5 SECRETS FOR MAKING YOUR LOGO STAND OUT

Your logo is the face of your company. It will often be the first thing people see and the main thing they remember. If asked, most of us could name at least a few iconic logos, whether it be Coca-Cola's cursive script or the namesake bird of Penguin Books. And that's the whole point: You invest time in crafting the perfect logo so it will stick in people's minds.

"Other people have to be able to speak for your brand," says Jonah Berger, author of Contagious: Why Things Catch On (Simon & Schuster, 2013) and the James G. Campbell Associate Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. "You love your company, you think your company is great, but if you're not around, what are people going to be able to remember? And what are they going to tell others?"

The best logos have several things in common. Below are Berger's five keys to a successful logo.

1. Simplicity.

The first element of many killer logos is simplicity. "A good way to think about simplicity is how many moving pieces are there in the logo," Berger says. For instance, the old Apple logo was rainbow-colored, while the current one is rendered in solid black or simple grayscale. That newfound simplicity makes the logo easy to look at, which customers appreciate.

"The easier it is to process things, the more we like those things," Berger says. For that reason, most brands want to present a simple aesthetic that is easy for consumers to digest. Other major brands such as IKEA, IBM and Coca-Cola follow this rule. "It's hard to find iconic logos that have more than two or three colors," says Berger.

FINDING A VOICE FOR YOUR BRAND

Brand awareness is super important. With the right brand positioning, you can attract the exact target audience you're looking for. I know that with AlleyNYC for instance, we want awesome up-and-coming startups to be attracted to our space. We also know that AlleyNYC is an up-and-coming startup. We knew that being ourselves, and being authentic to who we are, no matter how many people we put off, we would attract really great people to join our community.

Here are some tips to help establishing the voice of your brand:

1. Ask yourself: "Who am I targeting?" Is your target older rocket scientists or young hipsters? In most cases, you obviously don't want to talk to your parents the same way you talk to your friends. (Until you get old enough.)

2. Speak to your target. Once you have defined who your target audience is, start speaking to them. Chances are, you have been dealing with them for years and you know exactly who they are. Do what works best as you already know it.

3. Ask the voice: "What would YOU do?" We love this one. It makes our job a million times easier. We hardly have to think about major decisions. In most cases, when something comes up that needs to be decided, we look at our logo and ask her: "What would Alley do"? We ALWAYS get an answer, and most of the time (nobody is perfect), it is the right answer.

5 SECRETS TO CREATING AN IMPACTFUL BRAND

Being a little fish in a big pond is scary, as it takes patience, perseverance and ambition to make any sort of impact. Impact is something The Mars Agency has in spades.

Launched in 1973 by Marilyn Barnett, Mars Advertising (initial name) stepped into the retailer advertising scene as a little fish. Her son, Ken, joined the firm just a few years later knowing full well they needed to find their niche in the saturated market. They knew they had to do something to stand out, and while retailers were their clients, they made a bold move to also involve consumers and manufacturers to carve out a spot in "shopper marketing," a strategy of studying consumers' behaviors as shoppers in various formats.

As the world changed, shopper marketing evolved into a multi-billion dollar industry. And that transition was great for Mars Advertising. While the Detroit-based company used to get the leftovers, they were now one of the leaders globally. They built offices near every major retailer and wrote marketing strategies unique to each brand -- a move that helped them stand out among their competitors.

But after being in business for 40 years, Mars Advertising realized even with all the success, it was time to rebrand. The company knew they weren’t all about advertising but instead, a way of thinking.  As they recast their vision and approach, they changed Mars Advertising to The Mars Agency but that's not where it ended.

Their new tagline, "Create. Impact.” isn’t just smoke and mirrors: It’s a lifetime mission. "Everything happens incrementally, says global CEO Ken Barnett."We create impact in everything we do in our company, with our clients and in the community.”

During rebranding, they knew they had to make sure every aspect of the company and its focus fit the new brand.

Here are the five areas they focused on.

THE BASICS OF BRANDING (A MUST READ)

Branding is one of the most important aspects of any business, large or small, retail or B2B. An effective brand strategy gives you a major edge in increasingly competitive markets. But what exactly does "branding" mean? How does it affect a small business like yours?

Simply put, your brand is your promise to your customer. It tells them what they can expect from your products and services, and it differentiates your offering from your competitors'. Your brand is derived from who you are, who you want to be and who people perceive you to be.

Are you the innovative maverick in your industry? Or the experienced, reliable one? Is your product the high-cost, high-quality option, or the low-cost, high-value option? You can't be both, and you can't be all things to all people. Who you are should be based to some extent on who your target customers want and need you to be.

