Promoting Your Small Business Brand Online

Hi I’m Matt from Kurb!

Kurb offers a wide range of marketing and promotions services from Auckland to New Zealand and online services to clients internationally - check out the www.kurb.co.nz website for bargain deals on cd and dvd copying, colour printing, poster services, internet marketing specializing in  music and small business marketing, talent management, seo, ppc, online video production and promotion,  graphic and web design - or call me on 027 684 8250

Hi it’s Matt from Kurb here and having scratched over some ideas for how to begin developing our retail business, it’s time to get our feet firmly back on the ground - there’ll be no point developing a new business venture if our core business isn’t staying strong.

It’s been my plan to rehaul our main website for a long time now, it’s just coding up designs is not one of my strong points, and I have revised the copy on a lot of my pages several times over, but had reached a point where I felt more than anything it needed a fresh and professional new look so I could take a completely new approach to the bare basics of promotion and marketing as it was being projected on the site.

In order to create a professional impression your website must have a professional, contemporary design, but more often than not, a small business will pay for a fancy web design that looks great but contains little substance to actually motivate the customer.

I’m fortunate to have spent years developing my site to the point where now I know it works well but I know it could also work better, so I’m going to be using this blog to discuss and tackle some of the issue of copywriting and the actual substance of the propositions being made to visitors and potential customers when they reach the site.

There is always a balancing act - you want to make visitors aware of what you can offer them, but at the same time you want to qualify your skills and authority in providing the service or product that your visitor maybe willing to purchase.

Having a good dsign already qualifies to many visitors that you are a professional operation and I did have concerns that my current webdite was not communivating to the broadest possible sample - or important parts of my target market by having a very - well what would you call it? “home made” feel?

The website I have now is only a slight customization of a website a friend helped design 5 years ago. There are obviously successful elements that have to be retained and nor do I want tosterilize the visual feel - but I do want to strike a balnce more toward the corporate customer who has the ability action regular large and simple orders and the traditional background we’ve built from - the little guy with their personal projects.

So as part of the evaluation of the development of a new branding, design and copy feel for the sit, you have to think about what you want to achieve in line with your business goals.

My main business goals in the company are to maintain the level of business we’re doing in cd / dvd duplication as well as colour copying and printing orders including our poster and flyer distribution services. That’s always been the core of our business and basically I see branding as a really strong way to fortify our position as a trusted provider.

Secondly are our marketing services for small business and musicians - whether in Auckland, New Zealand or internationally. Now I’ve recognised this area as having unlimited growth and potential unlike the more reliable physical promotions we provide - but at the same time presents a far bigger challenge given the expectations that low end clients have when spending advertising and marketing budgets.

These clients expect a very high level of service and it makes it hard to develop this area. Again, branding and the way we present the business can play a major part because it helps to manage expectations of clients as well as demystifying the complexity of online marketing and online business models. So although I am not clearly motivated to expand the online marketing, small business marketing and music marketing services we offer, I think that these services could be better presented for a more efficient result.

Finally, there are a large number of supplementary services which we provide under general marketing and promotions, especially in the online area.

Those include graphic design, web design, search engine optimisation, pay per click and adwords advertising, general copywriting services and probably most importantly, video services because they are higher end, have more of a market and has more potential for growth and high margins.

So video marketing and video production services may be in between our traditional music and small business marketing packages and the supplementary services listed above that we might offer “unbundled”, as it has far more potential and greater margins than the individual services.

This raises more branding issues - and that’s what writing these articles is all about - examining this stuff and going over the issues. Is it even worth promoting individual services when all we really want to do is push the packages to build marketing partnerships because

These are issues that we’re facing when we re-examine what is being communicated to our website visitors when they visit our website, when communication and branding is clear and strong, then the right visitors become customers.

Otherwise you get the wrong customers, and you fail to connect with those who have the ability to be your best business partners over time because you haven’t  clearly communicated why what you’re offering is the best choice, and laid down compelling evidence and incentives.

So stick with us right here at the kurb blog as we get stuck into it - common sense branding and presentation for your website that connects you with more of the customers you want.