Does Your Small Business Need A Facelift?

How you look affects your self esteem and how your business looks affects your bottom line. But what if you need to improve your business image but have minimal staff or budget to support those changes?

Not to worry. There are some simple tips you can apply that cost nothing or next-to-nothing and that can get almost immediate results. So where do you start? First, you need a plan.

Plan Your Brand

A facelift, also known as an *identity* plan deserves detailed thought because it involves more than your logo and letterhead. Having a plan assures that everything you put before a potential customer carries a unified image so that the customer can identify the product or service with your business. This identity becomes the brand upon which you build future business, so putting optimal resources toward your brand development will provide the best return.

Revamping your brand may be as simple as updating a logo or as complex as creating a many-page website with double opt-in lists, links and affiliations. Because you will likely be living with your choices for a long time, you will want to consider selecting the image that is not only the most acceptable but the one you believe will enhance your success. It is always a good idea to solicit feedback from others when creating something as critical as your identity.

Five Ways to Find the Services You Need at a Fraction of the Cost

How do you find someone to help with your identity plan? Five ways come to mind:

1. Offer a high school or college art student the chance to design what you need in exchange for including the finished work in his or her portfolio. A letter from you verifying your satisfaction with his or her work is a help, too.
2. Post the job on a freelancer site and subcontract the work. Search with your favorite browser for freelance graphic designers, publish your proposal and determine from the bids you receive what works best. (These sites can be global marketplaces so determine if terms of agreement are acceptable before you post your proposal.)
3. Barter services with a designer whose work you know and trust. For example, if your business is landscaping, offering to rid the designer of yard-weeds in the spring may be enough to offset what you need.
4. Offer to introduce a designer to two other clients who would agree to use his or her services. The business referral may be seen as equity for your own work.
5. Buy an already created set from a software or shareware company. Add your business information and voil?, you have got a new look.

Some Words of Warning

Although it may seem like a good or convenient idea to have a family member or friend do the design work for you, it usually turns out to be far more costly not only financially, but also with relationship conflicts. So, weigh the potential outcome before you ask.

Finally, make sure you have the electronic file formats and copyright permissions (or ownership) you need for the work you purchased. After all, you do not want to be seeing your image anywhere but on your business face.

Rebecca Jacoby is a business writer an award-winning designer who has written numerous projects for the web and print. She is the author of the e-book for small businesses, Surefire Design Ideas for the Design-Challenged. For more information see http://www.AFewChosenWords.com

Is It Time For A Copy Facelift?

by Karon Thackston 2003
http://www.copywritingcourse.com

I just had to laugh! During a recent conversation about how often you should change your copy, I had one person tell me Well, if there were any *good* copywriters out there, theyd be able to write it once, and it would work forever! Oh really? Actually, nothing could be further from the truth.

It is extremely rare for advertising copy to last for extended periods of time. Changing your copy is a given, the reason being that people and events change. Since we, as copywriters, are reaching our customers on an emotional level, we have to stay in tune with whats going on in their lives and their worlds. Lets look at an example.

Say you rent mailing lists. Your primary benefit might be that you have the largest lists available offering a minimum of 100,000 names per category. Things are going great, and youre renting lists like wildfire. But then right in the middle of your success the postal service increases rates substantially.

All of a sudden, your rentals begin to drop dramatically. Here you are screaming about the largest lists available anywhere, and your customer is thinking about how much his postage expense is going to skyrocket.

The businesses you rent lists to are now very concerned. What *used* to be your biggest benefit is now your biggest deterrent. Your customers no longer want to rent lists that have a minimum of 100,000 names. Instead, theyd love to be able to rent much smaller lists in the 5,000 to 10,000 quantity range. Yep! You guessed it. Its time to change your copy, USP and all!

Any number of aspects can cause a change in focus for your target customer, and therefore a need to rewrite your copy. Here are some of the more common ones for businesses:

New tax laws
New mandatory expenses (such as a postage increase)
Starting a new business
Closing a business
Stock price increase
Stock price decrease

Business to consumer sales can be affected, too. Personal circumstances that change every day include:

Buying a new home
Retiring
Getting married
Getting divorced
Having a baby
Receiving a tax refund
Receiving an inheritance

What do I recommend? Twice a year, take a good, long look at your copy. What has changed in your marketplace? What laws, regulations, or events have been implemented or have taken place? Will these things have an impact on your customers? How will you respond to them?

Take that information and compare it to what your current copy says. Is your message clear? Are there benefits you need to update or change? Is your copy still making the most positive impact on your potential customers that it can?

If not, dont hesitate to make changes. After all, your copy is your key to new customers and repeat customers. And, as I said in the beginning, hardly any copy will last forever. Eventually, everybody is due for a copy facelift.

Most buying decisions are emotional. Your ad copy should be, too! Let Karon write targeted copy and ezine articles for you. Visit her site at http://www.ktamarketing.com, or learn to write your own copy at http://www.copywritingcourse.com.