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How to Become a Household Brand

By John Holland of JH Studios, Inc.

There are many challenges to establishing a new business. Often marketing is the last thing on the list while establishing an office or storefront, hiring employees and handling the legal demands of setting up a new corporation or limited company. Rather than think of marketing as an after fact however, you will be more successful if you take your first steps to marketing a new business at the same time as the other 'first steps'. A primary key to success in today's business climate is a solid brand image and a clear public impression of that brand. So how should you approach new business marketing?

Marketing a new business will be successful if you follow a few basic steps all designed to help you look established and reliable. Customers can be leery of start up businesses which is why it is crucial that your marketing material is polished and professional and gives the impression of stability. The center element of this is your logo. A corporate logo appears on business cards, stationary, on the signature line of emails, on employee uniforms and on promotional materials. The logo needs to adequately portray your business and your personality. Once you have a good logo design, print business cards and hand them out like candy. This is the cheapest form of advertising and also happens to be one of the most effective.

Another of the first steps to marketing a new business is choosing a domain name and getting a website up and running. Even if you are not quite ready to create a webpage securing the right domain is critical. Use a professional to help you pick a domain that is searchable and will keep your business at the top of the search lists. Put up a coming soon page so that anyone you have given a business card to does not get lost. Then look to having a professional web company create your site and customize a SEO (search engine optimization) program to ensure customers can find you.

Finally, you can turn your attention to other types of new business marketing including direct mail-outs, print advertising, promotional 'give-away'’ items and brochures. Concentrate on keeping all the separate strands of marketing materials thematically linked to your logo and your crafted business image. The key to becoming a 'household brand' is in the consistency of presentation across all marketing platforms.

John Holland is the founder of JH Studios, Inc, a web design and marketing firm in Tampa, FL.

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www.jhstudios.com

Nice first intel, John. Thank you for sharing and keep up the good work.
Best wishes.
Frederick

frederick May 11, 2010 11:21

It is OK to put all your eggs in one basket if they are hard boiled eggs.

How many baskets do you recommend for eggs that aren't hard boiled? I tried counting the eggs in your basket but just gave up and had some breakfast.

Can you name one company as an example where the logo and domain name were designed first or even at the same time as the other considerations you mentioned?

They say to not pay you any mind, but any man that gives away free bibles to spread the word of God is worth listening to even if he has an unhealthy obsession with eggs. :)

To answer your non-egg related question, most of the clients found on our web portfolio came to us as a business start-up. We guided them to first agree on a business name, secure the domain name for it and develop their logo before printing anything or releasing the name/business for public viewing. Some web design firms have been known to buy the domain name of a brick & mortar store/restaurant that hadn't even opened its doors yet-- telling them that they owned that domain name and if they ever wanted to get a website, they'd have to go thru them to do it. As far as the printing goes, you don't want to print up your business cards, postcards, brochures, etc. w/o already having your domain name purchased with at least a coming soon page up. Most print runs now-a-days (due to the gang run process) are in lots of 5,000. No one wants to have to reprint all of that material just because you now need to add your web address. Yike$!

Wendy Ratel May 11, 2010 12:13

Just to let you know that your intels on Qondio actually do some good, I spent some money on your web site today. I hope to have a new and improved logo sometime soon. After you get it finished, you can post it here on Qondio. Not to put any undue pressure on you, but everyone here will see it.

Oh, and since you are new to the Qondio community, learn to not pay a lot of attention to Franklyn's comments (aka biblefreeorg). They are mostly nonsensical. (he will ask for royalties on the trademarked word, "Nonsensical")

Thanks for the business, Jim. I loved the video you asked me to look at about "How to Make You Woman Happy". Hilarious!

First impressions do count! Your intel has made a good impression on me. Keep up these good intels - sounds like you already have one customer here.
Best wishes,
Laraine

Thank you for you kind post, Laraine. I'm glad I discovered this community. Everyone seems very nice here.

Interesting intel, my question is after looking at your site and dozens of others in the past month, how is a very small business suppose to afford the price everyone wants to charge to help with a website? And, if all of this is new terrority how are we suppose to even know what we need?
Welcome to qondio and as Jim said, don't take biblefreeorg to heart, he is a barrel of laughs!

Deborah,

Choosing the right web designer/SEO expert to help you can be a lot like running through a mine field. Chances are-- you're going to find more mines than safe places to put your foot. There's a lot of people out there claiming to be the best thing since sliced bread when it comes to web design and organic Search Engine Optimization. The best way to tell if you've found the right company is to check their portfolio-- do they practice what they preach by getting their clients to do well on Google? After you've decided that they are the 'real deal' (that they do get their customers high placement), don't just settle for that-- call their portfolio to make sure their customers are happy with their services. Look before you leap, because some web designers (not intestinally, mind you) can do more damage than good. I've seen some sites designed using template based systems and Content Management Systems that were actually making the site undermine itself from a Google standpoint. The site was making itself get duplicate every time the unsuspecting end user (client) added a new page to their website. Duplicate content is a no-no with Google. Other sites that contain FLASH intros and music (what we refer to as "dancing teddy bears") can injure your placement no matter how many links you have coming.

For small companies that have tight budgets it usually comes down to 'elbow grease' or bartering to get what you need done if paying for the services is not an option. Some SEO companies can charge you thousands of dollars to do what you need done (refer back to the mine field analogy).

What all of you are doing here is definitely a great thing for building up your link popularity and PageRank, but it's only one factor in the grand scheme of things when it comes to SEO.

Because of the diversity of my business, I'll be posting a very wide range of marketing and web site design/SEO related articles. I hope you'll find some of them helpful, Deborah. Thanks for reading!
(wow do I blabber on!)

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