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April 2016

The Monthly Resource Guide For Startup Businesses

Building Your Special Report

Brand

Your brand is an essential currency that’s as good as gold. It says you’re able, capable. creative and committed to succeed. This team of experts has great ideas on how you can build a brand and project an image that says you are up to any challenge: Tami Enfield, Brand Yourself Consulting; Larry Davis, Fox Tracks Print and Marketing Solutions; and Lori Spiess, OffiCenters/VirtualOffiCenters.

Reprinted with Permission Courtesy of New Business Minnesota ©2016 – www.newbizminn.com

Building Your Brand

Publisher’s Note: Every startup business has a unique challenge beyond merely launching: they are creating a brand by how they appear, behave, promise and deliver. Like every new business that’s come before, you can easily be overwhelmed with all the tasks that are beyond your core competencies. To assist you, we assembled this team of business leaders to share their expertise on Building Your Brand. These experts will appear at a free “Building Your Brand” workshop and networking event in the next few months.

For more information, go to www.newstartupmeetup.com Reprinted with Permission Courtesy of New Business Minnesota ©2016 – www.newbizminn.com

Harness the Power of the

Virtual Office

You’re Building a Great Brand. You Don’t Have to Do It Alone. Come In for Flexible Space, Community, Collaborative Environment and New Opportunities.

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By Lori Spiess VirtualOffiCenters

ust because you’re a small business doesn’t mean you can’t stand out in a big way. An import part of standing out is to make sure there is alignment with your brand, what you do, how you act and how your present yourself to the world. Most large successful companies have their fancy board rooms, conference rooms, receptionists and support staff and the latest office equipment. It all supports their brand and image. It sends the message they are successful and have the resources to deliver on their promises. You don’t have to spend a million to look like a million. Even a small, oneperson company, can burnish their brand with a showcase work environment like much larger companies, but at a fraction of the cost by joining the growing virtual office trend. With a virtual office, you get to keep your home office and its advantages, but also acquire an enhanced public persona of corporate brick and mortar with an array of services you can buy on an asneeded basis. For most new businesses, most of which start off home based, the virtual office is the business model for the future. It is not just a low-cost means of projecting your brand image, but many of my clients at OffiCenters/VirtualOffiCenters say it has had a direct impact on their success. It is amazing to see businesses blossom and grow in this model. I often hear people say they didn’t realize there were so many resources and options available to them.

Virtual Office Services The backbone of our virtual office is the array of services that improve your productivity and enhance your image and brand. When a client calls you, we can have someone answer the phone with your company name. People aren’t impressed by the automated phone tree options. Live answering is having a rebirth that’s very retro right now. It’s also interactive. The receptionist can take messages, answer basic questions and schedule appointments. Your callers feel like there are being handled with care. That reflects well on you. We have people to manage your mail, shipping and receiving as needed. If you’re waiting for a check and are out of town, we’ll call you if it doesn’t arrive so you can react. There is someone at “your” office every day to accept mail and packages or to help with presentations, spreadsheets or big projects. Adding virtual office capabilities means you can have a mailbox service, copiers, printers, access to conference rooms and furnished offices. You can even use an office for as little as 30 minutes. Your name is listed in the

building directory. Another reason virtual office plans are catching fire is because they are very flexible. You’re looking at a 30-day c o m m i t m e nt and you only pay for what you need. That equates to a great value! Virtual Community The most significant benefit to emerge in the past few years for our virtual office members is interaction, collaboration and networking. A home office doesn’t have to be lonely. Members come to our office locations not just to use space, but to interact with other business owners. We offer events, such as free networking events, and a Lunch and Learn educational seminar series for clients that showcase client businesses. We even created a whole new social media campaign to keep members up to date on events. Our holiday lunches are legendary. Our spaces are always

