North San Diego Business At Large

North San Diego Business At Large
Show Notes: July 9, 2010

Barbara Eldridge and I discussed what Social Media Channels are and how a business owner would use them. We discussed blogging platforms, micro-blogging, social networks and video.

Some resources for more information:

So, How Many Channels for Your Brand?
Wikipedia List of Social Networking Sites
Which Channels Should You Be Using

North San Diego Business At Large

North San Diego Business At Large
Show Notes: April 23, 2010

What a great interview with Lynn Pittman on developing your business brand. We talked about building your tribe, determining your brand, some branding mistakes and how to build relationships with your clients and customers.

Lynn shared one of our great small business resources, outside of Mind Masters Entrepreneur Association, the Small Business Development Center (SBDC) at 1823 Mission Ave. in Oceanside.

We also spoke about the upcoming Project Management Institute May 12th – 14th event. The 7th Annual Leadership and Education Conference Mission : : Success with Apollo 13 Flight Director, Gene Kranz.

This is the premier business conference featuring national speakers, hands on workshops, tutorials, seminars, networking events and more featuring the latest in technology, program management and leadership skills. The Project of the Year Award Winners Will Be Announced at the Kick Off Celebration May 12, 2010. For more information and to register for the conference visit conference.pmi-sd.org

North San Diego Business @Large Show Notes
December 4, 2009, 3pm PT

My guest this week was speaker and author Liz Goodgold, a fiery redhead with over 25 years of experience in marketing and branding. She is the author of RED FIRE BRANDING: Create a Hot Personal Brand and Have Customers for Life and DUH! Marketing.

Liz has worked for such major clients as Quaker Oats, Times Mirror, and Arco Oil as well as with small business owners and start-ups. Her specialized, one-on-one branding and coaching programs spark new ideas that deliver sure-fire results.

An often quoted expert, Liz has appeared in over 500 media outlets including ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNBC, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.

Most everyone who knows me, locally, knows I published a small business newspaper in the early 90s, The Business Resource (formerly known as Networks). I’ve always been passionate about the homebased business community, now known affectionately as, solopreneurs.

I watched an Adam Urbanski video the other day, 3 Ways To Stay Motivated,  about staying positive during rough times as a small business owners. He has a collection of all the nice things people have said about him over the years. I have a similar collection and happened across a letter I received in July 1993. It was a comment about an editorial I wrote in the paper. I thought I would do what I tell my clients to do, and re-purpose my content.

This is a reprint of that editorial. Keep the faith! Join the conversation and share your comments below.

The Roundtable
July 1993

Getting out into the small business community as much as I do, I see a business community that is changing rapidly. We are growing in numbers as larger employers downsize their businesses. We are creating new jobs for San Diego. We are being recognized as a vital and moving force for San Diego’s economy. There are many new opportunities opening for the small business community and now is the time to prepare for those opportunities.

This is the time to stay visible in your business. Establishing stability and credibility is the key to success. Let your clients know you are there to serve them. The more consistent and visible you are in the professional organizations and business mixers you attend, the more you’ll be perceived as a stable business.

Strengthen your customer service policy over the summer. This, along with hard work, is the most recurring comment made by successful small business owners like Ralph Rubio (Rubio’s Fish Tacos) and David Cohen (The Corvette Diner). They stress excellence in your business practices, with particular regard to how you treat your clients. What kind of interaction does your customer experience in dealing with your business? A strong customer service policy creates customer loyalty, in turn creating increased customer sales, therefore affecting the profit line. A successful business strives for zero customer defections.

In my business library I have The Book of Excellence by Byrd Baggett. It’s worth keeping close at hand. What this book offers are little reminders and pieces of advice on strengthening your service policy and customer interaction . For instance, “Be as critical of yourself as you are of others ” to keep us humble at times. “Excellence knows no time clock”, for those occasions, as in laying out the newspaper, when you pull long hours and start to get just a little punchy. Pieces to keep you focused, “Don’t go just for the big hit. The greatest opportunities exist in small to medium sized companies.” If you add just one or two new components to your customer service policy, by the end of summer you’ll be ready to pull ahead of the pack.

We are here to support your business success. Use us and hang tough!

Join me on Friday, January 9, 2009 for North San Diego Business At Large Online Radio Show, when I interview Dianna Arreola, Core Specialties, on brand continuity and using products to market your business. This is an online radio show I hold every Friday at 3pm PT.  All you need to do is tap the link and listen in. If you miss the show, it’s always archived on North San Diego Business.

Dianna has years of experience in human resources and has a keen eye on using traditional branding and marketing, as well as new media technology.  She’ll be presenting a case study on one of our own North County businesses and some of the ways they used brand continuity through logoed products, widgets, and other promotional materials.

There are call in lines where you can ask Dianna specific questions about how you can develop your brand and market your business more successfully.  There is also a text chat area, if you can’t call in, to ask your questions.  Remember, we always spreak the link love at North San Diego Business.  So if you do call in, or text a question, make sure to include your name, business name, and website address.

