So, you finally have a widely recognized brand. What’s your next step? This is a question faced by entrepreneurs after a successful marketing campaign for their initial brand. If you want to grow your business, you can either introduce a new brand or come up with product extensions.

Unfortunately, some entrepreneurs immediately decide to extend their successful brands without analyzing the consequences of their actions. Before you decide on this alternative, you should do it for the right reasons. Brand Curve highlights the top 5 reasons to extend your brand and the main goal is:

Brand extensions can reduce the costs and risks associated with launching a new product. Since the brand name is already known and (hopefully) popular, using that brand name on a new product (particularly when it’s in the same line as the original product) immediately communicates the same level of awareness and perception.

For brand extension to have a value, it should serve the unmet needs of the main brand and expand usage to different segments. If the main brand is strongly associated with one category, you should limit your brand extension within the same category.

Branding for a small business is somewhat tricky and most entrepreneurs are confused about this very important business aspect. To appreciate the value of branding, you can download and read Interbrand’s Best Global Brands 2007 [PDF, 63 pages].

In that report you will see that Coca-Cola’s brand value is worth $65 million. It means that even if you burn all the physical facilities of this company, the brand name Coca Cola is still worth that much. That’s an intangible power your business should strive to achieve. Here are some basic things to do:

Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

The heart of branding lies in finding what’s unique with your products or services. You should know what sets you apart from competition. It can be your fast delivery, friendly customer service, or superior products. You can find this once you do a competitor analysis and talk with your target market. It is also strongly advised not to use price advantage as your USP.

If you are still in the startup stage, try to find out what your major competitors are doing wrong and use that as your key proposition. Even if you are already established, you can still reposition your brand but it must be done very carefully.

Consistent Communication

Once you find that powerful USP, the next step is to integrate it in all your communications such as press releases, advertisements, giveaways, store front, and your company logo. Make sure that you are saying the same message to all channels to achieve clarity and recall.

You might also be interested to read about additional tips on branding that authors can use.

One of the problems with running a business online is the pressing need for fresh articles on your company website - else risk stagnation of search engine results. Writing was hardly a requirement of most business owners, even in the first decade of the Internet. Now, with blogs so popular and so many people saying a business website should have one, you are probably considering it. A good blog can be an ideal branding tool for your company. But who should write for your business blog, and what should you write about?

Maybe you’re too busy, and you may not have a PR department, let alone people with writing skills. What about a comments moderation policy, handling comments, or commenting elsewhere? Should all this be handled by executives, C-level management, non-management employees, or a hired blogger?

If you decide to have a blog, these are concerns you must deal with. Basically, it boils down to this. If you don’t have someone capable of writing regularly - even short summaries - at least 3 days per week, you should either hire someone capable or put the decision to blog on the backburner.

Recommended Reading

Here is some recommended reading:

1. Chris Garrett’s How to business blog without being unprofessional, which is aimed at bloggers who blog for businesses. It’ll give you the perspective of any blogger you might hire.
2. Also check out the Bloggers for Hire blog, run by Jim Turner and Tris Hussey, who run One By One Media. Jim and Tris communicate with a lot of business owners and help them find suitable bloggers. Particularly read Hiring bloggers gaining steam.
3. David Dalka’s Where are the C-level people? which points out that having a non-blogger manage blogs might not be in your business’ best interests.
4. Marshall Kirkpatrick’s Introducing good bloggers and companies to hire them, which is referenced by all the articles in #1-3 above. Marshall writes about how he is currently getting a lot of requests to help hook up bloggers and business owners, and how he’s helping.
5. Liz Strauss’ Successful Blog talks about blogging, developing conversations, and in a general sense is about business blogging.
6. Debbie Weil’s BlogWrite for CEOs offers advice for executives who blog. She’s also the author of The Corporate Blogging Book.

Summary

I know everyone above except David and Debbie, and I know that most of them can help you in some consulting capacity. Some of them are even available for blogging. You can also drop comments in this post, and I’ll do what I can to help you find a blogger, or can point you to resources. (Your email address will not appear in the comment unless you actually put it in the body of the comment.)