VirtualOffiCenters / OffiCenters Continued from Previous Page busy, full of buzz and positive energy. It’s all about creating a real community. Collaboration With the wide variety of members we have, collaboration has become an important tool for helping just about any business look larger and more capable. Projects they couldn’t handle themselves become possible when they can reach out to people with whom they regularly network. With the right partners, everyone can be more effective and efficient. A key way to build your brand is to tell more people about what you do. We help our members do that with our B2B directory called “CONNECT,” where every member gets a free listing and, in return, commits to buying from the network when possible. Through our member newsletter, we help tell their stories by promoting what they are working on, such as their seminars, projects, specials meetings, books and accomplishments in general. The newsletter goes out to more than 1,000 businesses that are part of OffiCenters and VirtualOffiCenters. In that environment, you get an idea of what people are doing. If you need a partner, you can easily assemble a team for just about any project imaginable. Some members report sales increases from 40 percent to 50 percent just from being part of this community. Two attorneys formed a partnership based on a successful collaboration. And a web designer got more business after teaming up with members in IT and social media to start a Google Hangout for live streaming our Lunch and Learn seminars to all five of our locations. And these are just a few of the stories we hear about every day. Collaborating enhances the promise that your brand can deliver. You don’t just project a larger image, you are actually larger. If a prospective client needs a skill you don’t have, you know exactly where to find it. You can increase your sales and promote your business merely by expanding your collaborative resources. Their clients see a difference. We are stronger – Together! Our virtual office members value the home office lifestyle, but isolation continues to be the number one problem plaguing home-based businesses. Getting out of your home office more often has significant ben-

Call To Action Stop at any of our five locations and mention this article to schedule one hour of free conference room time.

efits. Interacting with other virtual office members is a chance to learn from those who are at different stages of their business life cycle and talk to someone who has been there. Information is very powerful. The energy is very contagious. Flex Space We have a variety of space that fit your needs on any given day at a location that is convenient to you. We have 24/7 office space, offices by the hour, open work space, small and large conference and training rooms. Sometimes you just need to be in a productive environment. For that we have drop-in co-working space, which is open space with tables and work surfaces where you can work quietly on your own or casually meet others who are there for the same reason you are. No appointment needed. It’s a magical place. You can hang out all day long or not. You never know what’s going to happen. I can’t go into the spaces anymore without hearing stories of incredible opportunities coming together. Our virtual office members know that when they walk into the co-working space, there will be people looking for collaboration and conversation. It’s all about human interaction, free networking, making connections and creating a sense of community. We’re no longer selling 4 walls like in the old days. Now, our focus is finding ways to help our members raise the bar and run great businesses that live up to their brand. Virtual offices are aimed at what we call gazelle businesses: small, quick, highly flexible and frugal businesses. This isn’t just a stopgap measure until they move into a physical office. This is a business and lifestyle choice. With virtual office options, you won’t have to be a one-man band. As you grow your business, keep in mind that you now have very powerful options to make you more responsive to customers, project a stronger image, preserve your sanity and leverage all the advantages of your home office. NBM Lori Spiess CEO of OffiCenters/VirtualOffiCenters has provided workspace solutions to the Twin Cities since 1981. She is an innovator, leader and motivator who helps businesses do their best work. Her company won Most Innovative Workspace 2014 and she made the 2015 Minnesota Business Magazine’s (Real) Power 50 List. Spiess, a recent cancer survivor, has a new motto: Life is short. Work someplace awesome! She can be reached at: [email protected] or (612) 373-7070 www.virtualofficenters.com

Reprinted with Permission Courtesy of New Business Minnesota ©2016 – www.newbizminn.com

‘Brand Power’ The Value of Your Brand and What promoting This Value Can Mean to Your Business! Brand Value Ultimately Resides in the Mind of the Customer, So Keep It Top-of-Mind. By Larry Davis

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Fox Tracks Print and Marketing Services

he value of a brand – “Brand Power” – as with many business concepts, is something most business owners may have a less than perfect understanding of what the term really means. This limits our ability to effectively develop marketing plans to create the kind of brand we want to project. So, exactly what is brand value? What does it mean to create and promote an effective brand? Simply put, the value of brand is determined by its perceived value in the marketplace. High brand value – a brand with high equity – means that the brand has the ability to create some sort of positive differential, response and emotion. This can mean that your brand is easily recognizable when encountered in print or on the web. It can mean that your brand is one of the first ones recalled when prospects asks themselves or others, “Who could I call for help with this?” It could mean that individuals would be willing to pay a premium price for your brand’s offering. All of these are examples of Brand Power. A company with Brand Power has a readily recognizable brand, a brand that is recalled quickly and easily when needed, one that individuals are willing to pay a premium price to acquire, and a brand that is recommended to others. These are all characteristics of a high value brand.

