I know that I am making a lasting impression. My brand of helping business owners be successful is catching on rapidly for a business that is just 2 years old.

So, if you are wondering if you are memorable as a business, test to see if you are by attending a networking event this week  in which you have had an opportunity to say your elevator speech and mingle with other business owners that you have never met for at least 20 minutes.  Leave the event with a handful of business cards. Wait a couple of days and then make some phone calls to see if anyone connected with you. If you find that you are spending more time on the phone reminding them of the conversation you had at the networking event or retelling them your name and all about your business then it might be a red flag that you are not memorable as a business or business owner.  If this keeps happening you may wish to consider working with a marketing coach to help you create a story about your business that will be memorable and lasting and have people wanting to call YOU!

All my best to your success!

~Charlene

“Success wears the Purple Diamond!”

*Congratulations to my daughter Nicole and my new son-in-law Richard on their new marriage. The day, 3-6-2010,  was one I will NEVER forget!!!

Til this past week I didn’t honestly think anyone did this on their company blog, but I found out it is quite common and something that laws were created to protect….using other people’s articles without their written permission on YOUR blog .  Now, I am not talking about taking a short quote and placing it in your blog or adding a hyperlink to someone’s website where more information is found, I have seen blogs that people unknowingly grabbed an article of interest and posted the entire article in their blog with the name of the author listed.  YIKES!  If you are doing this you need to stop unless you have written consent from the author.  When I started my blog a few months ago I was actually asked by another blogger if he could grab articles to post to his site and I gave him written permission in an email as long as he gave me credit for the work.   I knew the purpose of my blog was to help business people be successful and having other bloggers post my articles would be in-line with my mission statement so permission was granted.  However, many bloggers are trying to build their own brand and traffic to their website and are not wanting their work posted as a way to build another site. So, there is a copyright law out there to protect them and was passed in 1978 that protects their written work that is posted on the internet even if you do not see a copyright notice and it has some heavy finds attached to it.  [note: I am not a lawyer so please review this with yours to verify this information and learn more.]

I am assuming many of the bloggers that I see who are posting other people’s work are not aware of the laws. They might be new to on-line social networking and have a Twitter account and see people Re-Tweet links or they are on Facebook and have used the share option to take what one person has posted and then re-post it on their own profile page, so they get the impression that everything on the internet is FREE and there to share.   Building your brand with a blog is powerful, but if you are using someone’s thoughts to offer information you are not helping your business. To gain market share and to be seen as a expert in your field requires you to have your own thoughts and offer your own expertise.  If the reason you are posting articles from someone else is because you are too busy to create your own, then I suggest you either get written permission from the author, make time for blogging by prioritizing it in your work week, hire a staff blogger, hire a ghost writer, or take the blog off-line until you have this problem solved.  The last thing you need is to ruin the business reputation you have built by using someone’s work without permission.

All my best to your success!

~Charlene

“Success wears the Purple Diamond!”

All my best to your success!

~Charlene

“Success wears the Purple Diamond!”

With easy-to-use templates and high quality printers, having a professional marketing brochure for your business is a smart investment provided you are actively giving the brochure to potential clients and placing them at key areas within your business community like the local chamber office. Be sure that your brochure reflects your company image and offers a marketing message that clearly defines what the benefits of doing business with you are, will hold the reader’s attention, has a call to action and offers all contact information. The brochure must compliment all your other marketing material including your website so be sure to match colors, themes, logo, tag-line, etc. If you are struggling with understanding your brand and your marketing materials look like they were thrown together without any rhyme or reason, please hire a professional who can make your marketing message effective and stimulate sales.

All my best to your success!
~Charlene

“Success wears the Purple Diamond!”