Friday, April 25, 2008 @ 11:30am at
Shadowridge Country Club

Does your brand speak for you when you’re not around? In the next session at TheMeetMarket, we’ll be discussing your marketing brand and how it represents you and your business. Learn these following techniques …

• Define "branding"… comprehensively and by its parts
• Understand the 3 Key "C"s of branding as it is used in marketing
• The basic principles of creating and using your brand
• Discover what changes you should make to your own brand and message
• Walk away with the knowledge, understanding and ability to be a better "brander"

Learn how to maximize your marketing brand with Shonna Jordan, owner of Jordan & Jordan Marketing. Come for the Speaker and stay for the networking! Mix & mingle with other Small Business Leaders right here in North San Diego County.

Visit The Meet Market to RSVP today as seating is limited and reservations required! I’ll be there, just look for That Hat Lady!

The best way to build trust in any relationship is to create a sense of familiarity and comfort. Look at your relationships currently, the best ones are the ones where you have these very aspects. It’s not so different in business. The idea of branding can cause some people to go mad trying to figure out what to get across in order to create the correct position in the mind of their target audience.

Let’s strip everything away and build the familiarity and comfort level. Go to your top 5 ideal customer’s websites and take notes. Look for the following:

·         Use of Color
·         Style of Writing
·         Font Choice
·         Use of Pictures
·         Overall Feel
·         Emotions Elicited

With this information you can now create your brand to Mimic the ideal customer’s. Don’t copy their brand, but utilize similar color schemes, pictures, fonts, writing style, etc. With your new brand, you should be able to begin the trust building through familiarity and comfort. It’s that simple.

Paul Miser is the President of Miser Advertising and Marketing, an International Marketing Strategy and Branding Agency in San Diego County. Miser Advertising is a full-service marketing agency that acts as a complete marketing department for small businesses in the San Diego area and the World. You can reach Paul Miser by emailing him at pmiser@miserad.com.

Customers make the heart of your business beat with their desire to choose products, services and experiences that meet their needs, fit their values, engage their emotions and respond to their desires. Your role is to transform prospects into customers and customers into fiercely loyal advocates. As your own marketer you have to be heard over the marketing noise that is everywhere, (TV, newspapers, on every street corner, now even at the movies). You then have to overcome the skepticism of the more sophisticated consumer.

Many of you have taken one of our "Personal Branding" workshops to learn more about standing out, creating interest so that people take action. It is important to understand that all of this starts with what you say about who you are, what you do, but most importantly what is the outcome you deliver that satisfies someone’s desire to buy.

I would like to suggest you start by asking yourself some questions that can flush out the things you need to know about your customer, and what your customer needs to know about you. If you have targeted a market, what is their challenge, issue or problem. The better prepared you are to answer that question the better prepared you will be to know what your customer needs to know about you.

What is the value of your product or service in terms of saving customers time and effort? Does what you offer add value by offering an enhancement – beauty, status, advancement or guarantees? Can you demonstrate that your product or service is not a cost but an investment? How about your competition, why do people buy from you rather than your competition? What makes you different? What do your customers tell each other about your product or service?

Amazon.com and eBay have capitalized on this by giving buyers a chance to comment and/or review what they purchased and in the case of eBay how well the seller fulfilled what he sold. You need to be able to tell the stories and quote the testimonials of happy customers so others can see how you are different.

Few products or services are unique, you make them unique by looking at your strengths to create your competitive edge. What strengths do you have that you can effectively capitalize on? When you have answers to the questions that apply to you, you must be able to deliver that information verbally and in all your written and hand out materials. Remember people want to know "what’s in it for them." So what is the outcome and value you deliver; this is not the how, but the what, that will keep them coming back over and over again.

For more than twenty-five years Barbara Eldridge has been contributing to other people’s business success. Her many years experience in the corporate world provided her with knowledge, insight and presence to help thousands of entrepreneurial men and women nurture their business ventures into thriving successes.

Barbara founded Mind Masters in 1991 as an organization for entrepreneurs to master the challenges they face in an ever-changing market place. Barbara has a vision of Mind Masters to provide a value based program so that business owners could harness the power of each members’ success, make wise business decisions and realize their dreams. Visit Mind Masters for a meeting location near you and start on your path to business success.

Where does your brand fit into the Day-to-Day routine of your customers? No answer, huh? That’s because no one has ever been asked this question before. Why would we want to know where our brand is in the daily lives of our customers? Simple, if we can ensure our company or brand is integrated in to the daily activities completed by our customers and core target, we can ensure top of mind awareness, brand loyalty, point of sale positioning, and can take us to the promise land of our brand; complete brand saturation.

Routine Branding is the marketing of the future. It will soon become commonplace, much like relationship marketing or duct tape marketing, but is now the idea that will change our Brand as we know it. It will look the same from the outside, but inside the customer’s life, it will take on a whole new meaning. It will become a catalyst for their life growth. It will become so ingrained in their routine that, if removed, would create a void that could equal the loss of a friend or family member. Routine Branding is the crowning achievement for any brand. Forget about brand awareness or brand loyalty, we are creating a Routine Brand, a part of the customer’s life.

Paul Miser is the President of Miser Advertising and Marketing, an International Marketing Strategy and Branding Agency in San Diego County. Miser Advertising is a full-service marketing agency that acts as a complete marketing department for small businesses in the San Diego area and the World. You can reach Paul Miser by emailing him at pmiser@miserad.com.