The Black Bass Lesson: How hard is it for potential customers to find you?

Recently, we were invited to a friend’s surprise party at the Black Bass Inn in Pennsylvania, and decided to fly up just for the night. The Black Bass turns out to be a charming inn built several decades before the Revolutionary War, but making a reservation wasn’t easy. In fact, it was so hard to find their phone number, I wondered if maybe they had banned telephones as a nod to historic accuracy.

The invitation instructed us to visit http://www.blackbassinn.com, which actually takes you to a porn site called the Boob Tube (with a logo composed of two hot pink cartoon breasts). Okay, that’s funny, but not much help. There are plenty of reviews of the the hotel and its restaurants on various travel and dining sites, but they don’t give a phone number.

Then I started noticing mentions online of people asking if anyone else had the inn’s new phone number. Apparently, the old number was assigned to another customer in the interim between the former owner’s death and the new owner’s re-opening of the inn.

Finally, I went the old-fashioned route and called directory assistance. I had been putting that off, because I wasn’t sure if the hotel was in New Hope or Lumberville, or where in Pennsylvania either of those towns might be. But fortunately that didn’t stump AT&T for long, and soon I was on the phone with a lovely woman at the inn who helped me book what sounds like a pretty fantastic room with exposed stone walls and a view of the Delaware River.

I mentioned to her my experience with the website, which was apparently the first she’d heard of that. She actually guffawed when she pulled up http://www.blackbassinn.com and saw the boobies. Turns out the inn’s real website is at http://www.blackbasshotel.com. Who knew?

Here’s some advice I took myself: Take a few minutes and pretend you’re a potential customer looking for your company online. Try a few variations on your company name — like the Inn and Hotel example. Hopefully, your website and phone and even address are easy to find. But if not, it would be good to know where those potential customers are ending up. Especially if it’s somewhere as colorful as the BoobTube.

One year later, Kagan says social media is still f**king important

If you missed Marta Kagan’s viral sensation titled “What the F**k is Social Media?” from a few years ago, or even if you did see it, you owe it to your business to take a look at her recent sequel. This one is called, appropriately enough, “What the F**k is Social Media: One Year Later.” The presentation includes some interesting numbers, such as Forrester’s finding that three out of four Americans use social technology, as well as statistics on the sheer amount of media being uploaded to Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and others.

But some of the best bits are when she quotes thinkers like analytics evangelist Avinash Kaushik and influential author Seth Godin. According to Kaushik, “Social media is like teen sex. Everyone wants to do it. Nobody knows how. When it’s finally done there is surprise it’s not better.”

On the topic of blogs, Godin says, “The word blog is irrelevant. What’s important is that it is now common, and will soon be expected, that every intelligent person (and quite a few unintelligent ones) will have a media platform where they share what they care about with the world.”

The nugget of this presentation that’s most important to small business owners (as well as those who manage large national and global brands) is that social marketing is different from regular old marketing. Kagan quotes a social media study that found  93% of social media users think a company should have a presence in social media, but she goes on to say, “Believe it or not, that doesn’t mean that 93% of social media users think companies should treat social media as yet another channel for broadcasting bullsh*t.”

While in regular old marketing, companies are accustomed to telling customers what the company wants them to hear, social marketing requires listening as well as talking. It’s a conversation. A two-way street. A street with lots of traffic, where consumers are doing a lot of the driving. 

When you talk to your customers and they talk back, it’s nearly impossible not to listen. And when you listen to what they have to say, you will probably feel the urge to respond to what your customers want.

The great news is that as a small company, you have an advantage over large companies in your ability to move quickly. You can respond more easily to what your customers are telling  you. Large companies have a much bigger ship to turn around, and any significant change will require a zillion meetings for ideas to be vetted and consensus created. Your agility allows you to make sweeping changes on the turn of a dime. 

If you are an entrepreneur and you’re not blogging or not joining social networks, it’s time to start. If you’ve joined the networks but never really figured out who to friend or what to tweet, it’s time to learn. And if you’ve already got a blog, and you post something new every few months whether you need to or not, it’s time to take it seriously and blog as a regular part of your daily or weekly routine. 

If you have no idea how to start, get some help. A new Starter Cards deck called “Build Your Brand With Social Media” can walk you through the process one step at a time. Or get online and find what you need to know for free. 

The important thing is that you get in there and start talking. And even more importantly, start listening.

Small Business Strategies: Business cards, letterhead and other basics

For most companies, a corporate identity package starts with the basics: business card, letterhead, envelopes. But you might want to add other materials, from stickie notes to magnetic signs for your car. Here’s a checklist of items you might want to consider:

• Logo Before you do anything else with your corporate identity, you’ll need to get your logo designed. If you don’t want to spend what an ad agency or design firm would charge, look for a freelance designer. Can’t afford that? Find a designer willing to trade out a logo for something you can provide. Just make sure you have a logo designed professionally by someone with real talent. Once you choose a design, ask the designer to show how it would work in both color and black and white, and in horizontal and stacked format.

• Business card Do not go to the copy center on the corner and get a cheap black and white business card. That will immediately brand you as a shoestring startup, and not one destined for sweeping success. If you’re on a tight budget, you can have your business cards printed digitally, which will limit your choice of paper but will be much cheaper than regular printing. Choose a card stock that feels substantial; you don’t want your card to be too flimsy. Make sure you include all your contact information on your business card, from physical address to email address, phone to fax.

