Yesterday, I had the honour of presenting live and via videoconference from the NABI (North Alberta Business Incubator) office in St. Albert.

How it came about would be a whole other post on the power of networking, but I’ll get to that another day. Or maybe later today – we’ll see how it goes. It is officially a holiday, after all. I’ll post a link here later whenever it is done.

The presentation was on Branding for Small Business. I worked down a three hour seminar that I had once planned (but never delivered live) and combined it with a couple of recent projects to create a powerpoint and workbook to go along with the presentation. I also offered a free half hour consultation to anyone who attended the seminar.

So far, only two have responded to the offer – I can’t figure out why no one else has. I gave out at least three free techniques that they could apply to their business for increased results. So maybe they are planning to try those things out and then look me up when they work. That would be cool!

The truth is – I know most of the people in those rooms will likely never think about branding and really looking into the potential power of building a brand through careful positioning.

I really don’t think I did a good enough job in showing the dollar value of branding – in the attempt to deliver information that could be applied immediately I took out the details where the “compelling reason why” was hidden.

I’ll do better on that next time…if I get another chance.

As I mentioned during the early part of the presentation branding is not my forte.

I am a generalist who likes to pull a lot of different things together to create a robust, mostly automated marketing system that builds both brand equity and immediate sales by bringing together direct response principles with multi-media distribution.

What that means is I like to be frugal about things and work first on helping my clients get the most of their current marketing. No one in business with a brick and mortar store or a local service based business can say they do not do any marketing. Your windows, your office, your letterhead, your business cards, brochures, your staff, your service…it’s all part of your marketing!

Too many people confuse marketing with advertising. But that’s another post for another day.

If you can get all your current marketing – in-store, yellow pages, local community guide, newspaper, brochures, business cards, letterhead, newsletters, radio, yellow pages – working together and then add online and direct mail to your existing customers and then adding a public relations angle to all your marketing promotions and events.

Those are the type of things that I like pulling together.

It’s not hard to pull it all together – but it is hard to pull it all together well if you don’t put it all together with your own personal passions and values -which brings us back to branding.

Though I am not a world expert in the concepts behind building a brand, I do understand the basics and know without a doubt that your brand is foundational to marketing success.

During the video conference, the question and answer period brought about some questions that I’ve now had a chance to think about more in-depth and will post additional thoughts that I didn’t think of in time to mention during the video conference.

I am seriously considering doing that through video, but I’m truly not sure how much time small business owners spend scouring for information on marketing their business and whether many of them would like to learn through short videos.

I really have to find an effective way of reaching more business owners directly and in ways that they can relate to.  I just don’t know how to do it, yet.

In my experience, most small business owners wear so many different hats in their business that they spend much of their day “putting out fires” within their operations to deal with marketing at all.

Even when business is slow they have to deal with customer relations, supplier issues, staff relations, advertising (if they do any) — not to mention that they may have family or medical issues that are taking their time and attention.

I guess I’ve discovered that my next major goal is finding a way to deliver this information into the hands of people that can use it. I have ideas in landscaping, renovation, home decorating, retail stores (clothing, sports, furniture) plus some general concepts on wedding, gardening, spa, outdoor living and so on…but I obviously can’t use any of them.

If you know of a way that I can share this information with small business owners who really want to do the most with a small budget, let me know!

I’d love to be able to help more small businesses figure it all out so they can serve their customers and build long lasting relationships to help them ride out any economic storm.