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14 Tips for Making Your New Small Business Memorable

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Home Page > Marketing > Marketing Tips > 14 Tips for Making Your New Small Business Memorable

14 Tips for Making Your New Small Business Memorable

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Posted: Sep 29, 2010 |Comments: 0
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THE goal for your small business’s marketing efforts, especially during a start-up phase, is to be noticed, is to be memorable in the eyes of customers or potential customers. You achieve being memorable by finding something your customers or potential customers can identify with. Then you deliver that image — your marketing message — in a unique and memorable way, that is, in a way that is different from your competitors. Here are 14 tips for how to make your business both  memorable and unique:

#1 – Adopt a corporate color and use it on everything. Paint your storefront and interior walls in that color. Print your logo in that color. Use it on your vehicles, your baseball caps and coffee mugs, your signage and brochures. Use it on your product packaging. Think about it: What’s the dominant color for Coca-Cola? How about John Deere? UPS? Harley-Davidson? Shell Oil?

#2 – Use a humorous or quirky approach. Who can forget the hilarious Budweiser lizards, or the quirky Quizno’s sponge monkeys? Never heard of the sponge monkeys? Try Google-ing them… They were certainly memorable and perhaps more than a little annoying — hmmm, maybe memorable and annoying tend to go together.

This technique is not for everyone, though. As a business you have to be comfortable with what you’re doing. Could you deal with it if people said about you, “Oh yea, you’re the guys with those weird sponge-monkeys.” Actually, you should be happy if they’re saying that, it means you’re being remembered over your competitors.

#3 – Use a distinctive voice. There are many prominent actors who lend their voices to commercials, like the deep and authoritative timbre of James Earl Jones. While you probably couldn’t afford James Earl Jones, there are distinctive and affordable voices locally you might use. Most radio and TV stations will provide what they call the “talent” (a voice) at no additional cost if you produce your ad with them. Or you might hire an announcer from a classical music station, which relatively few people listen to, or recruit someone from a local college speech department or community theater. Once again, a “voice” that will only heard in your ads, thus making them unique.

#4 – Or you could be your own spokesperson.The late Dave Thomas was THE spokesperson for Wendy’s, the burger chain he founded. He had neither has the slick voice or polished delivery of a professional announcer. However, this is exactly what made him unique. Your competitors can’t use you to promote their business, so using yourself to promote your own business is by definition unique.

#5 – Or you could use an exclusive and recognizable professional spokesperson.  There are many professional spokespersons that by contract will be your exclusive spokesperson. They include “characters” like down home country types, business suit / CEO types, cute ingénue types, sophisticated world-traveler types, motherly types, and so on. Yes, they will cost something. But how valuable is this investment in uniqueness over time, particularly if you’re a new business trying to establish yourself in an already crowded marketplace?

#6 – Use a memorable tagline or slogan. “You’re in good hands with…” I don’t even have to complete the phrase, it is instantly recognizable as the tagline for Allstate Insurance.

A memorable tagline that means something to your customers or potential customers — particularly if it has emotional impact, like Allstate’s — is a great shorthand way to define your business and build identity over time. But your tagline must clearly be different from your competitors; to sound like them is to promote them instead of you.

#7 – Use a jingle or musical signature. Jingles for national products like Coca-Cola — “I’d like to teach the world to sing” — became so recognized they successfully made the transition to popular songdom. You can get a professional jingle for around a thousand dollars. While this is may be the ideal, you might just use a recognizable classical music theme as your musical signature, which is free because it is in the public domain.

The real secret to the success of a jingle is to use it, and use it, and use it, time and again, over a long period — think manyyears here. So that: (A) it becomes absolutely your unique signature; and even more importantly, (B) it becomes embedded in the minds of your customers and potential customers.

#8 – Feature customer testimonials. There is something compelling about a real person delivering a real story about how a product has helped him or her in some way. A good example is the blues great B.B. King, who is a diabetic, demonstrating the value of the One Touch Ultra testing equipment — no finger sticks to interfere with his guitar playing.

#9 – Feature a pretty girl. In this case I’m not talking about using a beautiful woman to illustrate the use of a product to a target audience, such as is done in shampoo or make-up ads. I’m talking about using a pretty girl simply as a compelling visual image, like the whiskey Black Velvet does in their billboards and print ads during the holiday season. A beautiful woman will always turn heads.

#10 – Involve animals. Animals, like the unforgettable Taco Bell talking Chihuahua , can give your business a unique look and feel. For example, all you have to see are the proudly stepping Clydesdales to know what’s being advertised. Budweiser doesn’t have to use its “official” logo, those horses are so familiar they’ve become Bud’s “unofficial” logo.

#11 – Involve kids. Perhaps my age is catching up with me here, but the one name that stands out as the epitome of effectively using cute kids to sell their products is Oscar Mayer. Who can forget those sweet little voices? “Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Mayer wiener…”

My personal favorite, though, is the plucky little guy in the famous Coca-Cola ad who faced down Mean Joe Green.

#12 – Create a memorable “character.” The Geico gecko, the Aflac duck, Morris the cat, Tony the tiger and the Keebler elves all come to mind as famous non-human “characters” that have helped a particular brand of product achieve uniqueness in the marketplace. While they were not literally part of the business’s official logo, they became so closely associated with the sponsoring company that they became an icon for the brand.

#13 – Have a “stand-out” visual look. With its use of intense color backgrounds, usually red, and its recurring circle motifs you would recognize a Target ad even if the logo were somehow left off.

How can you standout? Maybe you produce your TV ads only in black and white, instead of color. Or use only photographs instead of moving images. If no one else in your marketplace is using MTV-like quick cuts, with no image lasting more than two or three seconds, why don’t you? Maybe you could do all of your ads as cartoons, instead of using live people, or only use your employees and real customers, instead of a professional spokesperson.

These techniques can also be applied to your print ads. Give your newspaper or magazine ads a distinct look by using the same unique border treatment, or a certain style of visuals (only photographs or only sketch-like drawings), or the same unusual typeface, or the same general layout (with the same amount of white space from ad to ad).

#14 – Finally, tell a story. Nobody has been better over the years at using brief vignettes to tell an emotionally compelling story in their TV ads than Hallmark Cards. Would the nature of your business lend itself to using some kind of a mini-drama, especially if none of your competitors are using this technique?

Whichever trick or combination of tricks you choose, remember you always have two complementary goals here. One is to be memorable in the minds of your customers or potential customers, and the second is to be unique from all of your competitors.

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Dave Ramacitti -
About the Author:

Dave is the co-founder and chief content developer for Marketing Over Easy, a new website dedicated to helping small businesses be smarter marketers.

To receive a free copy of our information-packed special report “58 Free & Low Cost Tricks to Effectively Promote Your New Small Business” visit us at http://www.marketingovereasy.com/signup.

© 2010 by David F. Ramacitti. Excerpted from The All-Important Stuff You Gotta Do First to Effectively Market Your Small Business © 2009 by David F. Ramacitti.

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