In keeping with our summer theme, we thought it might do some of the overachievers some good if we called out a few specific ways in which small business can effectively work on brand-building while everyone else is off at the beach.

As we said, summer is the prime time to catch up on experiments that you’ve wanted to try in terms of branding. But what are some specific things you can do to make sure your brand is at its strongest when August comes to a close?

Make An Announcement: While most companies shy away from product releases during the summer (see our previous post), you can take advantage of the silence in the headlines. If you release a product or improve a service (or offer a new one) during the summer, the media will likely take interest, as they haven’t had much else to write about in regards to new products.

Bury Yourself in Research: Most companies spend a large chunk of time in the fall making plans and strategies for how they will attack the following fiscal year. You can take care of this same sort of thing during the summer and stay ahead of the game. Use your summer to conduct customer surveys or any other activities that will help you better gauge your market.

Do Something New: Maybe you haven’t quite got the hang of mobile marketing or have weaknesses in SEO knowledge. Use the summer to buckle down and become a master at them. Mobiel marketing is a great area to start digging deep, as it is getting more popular by the day. If you can spend your summer learning the ins and outs of such a powerful tool, you’ll have an advantage when everyone else starts revving back to normal as summer ends.

As you can see, there are many ways to build you brand during the summer. It just takes some dedication and a bit of extra work. Save the beach for later…it’ll still be there later and the crowds won’t be as bad.

There’s something about the beginning of summer that is almost magical. Whether it’s an inclination for warmer weather or something instilled in us since childhood when summer meant the end of school, summer is a time for relaxing and playing it cool.

It’s also an opportune time to buckle down on your advertising. There are many ways to take full advantage of people’s love of the summer. When playing to the relaxed and warm summer feeling, even your advertising can have a fun edge to it. Here are a few simple advertising ideas for the summer.

Give your brand some summer flair: While it’s never a good idea to re-brand completely, you can alter your logo and promotional materials just enough to give it that summer feeling. Implement warm summer colors into your logo or website or even create summer-only fliers to promote special offers or sales.

Use summer staples to tie in to your advertising: Consider local summer hotspots in your area. Maybe it’s a water park, a zoo or some form of tourist attraction. Whatever it is, why not offer coupons for those attraction. Create offers that provide these coupons to customers that spend a certain amount of money with your business. You can also consider giving special discounts to customers that are coming to you for anything summer-related.

Hold and promote events such as picnics or other fun outdoor events: While there is a bit of planning and strategy involved, planning outdoor activities for your customers can always help bring in new business. Send out invitations to your customers, including on the invitation that they are welcome to bring friends. You, of course, provide the food and entertainment, and your customers provide the brand loyalty and potential new customers.

So take advantage of summer! It is a great time to chill out and relax, but it is also a great time t start planning for how you can use the season to your advantage when it comes to marketing.

But don’t forget to have some fun while you’re doing it!

What exactly does a duck have to do with auto insurance? Nothing, really…unless the name of your insurance company just happens to sound like the sound a duck makes. The Aflac Duck have the company the boost it needed—and more.

The commercials became a hit, featuring the beloved duck quacking “Aflac” to people that have been the victim of terrible insurance policies. It sounds silly and forced but as anyone that has seen the commercials can verify, they actually work.

Created by the Kaplan Thaler group of New York, the idea for the Aflac duck came about when an agent for the company wa walking through central Park, trying to brainstorm for Aflac. He kept muttering “Aflac, Aflac, Alfac” to himself until he passed a few ducks. As the ducks quacked among one another, the agent realized the similarity between his client’s name and a duck’s quack.

There have been more than 30 commercials featuring the Aflac duck, the most recent of which involved him being involved in physical therapy following an accident. The mascot even has his own Facebook page with a surprising number of followers. What’s more, the duck also has a place along Madison Avenue;s Walk of Fame where he is listed as one of American’s Favorite Advertising Icons.

Of the 30 or so commercials, many have feature celebrities such as Chevy Chase, Wayne Newton, Yao Ming, and Carl Edwards. Other famous cartoon characters such as Bugs Bunny have even shared the spotlight with the Aflac duck.

The Aflac duck hasn’t come without its controversy, though. The famous tagline of “Aflac” spoken in duck-tongue was voiced by comedian Gilbert Gottfried until March 2011. Gottfried was released following some very insensitive remarks about the earthquake and tsunami Japan suffered earlier in the year. He was replaced by the winner of a contest put on by Aflac.

The duck has since become such a huge part of the Aflac brand that he was incorporated into the company logo in 2005.

