1. What do you like about the Timeline feature?

2. What don’t you like about the Timeline feature?

3. Would you want Facebook to apply the Timeline feature to your business page (they haven’t said they would but if they did)?

Respond in the Leave A Reply section below.

Thank you for your feedback!

Jennifer Garcia
Owner and President
Logicreative

Jennifer shared her expertise in branding. For the start of 2012, think New Year and a New Look for your business!

In keeping with the radio show’s theme of promoting your business on a budget, Jennifer discussed how even on a tight budget you can find ways to brand your business and the importance of branding for small businesses.

Here are a few thoughts she shared, but click on this link to listen to a recording of the show.

To begin branding your business you must first have a clear vision about your business, so sit down and answer the following questions:

What is your business about?

What are your business values?

Who is your ideal client or customer?

Then with this clear vision devise a marketing plan that fits what your business is and your target audience.

To actually brand your business you need the following:

1. Logo: The core of branding is your business logo
1. Images: If you can’t afford a logo find one or two images from a stock photography site to use instead of a logo in all your marketing materials [be sure to understand the licensing use for the images]
2. Color Scheme: Your marketing materials (logo included) should have a consistent color scheme. Choose 2 specific colors to represent your business (consider the meaning of colors) throughout all your marketing materials.
2. Tagline: A short phrase like “Just Do It” or “You Deserve a Break Today” that describes your business, is catchy, and memorable.
3. Business Summary: 1-2 sentences describing what your business is and the services it offers. This summary should be on all your marketing materials and be your elevator speech/infomercial when you network.

Two Key Words about Branding: CONSISTENCY and MEMORABILITY

Click here to listen to a recording of the show!

©2011 Jennifer A. Garcia, Logicreative
http://www.logicreative.com
This blog post in its entirety and/or portions thereof may only be reproduced and used with permission and attribution.

Winter is the time to reflect on your business accomplishments of the year but also on all that was not completed, a time to evaluate your current direction and your business future.

©2011 Jennifer A. Garcia, Logicreative
http://www.logicreative.com
This blog post in its entirety and/or portions thereof may only be reproduced and used with permission and attribution.

Thanksgiving is a time of appreciation so be sure to thank the people in your life.

Jennifer Garcia of Logicreative thanks her clients, networking partners, interns and her husband for supporting her business.

©2011 Jennifer A. Garcia, Logicreative
http://www.logicreative.com
This blog post in its entirety and/or portions thereof may only be reproduced and used with permission and attribution.

Watch this video to find out what a mentor can do for your business!

©2011 Jennifer A. Garcia, Logicreative
http://www.logicreative.com
This blog post in its entirety and/or portions thereof may only be reproduced and used with permission and attribution.

With no disrespect to the person who asked the question or others who think branding is the “hot new thing”, it’s not new. Brand management was started at Procter & Gamble in 1931 as a result of a famous memo by their employee Neil H. McElroy.

The reason the person who emailed me and many other small business owners think it’s new is because although brand management has been implemented by corporations for most of the 20th Century, it had not been widely utilized to market small businesses. The reason for this is that small businesses couldn’t afford to hire employees or a marketing agency to manage their brand like corporations could nor did they realize that these techniques could apply to them.

However, the advent of new technologies like the internet created a greater demand for marketing and advertising professionals while the demise of traditional retirement plans sent many of these marketing/advertising professionals, who had worked in Corporate America, out on their own. As solo entrepreneurs or small agencies they couldn’t handle corporate clients but with very low overhead and few employee salaries, they could offer their services at a cost that was affordable to small and medium-sized businesses. So they applied these brand management techniques to their new clients. So everything old is new again.

Back to the question, What is Brand Marketing?

You can search the internet and find varying responses to this question. This is mine…

Brand marketing focuses on the establishing, monitoring, maintaining, and promoting of a business or product’s brand identity.

A brand identity is developed by identifying a business’ values, unique selling proposition and target audience. With this clearly established, a brand identity is given a visual representation in the form of a business or product name, slogan or tag line, logo, and packaging design (for a product this would be the design of the container it’s held in, for a service this would be how it’s represented in print or on the web). Once a visual representation has been created, all advertising or promotion for the business/product must consistently utilize this visual representation to market the business/product.