We’ll cover what topics your blog should cover in a subsequent article: What is Your Business Blog About. Don’t forget to check out our sister Design blog, which covers various aspects of developing websites and weblogs, including general blogging issues for any type of blog.

Every entrepreneur should advertise to increase awareness and encourage customers to try your products or services. However, a poorly executed advertising will backfire and hurt your business venture. That’s why it is important to avoid the common advertising mistakes such as:

Advertising in All Media

Some entrepreneurs believe that the best way to advertise is to go all out and target all channels like Internet, television, billboards, radio, and newspapers. Even if you have enough money to finance this campaign, you must learn to focus on channels with most readership or exposure to your customers. It requires you to know your target market first so you can tailor-fit all your ads.

Inconsistent Ads

Advertising seeks to create a personality that customers can relate to your company and brands. That is why it is very important that you remain consistent in all your communications. If you advertise about your low price in newspapers for instance, make sure you communicate the same message to other channels like the internet. If not, this will create confusion among your customers.

OA (Overdoing Ads)

Focusing more on the artistic aspect of your ad instead of creating quality content is a very grave mistake. While aesthetic appeal is also important, you should put more emphasis on finding the right content that will surely capture your customers’ interests.

After learning these mistakes, you might want to visit Business Advice Daily to know the 9 ways to improve your ads.

Does packaging really matter? Some entrepreneurs do not want to spend exta money on packaging, firmly believing that the product is very important above all. Besides, most packaging end up in trash cans anyway. On the other hand, others believe in its power to attract customers and encourage product trial.

The best way to settle the debate is to provide some proof on this subject. According to Psychology Blog, product packaging matters. The site has an interesting study about how good wine packaging increases food consumption.

You might think packaging is exclusive to the retail industry, but it is not. It is important even in commodities like sand or sugar. If you look closely, packaging is the first thing your customers feel, see, and buy.

More importantly, it is not an isolated design but very connected with your company and branding. Some business experts say it is a tangible proof of your business’ strong collaboration between marketing, advertising, and even supply chain or logistics.

Perhaps, the soap Dove is a good example of excellent packaging that conveys the brand image consistently – purity and simplicity.

Aside from building your company and brand identity, it is also important if you know how to brand yourself and integrate it with your business. Examples of personal brands include Donald Trump, Martha Stewart, and paparazzi darling, Paris Hilton.

Your personality is almost always attached to your small business. This is more crucial in service businesses because you deal with customers face to face every single day. If customers do not like you, do not expect them to be back even if you have a strong company image. It’s all about personal attention.

If you know how to brand yourself, you can establish long-term partnership with many customers and expand your business through word-of-mouth advertising or referrals.

Know Thyself

The first rule of personal branding is to know YOU – your strengths, weaknesses, charisma, personality, leadership qualities, and even pet peeves. In choosing what qualities to highlight, make sure it is consistent with your business or brand image.

7 Cs of Personal Branding Success

The Alternative Broadcasting Online News Station explains how the 7Cs of personal branding (character, competence, consistency, creativity, courage, commitment, and confidence) help establish your personal touch with your audience.

If you are looking for ways to build brand awareness, it is time you join selected trade shows. These are exhibitions where companies set up a booth to present their new products or services. Tradeshows are commonly sponsored by established associations in your industry.

Additionally, this is also a good opportunity to spy on your competitors and identify new business opportunities. Before joining any trade show, there some things you need to consider:

Consistency

You booth must be coherent with your company or brand image from logo, taglines, name, and overall design.

Visual Effects

Simplicity is the key. Ideally your graphics must be readable in less than 5 seconds. Use bold colors, striking graphics, and unique shape to easily grab the attention of your audience. Focus on a short, single, and very provocative message to convey. Trade show attendees are bombarded with different messages and you must cut through the clutter to be remembered.

