Branding
Developing a memorable brand starts with defining the who, what and why.

1. Competitive Positioning: How is your company different from your competition? What areas of business are successful and why? Which ones would you like to improve upon?

2. Audience: Who is your target audience? What effect should your materials have on them?

3. Message: What is the overall message you want to convey to your target market? Why should they care?

4. Budget: Establish a budget that allows for cost-effective results while maintaining optimal impact.

5. Tone: What feeling or personality should your communication have? Should it be authoritative, light, emotional, fun, energetic, etc.?

6. Promotion: What channels will you use to promote your new look? Print? Web? Radio? Word-of-mouth?

Social Media
If you’ve signed up for a Twitter account but haven’t quite figured out what to do with it, read on for five tips on how to use this tool to grow your brand.

1. Keep it Short—Not that you have a choice. This popular microblogging tool allows you just 140 characters to get your message across. Make it engaging and impactful. You’ll be more likely to get “retweeted” or mentioned in other followers’ tweets. Use sites like tinyurl.com to shorten links.

2. Join In—When following other users, look through the tweets to find out what people are saying about your industry, product, or service. Then join in the conversation to boost visibility and sales.

3. Conduct Market Research—Everyone loves to give their opinion. Twitter is a quick and cheap way to get your followers to weigh in on a question you may have about a product or service.

4. Be Helpful—Give free advice, post a link to an interesting article or related blog, start a conversation on a hot topic, and tweet something new at least three times a day

5. Make it Personal—Rather than impersonal business-talk, you should use Twitter conversationally to build a rapport with your followers. Oprah is great at this. Of course!

 

Marketing
Using savvy marketing techniques will keep you top of mind for potential clients and prospects.

1. Understand and define your 4 P's: Product, Price, Place, Promotion

2. Know and internalize your company mission. This is the key to staying focused and achieving your marketing and branding goals.

3. Visualize and create your brand. This is the fingerprint of your business — the DNA, in fact. Treat it as the prized tool that it is and invest the time and resources to set yourself apart from the crowd.

4. Define your target market and develop key strategies to attract and retain clients for the long term.  

5. A robust customer pipeline is key to the success of your business. Invest time and resources into a customized Client Relationship Management (CRM) system that is tailored to your needs and matches your company mission.

6. A personal touch can lead to customer loyalty! When clients know you truly value their business they will reward you with loyalty and referrals. Be creative in your outreach to clients and THANK them for choosing you.

6. Identify your “why.” What is the driving force behind the marketing campaign? How will it improve business in the long run? What is the anticipated return-on-investment?

Cultural Communication
Understanding different cultural cues and incorporating them in your message is critical in developing effective marketing materials for diverse audiences.

1. CULTURE CHAMELEON —The life of your product depends on seamlessly blending into societies norms. The United States commonly packages products like glassware in sets of four, but marketing the same foursome to Japan could mean product suicide. The number four in Japan represents death—sending your brand to an early grave. Before you break into a new market, do your research on societal preferences and taboos.

2. NEW WORLD ORDER—Brand powerhouses in the automotive industries such as Mercedes-Benz are wooing the developing world to convert them into loyal customers. Instead of marketing expensive S-Class vehicles geared towards western markets, Mercedes developed a smaller A-Class line to attract the “new rich” in emerging economies. Lead by example and promote your wares tailored to emerging world markets.

3. NATIVE TONGUES—Language and tone sets the stage when communicating globally. Leave clever wordplay to the experts and seek native writers or translators to convey your company’s goals. Writing web site content or crafting tag lines are easy when you look to the experts to effectively tell your story.

4. CRAYOLA 64—When targeting markets other than your own, be mindful of how color communicates culturally. Imagine launching the American version of a dating web site with a red background in South Africa. In Western culture red is synonymous with passion but in South Africa, red represents mourning. When experimenting with color palates for web sites or marketing collateral, choose colors that speak universally.

 

Printing
In business, the bottom line is return on investment (ROI). Often, ROI is affected by major costs such as printing. Here are some things to consider when determining budgetary goals:

1. Determine if the job fits the printer. Different printers specialize in different types of jobs.

2. Choose a good printer who understands your vision and can give suggestions that help cut costs without sacrificing quality.

3. Decide if you want to use a local printer for qualty control and time constraints, or if you will send the job out-of-state for the option of lower pricing.

4. Are you unsure of whether you need 500 or 1500 brochures? Larger quantities can have a substantially lower cost per unit.

5. Paper represents about 30% of your printing costs—be open to alternatives that may be more economical.

6. Review proofs and make all edits with your designer before you give the OK to send the files to the printer.

7. Provide your printer with a mock-up or PDF of the final piece so that he or she can discuss any concerns before sending the job to production.