A.S.A.P. Branding (Entrepreneur.com)

A.S.A.P. Branding

Learn these smart shortcuts to branding your business quickly and effectively.

By John Williams | July 04, 2008

URL: http://www.entrepreneur.com/marketing/branding/imageandbrandingcolumnistjohnwilliams/article196258.html

To successfully brand your small company, you must know who you are and show who you are in your every aspect of your business--but especially in your promotional materials. Are you the innovative maverick in your industry? Or the experienced, reliable one? Do people choose your product because of its quality--or because of its price point? You can't be all things to all people, so you have to decide just who you are. Strategically pinpointing your niche in the market will simplify all your branding efforts. Every visual aspect of your brand should consistently point in the same direction. But when you're first starting out, how can you do this quickly and cost effectively?

As a fledgling entrepreneur, there's one rule of thumb to keep in mind when it comes to branding your business: Keep it simple! Besides conserving your time and your budget, simplicity will cement your brand in the mind of your prospects in the most expedient manner possible.

When it comes to the basic building blocks you need to develop your brand in the most efficient manner possible, I use what I call the "A.S.A.P." formula of branding. Here's how it works:

A = Advantage. You've got to decide what prevailing message--what content--you want to communicate to your customers.
S = Style. What's the style of your message? In other words, how are you going to "dress" your message for your audience?
A = Adjective. What verbal cue will your message carry to your customers?
P = PMS color. What visual cue will your message have that helps reinforce your brand?

Let's take this formula one step at a time. First, let's discuss your advantage.

What Makes You Better?
Your company is special--it has to be in order to succeed. If it's not special in some way, if you can't set it apart from your competition, it won’t survive in business today.

So what makes your company unique? You've got to determine what differentiates your company in your market in order to craft a brand that makes that advantage obvious. Ask yourself this: How is your brand better than the others? In what areas does your brand create value for consumers?

If you're stumped, let me help you out. Here are some common competitive advantages I've found in working with small businesses:

• high-quality
• low-cost
• high-tech or innovative
• customized
• stylish or trendy
• wide range of choices
• full line of products
• experience
• reliability
• conveniently located
• eco-friendly
• first-to-market (the "classic")
• unique (the only one)

Of course, advantages can be much more specific and unique to a certain industry. Advantages can also be both your current and your potential offerings--as long as you really plan to follow through with what you say you'll offer. After all, branding is for the long haul.

When you're trying to decide just what makes you stand out, remember this: Contrary to popular opinion, a brand can't successfully occupy both the high-quality and low-cost niches in the mind of consumers. Simply put, it's impossible to be "the high-quality, low-cost" option. You can be the high-quality choice, or you can be the low-cost choice. But you can't be both. If you really think you could be both, your best bet might be to focus on value, because value is a different story. Value implies satisfactory quality at a satisfactory price, and that's something all consumers love.

If you're having difficulty identifying your key advantage, start by answering this: What makes you personally different? Most new businesses take on the personality of their owners, so your unique traits really do matter. Another option is to list all the advantages up for consideration, and then choose the strongest, or the most interesting, or the most profitable.

Whatever route you take, choose only one advantage for your brand. When it comes to marketing and advertising, the ability to prioritize is golden--and the ability to select just one advantage is genius. Today's consumers have no time or inclination to juggle the three, four or five different advantages you may actually offer. They need to file your brand in their minds quickly and easily, into just one slot, so they can retrieve it quickly and easily. Choose one advantage, and stick with it.

Once you've determined that one advantage, sum up your brand's value in a sentence or two, and try to include your product's principle features or benefits. Here's a sample, fill-in-the-blank formula: "[name of brand] provides [name of target market] with [advantage to target audience]." For instance, "Prodo Products provides Fortune 500 corporations with the highest-quality printers." Then go further by stating the benefit your clients derive from your advantage:"... by providing fast document printing to increase business efficiencies." This statement can serve as a compass for virtually all your branding efforts.

Only after you've determined your brand's advantage and you've nailed the content of your message can you can address its style, which I'll happily address in next month's column. Stay tuned.

