Building Brand Awareness

How a small retailer is building Brand Awareness

Brand Awareness is your business’ identity. A high brand awareness does not guarantee that the consumer will prefer your business over another, but without a distinct and well-known identity, your business won't even be in the running. You have to create a memorable brand through marketing and ad strategies, more people will get to know your business — and you will see increased sales and even better - repeat business.

Brand awareness is essential not only because it brings customers to your business for the first time, it encourages them to keep coming back. People like to buy from names they trust and that they can identify with; when your logo and tagline are easy for them to remember, your brand comes to symbolize your company and it’s the first thing to come to the consumer’s mind when they’re ready to buy.

Below is an illustration of The Marketing Funnel, which clearly displays that Brand Awareness is the first step in attaining customers, customers who might become loyal or even Brand Advocates.

Here is how (tactics) a little independent retailer is building Brand Awareness with little or no budget

I have been consulting a small independent wine store, and in the below texts, I will reveal the simple tactics we have used to grow this business.

1) Great Products

You need products that your customers want to buy and a product range that will satisfy your customers’ needs and desires. The products must also deliver a profit for you to have a successful business.

How: The business owner is importing wines from wineries in France, Italy and Spain. Each winery has a unique story, the common element in this case is; that all wineries are small, they all make wine like they think it should be made, and not dictated by market demand.

2) Superior Customer Service

Real customer service is not about offering tons of sales or monthly specials—a decent salesperson can sell anything to anyone one time. But to encourage customers to come back to you again and again, there has to be more to your customer service plan. Building relationships is the key.

Pay attention to your customers’ feedback. It may be tiresome to hear about all the things your business is doing wrong, but listening to what your customers need is crucial to improving their experience.

Having adequately trained employees is essential, as well. Each employee should be thoroughly instructed in the principles of good customer service and how they relate to your business model. Empower your employees by giving them permission to make minor customer-pleasing decisions without having to consult a manager.

Do more than is necessary. Help employees to lead customers to the products they’re inquiring about, not just simply handing them a leaflet. Give employees the tools and encouragement they need to answer customers’ questions, offer instruction or advice on using products, interact with customers in a positive way or go the extra mile whenever possible.

How: Lots of people knows about wine, in this store will you get a very professional story and instruction about the wine and use. Additionally will the staff help you load your car, deliver for free.

3) Logo design

Your company logo is your company’s face to the world. It is one of the first things someone will see before and during the visit to your store. A unique logo is one of the main ways people remember your company. It should link your website with your marketing materials. It should give those who see it a feeling for what your company does just by looking at it. It should give people a sense of trust to buy from your company.

If your you just started your business, I strongly advise you to have your logo designed by a professional graphic designer.

How: When the business was founded were a very simple logo designed by the owner. This has now been undated by a professional designer, at a very reasonable price.

4) Location and Storefront

Location, location, location. History has dictated that this is one of the most important factors in the success of a physical store, and still to this day it will have a major impact on your success. Maybe you can not afford a premium location, but consider these elements before choosing a location:

• Demographics
• Competition
• Traffic Patterns and accessibility
• Merchant Associations

Additionally should ensure your storefront is looking good. The outside of your business is what the customer will see first, so it makes sense to focus on exterior improvements before making interior improvements.

An attractive storefront should be well-lit during the evenings, and should be clean, simple, but modern. All exterior wordage should be easy to read to passersby. Windows should be kept clean at all times, and burned-out light bulbs should be changed immediately. Sometimes all that is needed to boost sales is a storefront makeover.

How: the biggest asset with this particular location comes down to traffic patterns and price. This is a very inexpensive location, but on a street with much traffic and easy access parking.

5) Build a Mailing List

Ask for your customers names and email adresses to build your own mailing list. Send email to your customers is a very powerful tool and probably the best way to build an engaged audience, generate traffic, sell a product online or create hype around your next big event

How: Keep a sign-up list on your counter and remember to ask all customers to sign-up. Inform them about what you do, and how signing-up will be good for the. Like VIP invites to luxury wine tastings and great promotions.

6) Build a Website

If you do not have a website, make sure to get one fast - and have it made responsive to mobile and tablets. A website is not just a brochure it is your part of your branding strategy. Think of your site as a sales person that works for your business year round, never messes up a sales pitch, and communicates effectively with otherwise unknown clients

How: This business had an awful website, which did not at all match the impression you would have from visiting the showroom - it would confuse you and make you doubt the business. The new site matches the experience, it it light and easy to navigate. Now to the business gets much more business from other cities, and brand ambassadors is spreading their experiences with their network.

7) Get a Facebook Account

By now should it be clear to everybody, that social media is here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future. As a small business owner, do you have a great opportunity, when you use social networking sites effectively promote your businesses in powerful ways.

Facebook pages are excellent places to gather together your customers, prospects and fans to provide reviews, share opinions, voice concerns and offer feedback. You can build a community on your Facebook page in a number of ways, including:

• Posting useful, relevant and interesting links
• Asking fans to contribute with comments
• Organizing contests and promotions
• Providing a place to leave reviews and other feedback
• Offering incentives for activity on the page

Additionally is a facebook page good for SEO and several other good things…

How: facebook is great for small business, because you communicate directly with your customers and can give the quality advice, like no other. Further can you get your “brand advocates” to share your postings to their network.