Where on your financial statements is the value of a brand listed? It is difficult to find a universal chart of accounts label. As an intangible asset, some might place it under “goodwill” or “retained earnings.” I’ve helped build and implement branding strategies for decades at Fox Tracks Print and Marketing Services. I tell my clients that their Brand Power should reside in the mind of the consumer. Managing Your Branding Elements to Create Brand Power. The value of a brand is made up of two elements: 1) Brand image needs to reinforce your brand value on every possible contact you have with a customer or potential customer. 2) Brand awareness is everything you do in terms of marketing and actions to promote and reinforce your company’s brand values and brand promise. You create Brand Power in everything you do: logos, websites, marketing materials, building and vehicle signage, marketing campaigns in print and digital, social media, promotional items, branded clothing, etc. Key areas to consider are: • your business name, the names of your products or services • your logo, any tag-line, slogan or promise statement, the style and quality of your website • the style and quality of your printed material your stationary, business cards, letterhead, email signature, etc.

• product pricing and packaging, your premises • where and how you advertise • your company’s community involvement

Fox Tracks Continued from Previous Page • how you and your employees dress, how you and your employees behave • your company’s community involvement It is important that this image is relevant to your customers. It should be clear in what it stands for and offer some point of differentiation from your competition. It is easy to fall into the trap of creating a brand image that has a diverse mix of messages in an attempt to appeal to as many customers as possible. This only dilutes its value. Three Steps for Building a Brand Awareness Strategy Step 1: Segment Branding Efforts to Target Highly Specific Audiences. Brand awareness strategies should focus on capturing the attention of prospects. This applies to direct mail, digital marketing or other direct marketing campaigns. These targeted prospects should be those who have shown an interest by visiting the company website, reading company announcements, or otherwise indicated an intent to purchase. They can also be specified by demographic, geographic or psychographic identified as the brand’s target market. A few examples where these prospects can be found is through data mining, online keyword/ search engine research, or through direct targeting on the right social media networks at the right time. Step 2: Use Retargeting to Establish Strong Brand Recall. Retargeting through direct mail is a successful tactic today as many companies have forgotten the benefits of making physical touches in our current digital age. Retargeted digital display ads are those aimed at users who have previously visited your website or interacted with a digital asset. Using digital retargeting, especially in display ads, can stimulate brand recall and encourage prospects to come back to your site. There are four general ways that you can use retargeting to establish stronger brand recall amongst current and prospective customers: • Retarget individuals with a preliminary brand awareness. • Retarget people who have previously visited your website. • Focus on people who have opened an email or who responded to a direct mail touch. • Track users who have searched for your product by name. Step 3: Consider More Social Media Customer Engagement Did you know that this year more than 90 percent of marketers agreed that social media was important for their business? Success on social media networks requires companies to generate interesting content and push this content to their targeted audiences. A solid social media strategy can help you to increase brand awareness to your audiences. This will help your brand awareness by: • Improving prospective customer engagement. • Giving loyal customers a place to share your Brand Power. • Building a two-way conversation channel between your past, present, and future customers. • Sharing news, new ideas and success stories with your network. Remember, your brand is a representation of your business. It is the corporate image and identity. Solid branding reinforces your identity, drives positive sentiment, and is essential to ensuring proper representation of your business. Those companies who do it well (imagine Coca-Cola, Starbucks, and Apple) have cornered the market via brand recognition. This recognition was built by brand image and brand

Call To Action If you are interested in the best marketing solutions for your company, Fox Tracks is here to help. Contact Larry at: (952) 890-7798 or email me at [email protected]

awareness. Managing and Maintaining Your Brand Consistency and brand messaging can suffer if guidelines aren’t in place. This is why a content style guide is invaluable. It’s not hard to create and it will help you and your employees: • Keep the company logo, color schemes, and marketing style consistent. • Keep tone, voice, and messaging consistent. • Guide your team on how to write for your audiences. • Help maintain a brand quality, identity and integrity. Remember that your brand represents the whole customer experience, not just your website or stationery, and cannot be changed overnight. You should regularly review your customers’ experiences with your business. This will provide an early indication of any elements of your brand that are underperforming. Prompt action to correct this underperforming element can save a lot of money and negate the need to rebrand your entire business. Budgeting for a Brand Since your Brand Power effects so many areas of your business, it can be difficult to define a budget for building and maintaining it. Setting a budget will keep you from spending money unnecessarily, which can be easy. Make sure what you propose to spend will help promote your brand values and is consistent to brand elements. The key areas you could budget for are: • Design needs, such as a logo, signage, website content, marketing materials, video production or product packaging. • Website and social media pages maintenance and updates. • Premises or vehicles. • Training Time you’ll need to spend with employees to make sure they understand your brand. • Customer service costs to allow them to fulfill the brand promises. You don’t need to do everything at once. You should prioritize based on what you feel are the areas with the most need or will help enhance growth. If you are on a tight budget, as many of my small business owners are, you can create logos, websites, and marketing materials fairly inexpensively if you work with the right creative partner. However, it is a good idea to think about your future growth when devising your image as changing it later can prove costly. You may also find that customers and employees will have already built up a relationship with your brand, which can then make it more problematic and difficult to change. Conclusion Branding has been around for centuries. The term itself is derived from the Old Norse word “brandr”, which means “to burn” as branding was and is still used today to mark the ownership of livestock. Today branding is used with a variety of products, services, people, places, ideas, and concepts with the same purpose in mind – to distinguish each offering from the other. So, choose branding elements that are unique. That means unique logos, slogans, marketing messages, and website design. But, be careful that they are also relevant and clear. Relevancy is determined by what the customer wants. Clarity, by the speed in which the customer can see (or hear) what they want in your brand image. NBM