John Williams is the president and founder of LogoYes.com, the world's first and largest DIY logo website. In his 25 years in advertising, he has created brand standards for Fortune 100 companies like Mitsubishi and won numerous international awards for his design work.

Restaurants Produce Green Profits (Entrepreneur.com)

Restaurants Produce Green Profits

Any business can benefit from these strategies that appeal to consumers who want to support green operations

By Bill Roth | June 16, 2008

URL: http://www.entrepreneur.com/management/greencolumnistbillroth/article194882.html

Here’s why I am writing a two-part series about restaurants and "Going Green": According to the National Restaurant Association, almost a million restaurants in the United States generate more than $500 billion annually, employ 13 million people and provide 70 billion meals a year. The Green Economic Revolution has begun to take hold with restaurateurs, and they have lessons your business can learn.

One key element of "Going Green" is logistics. According to a study done by Martin Heller and Gregory Keoleian with the Center for Sustainable Systems, University of Michigan, the average American foodstuff travels an estimated 1,500 miles before being consumed. This is not sustainable at today’s fuel prices. And transportation accounts for approximately one-fourth of our country’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Typical of how "Going Green" tangentially creates other benefits, restaurants gain competitive advantage by offering fresher, better tasting food sourced from local growers. This also contributes to the local economy’s prosperity and increases support for local restaurants.

Like your business, running a successful restaurant also requires cost control and aligning with the increasing consumer focus upon "Going Green." So what would such a green restaurant that does it all--has compelling taste, strong cost management with competitive advantages and aligned with consumer desires for healthy food--look like?

One example is a new franchise that has exploded onto the restaurant scene with the motto, “Saving the earth one pizza at a time.” The restaurant is called Pizza Fusion, and it is the first franchise I have seen engineered to build and run a national green restaurant chain.

Pizza Fusion has a holistic vision. More than 75 percent of its food is organic, and the rest is natural. It offers a gluten-free pizza for wheat-intolerant consumers.

“We have had customers drive a hundred miles to buy our gluten-free pizzas,” vice president Eric Haley says. How many of your customers drive a hundred miles just to buy your specialty product at your location?

Pizza Fusion has a line of vegan dishes, including breadsticks with no butter, brownies and pizza with soy cheese and no milk-based ingredients. It also has casein-free pizza to provide fun food to the autistic community (casein is the predominant phosphoprotein that accounts for nearly 80 percent of proteins in milk and cheese, and many autistic children suffer from what is called a “leaky stomach” due to their intolerance to casein).

Pizza Fusion also has strong cost controls on its energy, waste and water. It uses Energy Star Certified appliances, rated most energy efficient, and uses only compact fluorescent light bulbs that use one-third less energy than conventional bulbs. Overall, a Pizza Fusion store uses 30 percent less energy than a typical pizza restaurant.

The stores also reduce their waste stream and associated costs through a supply procurement system based upon a 60-day decomposing goal that is enabled by food containers made from 100 percent corn starch and utensils that are made from 100 percent potatoes. They install low-flow faucet aerators that cut water waste by 40 percent. They use low-flow, dual-flush toilets and waterless urinals. They even give customers 25 cents off their meals for every pizza box returned for recycling. And deliveries are made by company-owned hybrid cars, which lower fuel costs and bring more cost savings. Cha-ching--straight to their bottom line!

So the question is: does "Going Green" sell?

“What we are seeing is that customers are voting with their dollars in support of businesses that are offering green solutions,” Haley says.

The business results of this consumer trend for Pizza Fusion mean 70 franchises sold in about a year covering approximately a dozen states with 10 store openings and another 15 anticipated by year’s end.

So, do you want to make money in this Green Economic Revolution and create sustainable competitive advantage? The steps outlined by Pizza Fusion are compelling:

1. Make sustainability the core element in your product design, cost management and branding to increase your margins and gain competitive distinction.
2. Identify and supply those green specialty products that mean something special to customers searching to buy green.
3. Invest in technologies that reduce costs and emissions to gain sustainable cost control and reduce exposure to higher fossil fuel and water prices.
4. Doing green (vs. going green) creates binding customer loyalties generating sustainable revenues.