8) Host events (wine tastings)

Hosting an event is a great opportunity for your business to gain exposure, especially to local potential customers. People attend events, because they are interested in the event itself. This is especially true if they have to pay a fee to participate. Surprisingly, paying for attendance does not deter people. In some cases, a paid event has an air of exclusivity, as if the activities and workshops are premium experiences that they would not be able to get for free. Guests who are willing to pay the price to attend an event often anticipate that their experience will be valuable or, at the very least, they are interested and curious about what you have to offer.

How: Hosting wine tastings is now an essential part of the business and being carried out quite often. The is several great thing about these events; You have people attention for a long period of time to leave a solid brand impression, additionally is this a good window to sell featured products. This business sends invites per email, informing about the event, asking them to bring a friends, spouse, co-worker…  this spreads fast, now are companies and groups booking tastings.

9) Public Relations

Small business can really benefits from good public relations. To have good public relations does not mean you need to hire an expensive PR firm. To develop a plan, think about your audience. This includes more than just customers. Additional members of your audience may be local media or employees. Use these additional resources to communicate your message.

PR is more than writing a press release. In today's public relations field, professionals utilize more than the traditional press release. PR professionals commonly use facebook and similar to convey their message to the public. Social media is changing the public relations industry as it allows businesses to communicate with a larger community. Instead of sending a message to just your local audience, businesses can now communicate globally. As the scope of public relations increases, professionals need to adapt and take advantage of new avenues to communicate with the public.

There is a good beginners guide to PR behind this link.

How: This business is reaching out to the local media. It participates in the papers wine tastings and it writes press release about the growth, new vendors and similar.

10) Guerrilla Tactics

Guerrilla marketing works outside of the mainstream, making a disruptive impression that gets a brand or business noticed, and in an extended period of economic downturn, that gets even more important. That’s why guerrilla marketing is more relevant than ever- finding a cost-effective way to stand out from the crowd is what guerrilla is all about.

There is a number of good and relevant cases behind this link

How: This store is to date used one simple and old school tactic with great success. They are having some kids distributing / placing flyers with coupons in windshields in cars parked in a relevant location to the store. The output is a combination awareness and the immediate effect of redeeming the coupon, which translates into trial and sales.

5 Step Guide to Public Relations

Public relations is a fantastic type of communication, it can be super efficient and inexpensive at the same time. Just have to it right.... Before you through your self into the world of public relations, you should do some research and studying. Below is a simple 5 step guide to master public relations.

1)  Understand the media

First find out, which media (newspapers, magazines and other publication) shares the same target audience with your company. You can get a lot of help from searching online,please use the library and read the fantastic book; The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference , by Malcolm Gladwell.

Once you know which medias you would like to work with, find out how the media is working. Find out who the reporters is and how they work.

• What do the reporters specialize in?
• What stories have the done?
• Other significant info, like who have the interviewed?

Document your research in a document, which you have easy access to. You should update the document, you will get valuable information from reading the media, be on the lookout for journalists switching jobs.

There is a short-cut. There is portals web sites, where you upload your story and journalists downloads stories. One of the most popular is call Help a Reporter out or HARO.

2) How to spin your story

Now you need to start thinking about the journalist, and how he or she will bring your story.  You probably have twist your story in order to match it with the journalists angel.

• Why should a journalist bring your story*
• How can a journalist benefit from your story
• Evaluate if you can contribute to any trending stories**

* You can setup a daily scan about articles which is relevant to your company, such as your competitors and industry news. You can use Google Alerts to be informed

** Say there is a story about the media, which relates to your business. You could contact media and informed them that your product can help / assist / prevent the problem, like you can offer your technical assistance to help the journalist. Your service provider could be Google Trends

Before you do so, make sure your have written a document with the key points your are interested sharing with the media and consider different angels, this will help the journalist. When you contact the journalist, you should be confident, fact based and accurate in your dialog.

3) Approaching journalists

When you are sure about your content, and have done the preparations, you are ready to approach the journalists. These are the typical format you send:

• Press releases
• Relevant stories
• Attach pictures, graphics, charts +

When you write your press release, make sure you are direct and fact-based. Avoid spelling errors and grammar, like you should limit industry lingo. Keep in mind who the audience is, and write to the audience.

A good advise is to contact the pitched journalist and follow up, be brief when you ask about the opinion on your story. Likewise could you ask if the is an interest in receiving other relevant stories from you.

4) Fieldwork

You have an interest in positioning yourself as an expert within your line of business. Speaking at different event can help you achieve the position.

Consider which relevant events there in your community:

• Chamber of commerce
• Business networks
• Organizations
• Online communities
• Institutions of education

Journalists get a lot of stories from such event, and is likely to interesting in getting more details about your story at the event. Moreover, will this spead by word of mouth, that you are an expert within your line of business.

If you are in a tech or trendy industry you benefit from using social media.

A nice bonus will this also count as advertising, that drives traffic and builds network.

