Consider practices and products that weren’t so successful this past year.  It might not be your fault at all but is due to the changes in the economy and spending power of your customers.

What can you do this year to minimize losses and even drive up profits?

• Discontinue unprofitable products
• Brainstorm for new products/services that meet people’s needs in a changing economy.
• Assess what promotional practices worked. 
• Discontinue those that didn’t meet with success over the long term.
• Look for inexpensive or free promotional programs.
• Collaborate with other businesses and develop some joint promotional ventures.
• See if you need to take a parttime job outside your business to meet family and business expenses temporarily.
• Consider what other business people, online and off, are doing.
• Learn how to use social media to your advantage in promoting your business and products.

What techniques are working for you?

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I’ve written about a number of branding strategists at Home Biz Notes.  Perhaps none of them started out deciding to develop a brand, but slowly it has evolved for them and is worthwhile building upon now.

Susan Gunelius on Branding Your Business – The Playboy Way

Branding – The Elm Creek Way

Kyra E. Hicks Discovers Her Writing Niche or Brand

How Do I Brand My Home Business?

Can I Brand – The Trails End Quilters Way?

Have you begun branding your business?

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• Decide on a date and time.
• What will you emphasize…new services, products, reintroduction of current ones (see list on Home Biz Notes post).
• Put up notice in your place of business.
• Tuck notices into purchases.
• Send out cards/announcements which you can make on the computer.
• Possibly plan a program.
• Do you need someone to help?
• Will you have special decorations?
• Whatwill you give as door prizes or hand-outs (keeping them within a reasonable price range)?

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When organizing promotions for your business, consider what group you’re focusing on or targeting.  Perhaps you have different groups.  However, your promotions generally are more effictive if you focus on a particular group at a time.  The same type of techniques might be used, but let each group know how you can fill their needs.

For instance, at Home Biz Notes, I mentioned that online shopping appeals to those with health issues.  If someone with a home or small business has items or services that interest those shoppers (and this can be a wide category).  I also wrote at Small Business Boomers, about statistics that mention the growing appeal of online shopping for seniors and boomers.

How can you appeal to specific groups of shoppers if your business is an online one or can utlize online sales even if it’s a walk-in business?  Here are a few suggestions on your way to organizing:

•  
  • Develop an e-mail list from your customers and ask if you might send them notices of new products or updates on how to use what you’re selling.
  • Develop an e-newsletter and send this out periodically.
  • Notice methods other businesses are using to appeal to online shoppers.
  • Realize that more and more shoppers will be doing their purchasing online in the coming months and years.
  • Have customers fill out a questionnaire denoting their interests in products and services.

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Instead of promoting your business hit and miss, collect these tips and organize them for effectiveness. 

Then check them off as you use them.  Or rate them as you find they’re effective or not.  Remember though, that is often takes some time before you know whether promotional tactics work.  Even then, you may never know which ones were most effective.  However, you can’t sit by and refuse to take any action because you’re uncertain what would work best.

So collect, list and organize your tips as you find them, learn from friends what they found worked well, adapt it to your business.  By writing them down, you at least have begun a plan of action for your business promotion.

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These might consist of simply a gathering at one’s home (if you operate an online or home business) or a time for greeting customers at your walk-in shop.

How do you organize?

• Set a date and time.
• Determine whether you’ll have scheduled hours or simply be open for customers and prospective customers stopping by.
• Will you demonstrate products?
• Will you serve refreshments?  If so, determine what they’ll be.  If you sell food items in your business, serve samples of these.
• Prepare invitations to send by mail, unless you plan on a large gathering.  Then you might put up a sign at your business as well as invitations.
• Are e-mail invitations appropriate for your Open House?
• If others in your town are joining together for a special Open House day or evening, see about planning yours at this time.  You might participate in some cooperative promotion.

If you’ve participated in Open House events, what tips do you have for organizing them?

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  Have you been organizing your business so that you fit an image or brand?  Do you have an image that will linger over time?

• Make a list of words that describe you or your business. 
• What are the best ones that bring vivid images of what you want people to think of you?
• Find or take photos that describe you/your business? 
• How can you develop promotional material that will reflect this idea to your public?

Study other businesses.  What do you think of when you hear their name?  Does their name create an image?  How have they achieved this effect?

At a business conference I attended recently, the idea of branding came up as a strategy the parent company is using to become a household word with the public.  So…how can you organize your marketing to do this, too?

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I used a photo album type portfolio when I operated a quiltmaking business.  That was before scrapbooking was a big attraction.  However, this was ideal for showing off my work at that time.

Now I’m involved in party planning,  Not so much the actual hands-on, being present at the affair planning as providing resources for my customers and helping them do their own affair.  I also look at ways to keep their costs down, yet enable them to have a memorable time.

So a portfolio, utilizing scrapbooking techniques to showcase the party ideas and resources, seems a good introduction and serve as a springboard to creativity.  Once I had a plan set down concerning what I would offer, I started my portfolio. I need to have my mission statement, various levels of involvement, and costs for these worked out.

Then I began planning pages with pictures and resources for the various party options.  At first, I chose a scrapbook I had on hand…a colorful green one with snap closing.  I then began composing the pages that will be slipped into plastic covers. 

This initial portfolio may change.  I even may choose a different type of scrapbook, particularly for different occasions.  Also, I may create different portfolios for various types of parties.

I’ll also develop a blog to accompany this.

Have you ever utilized a scrapbook type of portfolio for promoting your business?  How did you organize it to be effective?

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 Sometimes a blog can be an offshoot of your web site, if you have one.  In other  instances, you begin your online presence with a blog. 

Some possibilities for blog content to make it appealing.  Thus viewers will keep returning, and your business becomes a household name:

1. Include photos. 
2. Keep blog entries fairly short.
3. Use lists of tips and items to make for easy reading
4. Decide whether your blog will be product/service oriented or include some personal interaction.
5. Keep the posts from being dry and preachy
6. Include humor if it’s appropriate
7. Include helpful information that relates to your business
8. Give tips that would relate to your products and be of interest to customers.
9. Give background information about yourself, your products and services
10. If you’re not good at writing, enlist the help of someone who is…perhaps a family member or employee associated with your business.

How have you found a blog effective for your business?

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Here are 5 tips, of the many available, to organize your social media.

1. Join one of these groups and set up your presence
2. Start writing there
3. Avoid coming across too strong as promoting your products and services so you don’t turn people off.  Establish friends and correspondents.
4. Set up a blog and write about your business, your day to day adventures, and your products/services to keep people informed.
5. Do something each day

How have you found social media helpful in your business?

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