The foundation of your brand is your logo. Your website, packaging and promotional materials--all of which should integrate your logo--communicate your brand.

Brand Strategy & Equity

Your brand strategy is how, what, where, when and to whom you plan on communicating and delivering on your brand messages. Where you advertise is part of your brand strategy. Your distribution channels are also part of your brand strategy. And what you communicate visually and verbally are part of your brand strategy, too.

MOST ESSENTIAL SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS

In his book Tweet Naked, online marketing expert and Social Media Firm CEO Scott Levy provides the critical information entrepreneurs need to craft a social media strategy that will boost their brand and their business. In this edited excerpt, the author offers a quick look at the tools that can help you track your social media data.

There are tools that can help you track all possible social media data. Most are easy to use if you take the time to learn them, and many have both free and for-fee versions, the latter offering more detail.

The most useful tools are often those on the platforms themselves. For example, one of the simplest metrics that many businesses find extremely valuable is Facebook's PTAT (People Talking About This) score, which measures word-of-mouth marketing. It tracks the number of individual users or unique visitors who have interacted with the page. The number, which changes often, allows you to determine not only how many people are interacting with your pages but also whether that number is staying consistent, dropping or rising. For small-business owners who can't afford a 24/7 social media team, PTAT is a very helpful metric because it is a cost-effective manner of tracking content.

A slightly more complex factor to understand is EdgeRank. Even if Facebook users like a brand, they don't return to brand pages often, if at all. So many businesses look at the impact of showing up on users' news feeds, and EdgeRank is an algorithm designed to help brands increase their news feed visibility.

To understand the algorithm, it's important to first understand what "edge" means. Edge is a term for every possible Facebook action: updates, comments, likes, shares, etc. The algorithm takes into account each user's edges, and then measures the sum total of affinity, weight and time decay in conjunction with each action.

Affinity is the number of repeat interactions, including likes, sharing, commenting, etc., that a Facebook user has with a specific brand. The greater the interaction, the greater the relationship the user has with that brand.

HOW TO MAKE SURE THERE'S A MARKET FOR YOUR BUSINESS IDEA

You've got a killer new product or a service that will have the world beating a path to your door. But is it really something people want? Or is it just something you think they want?

Having solid information about what yourcustomers want to buy -- rather than what you want to sell them -- can save you hundreds of thousands of dollars, as well as peace of mind and sanity.

Here are four ways to think more critically about your business idea before you find yourself stuck with products or services no one wants or needs:

1. Accept the market as a harsh, but fair judge. If you're in business, you simply need to embrace the reality that the market will ultimately dictate your success. That means you have to make sure the numbers support your idea. Get information about the basics:

• Revenues for your category in your local market, regionally and nationally.
• Know how many competitors are out there.
• Determine if the market is new and growing or static and mature.

Say you want to open a clothing store in your area in which customers buy $1 million worth of stuff a year. You're up against 10 competitors. Since the top three companies in most categories usually get 80 percent or so of those revenues, you'll fight the next seven companies for the remaining $200,000. Is that really worth it? Can you ever make a profit?

THE TWO WORDS STEVE JOBS HATED MOST

It's not often that we get to hear new first-hand accounts of what it was like to work at Steve Jobs' Apple.

When we do get a new chance, there's always some new reveal about how he shaped the company's culture.

Take, for instance, this new interview with former Apple VP of Worldwide Marketing Communication Allison Johnson.

From 2005 to 2011, Johnson was one of the few people at Apple to have a direct line of communication with Jobs himself.According to Johnson, the two most "dreaded, hated" words at Apple under Steve Jobs were "branding" and "marketing."

"In Steve's mind," she recalls, "people associated brands with television advertising and commercials and artificial things. The most important thing was people's relationship to the product. So any time we said 'brand' it was a dirty word."

On the subject of marketing, Johnson says that "marketing is when you have to sell to somebody. If you aren't providing value, if you're not educating them about the product, if you're not helping them get the most out of the product, you're selling. And you shouldn't be in that mode."

Wait a second. Isn't marketing what Apple does best? How can the head of worldwide marketing at Apple claim that marketing was dirty word in the company?

Responding to a similar question from her interviewer, Behance CEO Scott Belskey, Johnson explains that Apple treated its launch campaigns as massive efforts to educate the public about the company's new products by effectively communicating what made the experience using them so great:

What was important about that is the marketing team was right next to the product development and engineering teams. So we understood deeply what was important about the product, what the team’s motivations were in the product, what they hoped that product would achieve, what role they wanted it to have in people’s lives. And because we were that close, we were able to translate that very clearly in all of our marketing and communications.