5) It is a long term commitment

When you have said A to public relations you also have to say B. It can take a while before you brake the ice and your stories a brough and published by the press.

Keep reminding the press you are out there, write press releases:

• About a new product
• About success stories with customers
• About new hires you have done
• Keep reminding the press, what your company does

In addition, could you keep your own blog, where you post your news when it is hot. Writing a blog gives you some other benefits, such as google rank, which everybody like.

4 Marketing channels on a budget

If you look at your options of marketing mediums or channels you can choose today, one can easily get confused, because there is a lot to choose from.

Say you are on a budget you can narrow down the channels some, below is an introduction to 4 channels which you could consider using.

I have on purpose not included social media, for a few reasons. There is a separate post on social media coming, moreover do social media compliment other channels very well as an accelerator.

Guerilla marketing

There is a parallel from Guerilla marketing to guerilla warfare. Guerilla warfare is concept of irregular war, where small cells or groups of soldiers use untraditional tactics, such as sabotage and ambushes to use the element of surprise.

The parallel is using some of the tactics to achieve the element of surprise. Guerilla marketing is using low-cost elements to promote products or service. Conventional marketing is typical dependent on a big budget, while guerilla marketing is more dependent on creativity, time and energy.

Below are some great examples of guerilla marketing:

These are examples, which hopefully stimulate your creativity and desire to try this out. The big idea is get people’s attention, put a smile on their face by catching them off guard, and leave the valuable impression of your brand or product.

There is a lot more examples to find on the internet, however is much content duplicated on different sites. Therefore do I advise to purchase the bestseller book by Jay Conrad Levinson Guerilla Marketing. The book has been updated several times and is a must read. It is loaded with inspirational content and matching strategy tools.

Email marketing

Sending email is an inexpensive media format, where you can distribute your messages directly to your consumers email or potential customers.

You need to have a database with some contact information and minimum the email address. You can build the database by leaving a printed excel sheet on your counter, and manually enter these names into the database. Alternatively can you obtain contact information from your website, if you build in a HTLM widget.

With a database in hand, you are now ready to send email. Theoretically can you distribute email from your outlook, Gmail or similar account, but this is not recommended. Instead should you sign a subscription with a mail service business, such as MailChimp.

The reason to use MailChimp, is that you can easily create beautiful emails with pictures, texts, links and social buttons, and get tracking on all of this. The program is very intuitive and provides several guide of how to get started. Best of all this there a good free plan to get you started.

When you add content to your newsletter, you have to post information which is relevant for the mail recipients; you can easily add links to your website, to generate traffic and sales. Consider dividing your content into two categories:

·         Hard sell: promotions, new products, services and similar

·         Soft sell: tips, guides, information about donations and similar

Next you should consider when the most optimal time for you, to send your email is? You probably need to experiment, before you get it right. Otherwise are there a lot of facts to find on the internet.

Partnerships

Forming partnership is inexpensive and can be very efficient. The sole purpose to create / turnover to both companies and create a win-win situation.

When you start looking for partners you have to be selective, it is important you select a partner which understand and respects your brand values and your business principles, or even better a partner should share those elements.

Below is 5 examples of partnerships:

• Include a gimmick in your product. Think about cereals! Big brand cereal companies do often include a branded toy. This creates desire to purchase the product and attention to the branded toy

• Coca Cola has three main Cola products, Coca Cola, Diet Coke and Coke Zero, each positioned for a demographic profile. Diet Coke targets the female use, and underlines it with a partnership with Marc Jacobs, both companies’ wins and get great exposure.

• Car dealers and theme parks, often share the same target group – families with kids. Car dealers can advertise free tickets, which initially drives traffic to the car dealership, secondly to the theme park, when the tickers is redeemed. Likewise could the theme park, place cars on display and host a competition of a prices covered by the car dealer.   

• Shortly before Mother’s day did 11 florists gathers together, to buy a one full page add in a big newspaper. Each independent florist, would normally never be able to get in that newspaper with such a powerful add, by splitting the cost, it became possible!

• Where I live, McDonalds support the local football / soccer team. Every time you purchase a particular product, the give x amount to the sports team as a sponsor. This is smart, because McDonald’s gets attention, the football team’s gets attention. In addition can you purchase tickets at the McDonalds counter.

Read my 5 step guide to Partner Advertising

Now ask yourself some questions and find out who can be the right partner / partners for your business.

Public Relations

Comparing advertising and public relations, there is one significant difference. Using advertising you control the content 100%, while using public relation the media´s control. You pitch them a story, they decide if they want to bring and in which format.

For entrepreneurs public relation is an inexpensive format to get your message out, find new customers and elevate your reputation.

Just like the other channels, you should know your position in the market. Start building your public relations locally, before you move to bigger regional media´s.

There are several PR agents that are working freelance and charge by the hour. You should consider this option, unless if you know how to write and have expertise in delivering the stories to the media´s.

You will typical achieve better results, using a pro, because they understand how to approaching medias with a practical approach.

Work on you credibility by focusing on smaller papers. The articles from these papers will help you get into other media, like radio, newsletters, blogs and local tv. Soon or later you will get more coverage.