Larry Davis is an owner and marketing specialist of Fox Tracks Print and Marketing Solutions, a full-service marketing agency that offers design, print, websites, signs, direct mail, email marketing cross-media services for businesses of all sizes. He has more than 29 years experience in business development and direct marketing. He can be reached at (952) 890 7798 or [email protected] www.foxtrx.com

Katelyn Regenscheid and Tami Enfield of Brand Yourself Consulting.

Branding in a Social Media Era The Internet is Hot...and Cluttered. Plan Your Social Media Marketing So Your Brand Message Can Cut Through the Noise. By Katelyn Regenscheid and Tami Enfield Brand Yourself Consulting

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n a world of endless Facebook posts, blogs, Tweets, Pins, and content in general, it’s hard to cut through the noise. With the rise of the internet, your branding and marketing efforts must evolve. A brand can no longer establish itself through excellent sales copy on a billboard. This is the era of social. For decades, brands were built on tried and true methods. Handshakes were exchanged, signs were erected, and companies hired ad agencies to purchase print, television, and radio ads. Brands were defined with a logo, colors, tagline, and a single phrase (such as “family-friendly” or “young and hip”). With the arrival of the Internet and social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, your options for building your brand have greatly expanded. Building an Online Presence If the branding game has changed, what are the new rules? First, your brand must establish an online presence. The most common form of online branding is a website, and it’s expected by your audience. Your website can serve as the base of your online marketing efforts, which means you should be able to recognize its messaging and imagery in all areas of your online marketing. This consistency is important because your customers need to know what to expect from your brand. When Brand Yourself builds custom websites for our clients, we focus on it as a source of

information, as well as a branding tool. Primarily, a website should offer an exceptional user experience. Every interaction your customers have with your brand--even online, pre-purchase, and without human contact—influence their perceptions. Making your website beautiful and navigable is only the beginning of positive user experience; it should be intuitive. While designing your website, consider your most frequently asked questions, and focus on answering them within the structure of your website as well as the copy. Blogging is a key tool in building your brand through a website. What you choose as blog topics reflects your brand values, and your diction builds your brand’s voice. Your blog should answer questions, provide resources, and give insight into the brand. Blogging regularly on relevant topics ensures your brand stays relevant to consumers. For example, Brand Yourself blogs about home tips for a client in the construction industry, a series that regularly garners comments and drives traffic to the client’s website. Your blog content should be shareable; incorporating social share buttons, as well as sharing your blog on social media platforms, can increase readership and direct followers to your website. Additionally, incorporating key words and phrases into your blog copy can improve your search engine optimization (SEO) rankings. Establishing an Online Community While a website is essential to any brand, social media platforms should be chosen wisely. Each social media platform functions dif-

