Archive for November, 2010

Today’s guest post is brought to us by Karen Hodges, owner of Synthesis Coaching.

As a micro-business owner, attracting clients is the lifeblood of my business.

Recently, I discovered that my client attraction strategies weren’t working as well as they needed to be. I had not clearly communicated my brand to my audience of mid-life women in a clear and compelling voice about who I am and how I can help them. Frankly, I was horrified.

So, I’ve begun a journey getting clear about my brand and what sets me and my services apart.

Here are the 7 Steps I’ve been using:

1. Develop a vision of where your business is going, and how you can leverage your brand to get there. Be very specific and describe what success will look like for you and your business, using both pictures and feelings. I’ve found this to be the magic needed toward building a bridge to my business 3 years down the road.

2. Assess the alternatives to your brand. When people don’t choose you and your services, what are they choosing? Why? For whom are you actually the perfect choice?

3. Define your target market. Get extremely specific about who needs what you are offering.

4. Identify how you and your services are different. In fancy marketing terms this is your USP or unique selling proposition, also referred to as your “secret sauce.” Make sure that your brand is clear, compelling, and authentic to who you are. Most importantly, this message must be consistently communicated through all of your marketing pie.

5. Package your differentiators, both verbally and visually. Here’s where you create your audio message, saying who you’re for and what you do that no one else can do as well. Develop a look- and-feel for your brand, too: a logo, color scheme and visual style, imagery and a “voice” to use in your marketing communications.

6. Select the marketing strategies you’ll use to deliver your message to your audience. Look to see where your audience hangs out.

How do they like to receive messages? How your audience likes to receive messages now is critically important with technology offering more avenues to tap into). Your audience might respond to blogging, articles, networking, and hearing you speak on signature topics.

7.  Weave your brand through all your touch points. Every place your brand is seen or experienced by your target audience should be consistent with your core brand identity.

Take a look at brands that you admire and do this extremely well. I’ve noticed that brands doing this well automatically attract more prospects with less effort, connect with ideal clients, charge higher prices, provide more value, and enjoy a more profitable and joyful business. Hey, let’s be honest…isn’t that the reason most of us left our corporate gig to go out on our own?

If taking the time to focus on your brand right now seems like a luxury of time and money you can’t afford…consider what you’re wasting on ineffective branding and marketing. Why wait any longer?

People start their own business for all kinds of reasons.  Some entrepreneurs want to create the latest startup to get gobbled up by Google, others want to build a company that takes on the bigger players in  a space.  Some start out with one small shop and expand to five or six across a specific region over a decade.  Others just want to be a sole proprietor, supplement their income and do something in their spare time.   Some people just want to be their own boss.

As we continue to explore the differing behaviors between “small businesses” and “micro businesses” (businesses with between 1-10 employees) the attitudes and opinions between the two continue to diverge.  Oftentimes when people talk about small businesses it can be any business from one employee to 100.  But it’s usually assumed that a small business wants to grow and expand into a mid-sized business, then a large business and so on.  In truth, all businesses start out in the micro format.  How fast they move to the “small business” category and beyond is up to them, to some extent.  The theory usually is that any small business is started with the intention of growing and a lot of advice and counsel is given, written and produced with that in mind.  But what about the large percentage of small businesses that have no desire (or intent) to grow beyond the micro business beginnings they have?

What we have found is that a majority of micro businesses have little to no desire to expand their business beyond 10 employees, for a variety of reasons.  According to Vistaprint’s recent survey data of our micro business customer base, nearly 74% indicated that they did not want to expand their business beyond 10 employees.  The most popular reason was that they were simply happy keeping their business small.  42% surveyed cited that as the reason they didn’t want to expand.  Another 25% said that their business was a hobby and they were happier running it by themselves, as true sole proprietors.  A further 13% indicated they didn’t have the resources to expand beyond 10 employees, even if the desire was there.   But given that 67% run their businesses from their home, and another 35% hold a full time job in addition to running their business, it makes sense that on the whole micro businesses don’t have the same illusions of grandeur that some traditional entrepreneurs or small businesses do.  But it doesn’t mean that micro businesses are any less important to the overall economy.  With an estimated 25 million micro businesses in the United States alone, they make up a large portion of the economy.  But should they be treated the same as a 100 person “small business?”

What do you think? How do you feel about the prospects of expanding your micro business? Is it something you aspire to do, or are you happier keeping it small?  Please share your thoughts in the comments section.