•Letterhead, first page This piece of stationery typically includes your company logo (and company name, if that’s not part of your logo) and physical address. If the company is you and you alone, you might add your name and your email address. Some people include their phone number or website. If you don’t plan on sending out a lot of correspondence by snail mail, you might consider just having an electronic version of your letterhead and not printing it at all. If you ever need a hard copy, you can print it out on a color laser printer. If you do want your letterhead printed, you’ll generally save a good bit with digital printing. A useful rule of thumb is that quantities under 1,000 sheets are usually cheaper to print digitally than offset.

• Letterhead, second page This page generally includes only the logo and company name, with no additional information. If you plan to write long letters, or contracts, this second page can be useful, but some people never use it at all.

• Fax sheet This item is about to become archaic, if it isn’t already. If you’re not a faxer, just skip it.

• Business envelope Commonly referred to as a Number Ten, this is the envelope that fits your letterhead. If you work with a designer who comes up with some fabulous envelope design with special flap or a color printed on the inside, that envelope will be a good bit more expensive to print because it will have to be specially constructed. You might want to stick with a stock envelope that already exists and let your gorgeous logo be the creative part.

• Memo sheets and envelopes Do you see yourself dashing off a lot of handwritten notes to clients and contacts? Handwritten notes seem to be making a comeback, as a backlash to all our electronic communication. You might want a small quantity of note sized paper and envelopes with your logo and contact info.

• Package label You might use a label more often than an envelope. If you anticipate sending more packages or flat mailers than regular business letters, then you’ll want a nice label. If you don’t want to invest in having them printed, use blank labels from the office supply store and get your designer to set up a template so that you can print a sheet of labels on your color printer.

• Stickie notes Pads of stickie notes with your logo can be very useful. On the other hand, if you don’t want to spend the money, nobody’s going to subtract points because you use a basic yellow Post-It instead.

• Signage Will you need signage for your store? The lobby wall of your office? The sides of your trucks? If so, make sure it looks as professional as the rest of your materials.

• Logo apparel Do you want everyone in your landscaping company to wear the same shirt with your logo? Would you like to give away company baseball caps to your clients? Do you like the idea of a necktie with your logo on it? You can find just about anything you want online or at a promotional items company in your area.

• Logo stuff Coffee mugs, pens, clocks, memory sticks, beach towels, you name it. You can put your logo on just about anything that doesn’t move, and probably some that do.

Small Business Strategies: Developing your branding materials

What’s in a brand? A strong brand will express the essence of what makes one company stand apart from the rest. You’ll want your branding materials to reflect the personality and values of your company. And you’ll need to make sure those brand materials show consistency across media, so your website looks like your sales presentation looks like your brochures. Here’s a checklist of materials you might want to include in your branding toolkit.

• Website You’ve got to start somewhere, and the website is as good a place as any. If you don’t need to do business via e-commerce, then your site doesn’t need to be a complicated project. Four or five pages could be plenty. Think of the website as your online brochure. There are plenty of do-it-yourself options out there, but try to pick one a template that looks as professional as possible. If you can afford to have someone design and develop a site for you, do it. Or have a designer work with existing software like iWeb, which omits the need for a programmer. The interesting thing about websites is that a small business can stand as tall as a larger company online.

• Blog site I’m a big believer in blogging for small business owners, and now it’s easier than ever and often free. Sites like wordpress.com allow you to choose from a large variety of established templates and then plop your content in. You can pull free stock photos from Google Images, or pay a subscription fee to photos.com or some other stock house for unlimited usage of professional photography. In most cases, you can add additional pages to the blogsite about you, your company, your products or services. For some small businessses, a blog site might even be an appropriate choice instead of a website. If you do both, focus on offering useful information or interesting tidbits on the blog site and leave the selling for the website.  

• Presentation format Will you need to take prospective clients through a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation when you’re trying to win a project? Do you need a sales presentation in a paper format you could show to someone one-on-one? These materials should spring from your brand look, using the same colors, typefaces, logo and so on. Sometimes it’s worth the money to have a designer develop a template for you that you could use over and over. Beware of trusting your own creative skills with PowerPoint, unless you really do have some design talent. One of the fastest ways to make your company look unprofessional is to show a presentation that looks homemade.

•Advertising Will your marketing plan include paid advertising? Newspaper and magazine ads, radio and television spots, outdoor boards and online ads all deserve a professional touch. If you can’t afford an ad agency, get creative and trade out services with a local ad shop. If you’re starting a bakery, maybe they’d trade an ad campaign for free birthday cakes for their employees and clients. Or see if you can talk a freelancer into taking on your campaign in exchange for a week at your vacation condo or a truckload of firewood or tax preparation or whatever you have to offer.

• Collateral Do you need a sales brochure? A catalog? A newsletter? Once again, the look and feel of these materials will reflect the caliber of your brand, so don’t put out something that compromises your brand. You might want a brochure that includes roughly the same information you have on your website. Or you might want individual sales sheets for various products and services that you include in a folder. That way you can customize the sheets you include for each prospect, by having a number of sheets tailored to specific services or expertise, and including only the ones that apply to that specific prospect. An inexpensive way to do this is to find a standard folder you like at the office supply store, have an art director or designer create the individual sheets in a PDF format, and then  the sheets as needed on a color printer in your office, or even down the street at Kinko’s.