Try these four green elements in your business. You may be surprised to find your customers and work associates have been waiting on you to capitalize on their enthusiasm, creativity and loyalty. And if you are looking for a business opportunity, start investigating franchises like Pizza Fusion that are designing strategies targeting the emerging $4 trillion Green Economy.

And don't miss part two of this series that will outline a grassroots path for "Going Green."

Business Credit Cards Simplify Record Keeping (Entrepreneur.com)

Business Credit Cards Simplify Record Keeping

Here are 5 ways to save time and money in your business.

By Debbie Dragon | August 04, 2008

URL: http://www.entrepreneur.com/money/moneymanagement/bookkeeping/article196036.html

It's true that careless use of credit cards can put you out of business faster than you can swipe your card through the reader.

When used effectively, however, a business credit card can simplify your financial record keeping--and maybe even earn you a little something "extra" for your diligence, too.

Here are five ways a business credit card can help:

1. Separation of personal and business finances

All business owners know how important it is to keep personal finances separate from business finances. A simple way to do this is to obtain a business credit card that's used only for business-related expenses and purchases. When the statement comes, you'll know without a doubt that every transaction listed is associated with your business and can avoid having to review the statement carefully to highlight or circle any expenses that don't belong with your business records.

2. Track employee spending

Most businesses have an employee who's responsible for paying small bills or making purchases on behalf of the business. It can be time-consuming to require that every transaction get your approval before making the payment, especially if vendors come looking for payments when you're in meetings or out of the office. An easier way to keep track of employee spending is to issue designated employees credit cards in their names, linked to your business account.

Most credit cards let you set monthly spending limits per card, so you'll have some peace of mind knowing your employees aren't charging excessively.

When your billing statement arrives, the transactions will be itemized and divided based on which employee made the purchase. If an employee abuses his or her credit card, you'll know before it gets out of hand.

3. Reduce time balancing your checkbook

When you get into the habit of using a business credit card to pay for all of your monthly expenses and purchases, you'll benefit from the reduced time required to balance your checkbook. Instead of having numerous transactions in your checkbook register each month, you'll be able to write a single check to the credit card company. This makes it faster to balance your checkbook and reduces the margin of error since there will be minimal transactions to keep track of.

If you get into the habit of paying the credit card in full each time the statement arrives, you can eliminate the need to pay interest on your purchases by using the grace period. Check with your particular credit card, but most offer at least 20 days' grace, meaning payments made in full within this time period are made without interest accruing.

4. Useful financial statements

In an effort to serve their business customers better, many credit card companies offer a range of reports. In addition to monthly statements, you can also receive quarterly and annual reports to categorize your spending. These additional financial reports can make tax time a breeze. Instead of searching through boxes and files for statements and records, you'll have just about everything you need on a single printout from your credit card company, categorized by the type of expense (gasoline, office supplies, travel, food and hotel, miscellaneous, etc.).

Some credit card companies also allow you to generate custom reports as needed. If you need a list of all payments made to a specific vendor over a certain time period--enter in the details and print out your report!

5. Extra benefits of business credit cards

In addition to making your financial record keeping easier, using a business credit card to handle the majority of your business expenses and purchases allows you to accumulate rewards faster.

Choose a card with rewards you will actually use--if you travel frequently, go with a card that offers airline miles, hotel stays, car rental discounts or free trips. If you don't travel much, choose from one of the many other types of rewards cards, and save on office supplies or gasoline, or get cash back.

Using a business credit card allows you to increase your productivity because it helps you save on time spent managing your financial record-keeping. For small businesses, switching to an all-credit-card system may even eliminate the need for a bookkeeper.

Debbie Dragon is a freelance writer for Creditorweb.com, where she writes frequently on credit cards, rewards programs and finance for individuals as well as business owners. She welcomes feedback at debradragon@gmail.com.

Google 101 para pequeñas empresas

Aqui incluyo un enlace (youtube.com) que contiene un video en español que ilustra las oportunidades que le ofrece Google a los pequeños negocios.