Brand Yourself Continued from Previous Page ferently, from its audience demographics to the messaging of your content. While establishing a presence on every platform may sound enticing, you are better off specializing in two or three. This will allow you to not only build and focus on the community there, but also to become an expert in that platform’s strategy. At Brand Yourself, we specialize in working with clients to not only identify their ideal platform, but also to develop strategic campaigns for it. Let us take a brief look at the major social media platforms. While you shouldn’t limit yourself to these players, they are important to understand. Facebook is possibly the most well-established social networking platform. While it’s used by all age demographics, each age group uses the site uniquely. Recently, their algorithms (equations that decide what shows up in a user’s newsfeed) have changed to require brands to use paid advertising for their posts to cut through the noise. Twitter, born not long after Facebook, oftentimes serves as a tool for customer service, a place to share your employees’ voices (by retweeting their professional accounts), and real-time marketing. Brands can connect with consumers by putting in their two cents on trending topics, oftentimes with a bit of humor. Instagram is an image-heavy platform, and requires beautiful photos along with creative, inspiring, or emotional messages. This platform is especially popular amongst professionals such as photographers, clothing retailers, and designers. However, you might also find a ceramic studio with time lapse videos of the owner throwing pots. Still wondering what else is out there? For consultants, a platform such as Blab could provide breakthrough connections; Untapped is useful for breweries; and Periscope proves unique for realtors. That is just to name a few! Beyond each platform’s distinct parameters, their individual strategies evolve as their algorithms change. An algorithm is a formula designed to determine what shows up in your followers’ newsfeeds. In order for you to break through the noise organically, you must learn to optimize your strategy with each algorithm update. Even the most experienced social media strategists must rely on one, replicable, method of increasing their reach: engagement. Quality engagement is more than responding to customer service inquiries, it’s a conversation with your community. To properly engage with your target market, your brand must bring value, emotion, or humor. You might do this by sharing relevant content, posting useful tips, or tapping into your brand’s voice and sense of humor. Telling Stories While providing utility to your followers reliably builds your brand as an industry leader, it doesn’t necessarily perform as well on social media as another method: stories. Stories about connection, emotion, and real people put the social back in social media. When people feel connected, they are compelled to share, retweet, and repin your story. This is comparable to standing on the cafeteria table at your high school and shouting to everyone about how much you love a story. Needless to say, it can be quite powerful for your brand. Call To Action Call today to learn how Brand Yourself can meet you where your marketing needs are at. From high-level strategy to content creation, our team is eager to build your online brand. (507) 351-9000.

Powerful Stories Will Spread Stories are the heartbeat of social media. When you tell the right ones, your social media followers are bound to engage. Purina Puppy Chow teamed up with SoulPancake (an already famous YouTube channel) in early 2016 to release their #PowerOfPuppies campaign. The duo created a video that told the story of the joy puppies bring to the world. For every view, Purina pledged to donate a pound of puppy chow to a shelter dog in need. The story associates both the viral joy of puppies and the moral satisfaction of helping shelter dogs with the Purina brand. With one of our own clients, Brand Yourself tells stories by featuring their team members on the blog and sharing across social platforms. Because the company is both local and sales-oriented, their social media followers feel connected to the employees. Therefore, this campaign performs extremely well (at least 10 times more organic Facebook reach) compared to content that doesn’t tell a story. What Stories Should You Tell? Sharing the right stories starts with identifying that which is truly important to your brand. If you have not already identified your brand’s core values, goals, and missions, this should be your first step. You should then ask yourself, “How does our company act out these values daily?” The answer may not come to mind immediately, because it’s likely something you take for granted. However, this doesn’t make the answer any less important. In fact, that it’s engrained in your culture is a sign of its relevance to your brand. Once you have identified the stories that represent your brand, sharing them will feel natural. You can create content of any variety to tell a story: interview, editorial, infographic, quote, photo, skit, event, video (to name a few). While that list may seem overwhelming, it serves as a launch point for brainstorming. For each value point you generate, brainstorm at least one method for each type of content. Some forms of content will seem natural, whereas others might feel forced. Based on your brainstorming session, you can determine which content types to forego, and which to pursue. Oftentimes, a company finds it paradoxically difficult to evaluate their own brand and tell its story. Hiring an outside consulting agency is one solution to this complicated problem. Brand Yourself Consulting specializes in hosting Discovery Sessions, which guide your team and unearth your unique brand and messaging. Our team then evaluates your online marketing campaign efforts and develops unique campaign recommendations, strategized to grow your social reach. NBM Tami Enfield, founder of Brand Yourself, has a degree in Multimedia Computer Graphic Design and Advertising. With years of experience, she knows what it takes to get your business headed in the right direction. As well as marketing/advertising experience, she is a professional photographer. She can be reached at (507) 351-9000 or [email protected] www.brandyourselfconsulting.com Katelyn Regenscheid,,is a Project Manager and Content Creator at Brand Yourself. She is a recent graduate of St. Olaf College with degrees in English and Psychology. Katelyn enjoys growing her photography skills and finding new ways to share stories. She can be reached at (763) 656-3323 or [email protected]