Giveaways

Giveaway items must always have your logo and be small yet very hard to throw away. Since all your competitors will probably have some giveaways as well, attendees will have a very hard time if you offer something big for them. They might even throw items away or give them to other people. A flash memory stick is a very good example of a good giveaway.

Picking Prospects

Marketing Idea Blog shares some practical tips on how to pick prospects out of a crowd.

Let’s say you have a product that is not clicking with your target market, despite your heavy marketing efforts. How will you solve this problem?

Traditionally, we will spend market research dollars on surveys and focus group discussions to identify the problem and prevent eventual failure. That means you have shell out more money to make this move.

Instead of you fixing the problem, why don’t you let your customers do it for you? How?

It’s time you learn about crowdsourcing or user-centered innovation.

This basically works by involving your customers in all aspect of your business operations from product development, branding, and even crafting marketing campaigns. While this will also cost you some money, there are times when it can be done for free. BNET explains why:

People will do many things for a business for free, simply because they think it’s fun. Products and companies can become hobbies unto themselves, and many consumers will derive satisfaction from feeling like an insider at a company they’re passionate about. In return, you should give them recognition, exclusive perks, the opportunity to interact with senior company managers, or free products.

Visit BNET to get a step-by-step instruction on using this new approach. You can also read BusinessWeek’s overview about crowdsourcing.

Over on our sister design weblog, we’ve started a series Building a Better Website. The second article, 7 Stages of Setting up a Business Weblog should, in hindsite, maybe have been over here. Nevertheless, this third article deals with the first stage: finding and registering a domain name for your business website and weblog. Since this is not really a design-related topic, it’s here on the small business tips weblog but is still part of the Building a Better Website series.

To help you in the process of finding a suitable domain here is a quick checklist, followed by a screencast video showing you part of the process.

1. Make a short list of domain names, preferably based on your business name.
2. Try to avoid hyphens and numbers, unless they are part of your business name.
3. If you ever plan to sell your business, try to avoid using personal domain names, unless your business is based on your name.
4. Use AjaxWhois to quickly test your shortlist for various TLDs. TLD = Top Level Domain, aka extension. That is, .com, .biz, .net, .etc, are all TLDs.
5. When possible, try to choose the .com version of your preferred domain name. The video below uses .net and .info, but only because they domains in question were not for a formal business.
6. If you cannot find a domain name directly based on your business name, you might consider putting your city or state in front of your desired domain name. For example, if you want breadbakers.com, which is taken, you could try floridabreadbakers.com. The draw back is that if you want to sell your business to someone in another state, they may not want it if they don’t like the domain name.
7. If you register a new name, you have many registrars to choose from. Try to pick a well-known registrar with multiple payment options and auto-renewal. If you plan to build a site that is crucial to your business, then you do not want to let the domain accidentally expire. GoDaddy is one of the largest registrars in the world who match all these criteria. Namecheap is another good choice, though they may not have as many payment options, and renewal is currently manual.
8. Sometimes, you simply have to break out the wallet and buy an existing domain instead of being able to register a new one. This is a decision that’s up to you and based on how you plan to use your domain name.

Click on the start button below to watch the screencast video.

Some entrepreneurs believe in the power of quantity over quality. The common tendency is to launch as many brands as possible in the short period time. You need to put an end on this approach and start focusing on your initial brand. Otherwise, you run the risk of losing your entire business.

In The Origin of Brands Blog, Laura Ries warns companies about knowing your branding boundaries. While launching a second brand is a great strategy to broaden market reach and increase sales, the initial brand must be firmly established first and you must have additional resources.

The man who chases two rabbits catches neither. Unless he hires another man. Can your company afford the resources required to launch a second brand? And resources don’t just mean the money for a second marketing budget, but also the additional drain on management’s time and attention.

Build from your prior success. Do not think that your second brand will save your first brand. In my previous company, the policy is to have at least 2 years gap between product launches. This is enough to measure a brand’s performance and build strong customer base. Still, consider the behavior of your industry as well.