Source | Entrepreneur

TOP 20 CONSULTING BUSINESSES THRIVING TODAY

Although you can be a consultant in just about any field these days, the current top 20 consulting businesses include:

1. Accounting: Accounting is something that every business needs, no matter how large or small. Accounting consultants can help a business with all of its financial needs.

2. Advertising: This type of consultant is normally hired by a business to develop a good strategic advertising campaign.

3. Auditing: From consultants who audit utility bills for small businesses to consultants who handle major work for telecommunications firms, auditing consultants are enjoying the fruits of their labor.

4. Business: Know how to help a business turn a profit? If you have a good business sense, then you'll do well as a business consultant. After computer consulting, people in this field are the next most sought after.

5. Business writing: Everyone knows that most business people have trouble when it comes to writing a report--or even a simple memo. Enter the business writing consultant, and everyone is happy!

6. Career counseling: With more and more people finding themselves victims of a corporate downsizing, career counselors will always be in demand. Career counselors guide their clients into a profession or job that will help them be both happy and productive as an employee.

7. Communications: Communications consultants specialize in helping employees in both large and small businesses better communicate with each other, which ultimately makes the business more efficient and operate smoothly.

8. Computer consulting: From software to hardware, and everything in between, if you know computers, your biggest problem will be not having enough hours in the day to meet your clients' demands!

9. Editorial services: From producing newsletters to corporate annual reports, consultants who are experts in the editorial field will always be appreciated.

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING STRATEGY.

Social media marketing is an important marketing tool for many small businesses as it takes less time and effort. It is effective but it needs to be planned and executed systematically. The following tips will guide you on how to go about it.

1. Planning: Begin to list out your objectives and map out a plan-of-action to meet these objectives. You should think of what you want to get out of social media marketing and how. You must think about your audience and how you are going to reach them. By planning your ideas, you will have something to refer back to in case you lose focus.

2. Commitment: Once you decide to use social media marketing as a tool, it is most effective to be totally devoted to it. You either give it your all or nothing. More harm than good will be done if you go into it halfheartedly.

5 COMMON MISTAKES ENTREPRENEURS MAKE ON TWITTER

Twitter is one of the purest forms of true social media -- conversations and direct interactions in real time happening all day, every day, making it one of the most valuable brand channels for entrepreneurs. You can find out what people are saying in real time about you and can personally connect with an individual in a genuine way.

While you may be promoting yourself or business on Twitter, you may be making a handful of easily correctable mistakes that could be severely limiting your influence and reach on Twitter, as well as hurting your brand.

Here are the five most common Twitter errors and how to correct them.

HOW TO START A BUSINESS IN 10 DAYS

With an executive staffing venture about to open, a business loan from the in-laws gnawing at her conscience and a new baby to care for, Michelle Fish was already feeling the pressure. But what really pushed her over the edge was an unexpected communiqué from the IRS demanding immediate payment of a "huge sum" owed from a prior business in which she was a partner.Poof! Her seed money was gone. "All the spreadsheets, all the forecasting, all the pre-planning took a back seat once that bill came," recalls Fish, hearkening back to the 2003 launch of her Charlotte, N.C.-based firm, Integra Staffing.

Jeremy Ostermiller didn't need a letter to know that he had to get his Denver-based media-tech startup, Altitude Digital, into the black fast or watch his future take a dispiriting U-turn. "I knew it had to be profitable," he says. "I had put my last $500 into it, and I definitely didn't want to move back in with my parents."

A lightning-fast rise to profitability by their respective startups spared Fish and Ostermiller from going belly up. Neither has looked back since. Now a decade old, enjoying seven-figure annual revenues and flush with Fortune 500 corporate clients, Integra Staffing is the third-largest female-owned business in Charlotte, according to Fish. Meanwhile, 4-year-old Altitude Digital, which matches online content publishers with advertisers using an eBay-like bidding platform, is on target to generate $20 million in revenue this year.

Chances are, neither venture would be where it is today if not for the strategically sound groundwork laid by its founder prior to and right after launch. Trying to start a business and make it profitable in a matter of weeks isn't for the squeamish. Nor is it always advisable. But it can be done. In fact, we've condensed the process into 10 intense, highly focused days. Call it our DIY accelerator to launching a business.

Read on to learn how Fish, Ostermiller and a handful of others did it fast--and, more important, did it right.

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