For example, if you can identify the following slogans “Just do it.” “You deserve a break today.” “Melts in your mouth, not in your hand.” with a business name, then these companies have been successful at marketing their brand.

Brand management, however, is not limited to just the advertising and promotion of a business. A brand identity is impacted by the quality of products and services as well as how these products and services are delivered. Just as a business owner must train their employees on how to do their job, they must also educate them on the business’ brand. Furthermore, the employee needs to understand that they are an Ambassador representing the business’ brand so what they do and what they say has an impact on how the business is viewed. Think about it, if you went to a restaurant for the first time and the waiter was rude, brought the wrong order and then disappeared after he brought it, would you ever go there again? Wouldn’t you warn everyone you know NOT to go there? Brand management has always been a concern for businesses but the internet has taken that concern and multiplied it a million times over.

Let’s take for example, the Domino’s YouTube fiasco. For those who haven’t heard about it, a pair of Domino’s employees thought it would be humorous to tape themselves in the Domino’s kitchen, in their uniforms, doing disgusting things with the food and then post that video online. In no time, their video had been viewed more than a million times on YouTube. Although both employees were promptly fired and soon after that Domino’s shop was closed down, because of this video prank, in just a few days, Domino’s reputation was damaged.

This is another the reason why brand marketing and brand management have become terms that are widely discussed by small and medium-sized businesses. Although Domino’s took a hard hit because of the video, they are big enough not only to withstand it but to hire the right people to fix it. Had this been a local Mom and Pop restaurant, they would have gone out of business. The internet has in essence forced small and medium-sized businesses to pay attention, maybe for the first time, to their brand and how its managed.

Therefore, a brand identity both exemplifies and is affected by a business’ values, the quality of their products and services, how they are delivered, how the business represents itself and how it is represented by others. Brand management is how a business establishes, monitors, and maintains their brand. Since some businesses either don’t have an established brand or their reputation has sullied their brand…Brand marketing focuses on the establishing, monitoring, maintaining, and promoting of a business or product’s brand identity.

©2011 Jennifer A. Garcia, Logicreative
http://www.logicreative.com
This blog post in its entirety and/or portions thereof may only be reproduced and used with permission and attribution.

Watch this video for tips on making your website more effective.

©2011 Jennifer A. Garcia, Logicreative
http://www.logicreative.com
This blog post in its entirety and/or portions thereof may only be reproduced and used with permission and attribution.

B2B Networking Expo will be held on Thursday, October 27, 2011 from 5-8pm at the American Legion Hall Meeting Room #2 1610 Old Sulphur Spring Road Halethorpe, MD 21227.

http://b2bnetworkingexpo.com/

Please post one of the following messages onto your Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter profiles and email it to the business you feel could benefit most.

Top 10 Website Must Haves Webinar — Learn how your website works and how to improve it — Sign up today! http://top10websitemusthaves.eventbrite.com/

The Top 10 Website Must Haves Webinar gave me some great information as to how to improve my business website – I recommend you sign up for it! http://top10websitemusthaves.eventbrite.com/

Samples of our work:

Testimonials:
“The site looks great! Thanks for all your hard work — site really is an outstanding addition for the chapter!”
T.C. Cameron
Society of Professional Journalists – Maryland Pro Chapter
http://www.spjchapters.org/maryland/

“Jennifer of Logicreative did one of my first web sites for my business and was great.”

Kathie Callahan Brady
First Financial Options
http://www.firstfinancialoptions.com/

“I had been postponing my website until I could find the company that would suit my needs. I needed someone who didn’t just finish a job to finish it, but rather someone who I could trust to do a great job as well as someone I could establish a working relationship with in order to meet any of my future needs. Well, I found that person and so much more. Now I know why I was postponing. I was waiting for Logicreative to come along.”

Malika Rasheed
Columbia Physical Therapy
http://columbiaphysicaltherapy.net/

“I hired Jennifer to create and design postcard templates and a landing page that would be used to market a target audience. Throughout the entire process Jennifer was knowledgable and extremely ethical. She worked with me to help me determine what I wanted my vision to be. Her work was creative and professional. I would hire Jennifer again for future graphic and web design work.”

Laura Strunk
Realtor
http://www.foreclosure-hope.com/