Check out the Aflac Duck on Facebook and keep up with his physical therapy progress.

We’ve discussed the importance of e-books on this blog before. If you’re a small business owner that wants to be seen as an expert in your industry, e-books can be an invaluable tool. But it takes a bit more than simply getting behind the computer and hammering out 20,000 – 50,000 words of content that your audience and peers will want to read.

There are several key elements to making sure your book goes over well. Some are obvious, but some are also hidden deep in the weeds of promotion. So before you wrap up that e-book and send it out to the masses, make sure you have the following items covered.

• Hire the services of a professional editor. To look like an expert, your grammar should be spot on and your book should flow cohesively. Even if you are an exceptional writer, it always does a world of good to have a second set of eyes cover your writing.

• Your book’s cover needs to be of a professional quality. Don’t just throw something together. A few images and color fades does not make a great cover. Since most books are now sold on-line (especially if you’re releasing your book as an e-book), the cover is the first thing people notice about your book. Make it pop, but don’t make it too busy. This is another area where you’ll need the possibly hire the services of a professional.

• Speaking of covers, your cover image needs to be easily seen in a thumbnail. Go to Amazon and look at the standard size of a cover thumbnail in the product description page. Your cover needs to be able to be conveyed in that small space but also needs to look great in paperback form as well.

• Come up with a great description of four or five sentences. Again, this is a huge factor online. If someone can’t become interested in your book based on your five sentence product description, chances are, they aren’t going to buy the book.

• Seek out people within your industry for reviews. Look for influential bloggers and publications within your industry and send then query letters. Ask what their review polices are and if they would be interested in reviewing your book. This can help generate an online buzz for your book, The earlier you can get this done, the better.

As you can see, an author’s work is never done, especially if you’re going the self-published and/or digital route. Make sure you are ready for all of the post-manuscript responsibilities before sitting down to write you book.

Just like restaurants, car dealerships have also found some creative ways to utilize mobile marketing into their daily tasks. It’s more than just about improving sales figures, but it also comes down to providing a better customer experience and enhancing brand recognition.

The great thing about mobile marketing within the auto industry is that it allows smaller dealerships to compete directly with larger ones. This sort of competition is great for consumers, as it keeps the industry highly competitive.

So how exactly are dealerships using mobile marketing to their advantage?

• Mobile content is more likely to bring new customers to their lot, as opposed to a plain website that can only be accessed from a home computer. Mobile marketing comes in handy when customers are out searching for a car. Mobile marketing gives them a direct link to the best dealers to meet their needs.
• Mobile marketing surveys indicate that car dealerships are one of the most likely industries to benefit from mobile marketing; the average age of mobile internet users tend to be 35 or slightly above. This also lines up perfectly with the average age of most new car buyers.

• Similar to what a few other industries are doing, car dealerships are using check-in technology for consumers that visit their lot. This creates a word-of-mouth advertising on social media that can be invaluable in the auto industry.

• While coupons are much less frequently seen at car dealerships, mobile coupons can still be used to some extent. For customer birthdays or other special events, the dealerships can instantly send customers various special offers such as discounted maintenance, free tire rotations, etc.

• QR code technology in the windows or displays of new vehicles can give consumers more information than ever about the vehicle that may not fit on the traditional sales information tags. This could include consumer reviews or even videos of the vehicle in action.

Mobile marketing is helping business get their information to consumers faster than before. It is also helping consumers get great deals and to make more informed decisions. What are some other mobile marketing tactics you have seen recently when it comes to car dealerships?

Mobile marketing has the power to drastically change the way small businesses engage with their customers. It is much more effective is some industries as opposed to others, based mainly on customer base and existing media platforms.

One industry that has shown just how effective mobile marketing can be is the restaurant industry. From advertising new specials to interactive promotions with their customers, this is an industry that has given other industries a deep well of ideas to draw from.

Customer Loyalty and Incentives: Many establishments have played with the idea of “check-ins.” If a customer arrives at a location and checks-in through social media or even restaurant-specific apps, the establishment rewards the customer after a certain amount of check-ins. Similarly, some mobile apps allow customers to fill in personal information such as phone numbers and birthdays. The restaurant then sends the customer a text with a special birthday offer.

Coupons: In the last few years, restaurants have reported that digital and mobile coupons are being used much more frequently that traditional print coupons. This not only means that the establishment can save money on printing up traditional coupons, but it also means that they can be much more effective in targeting specific coupons with specific customers. With mobile surveys, you can direct offers for certain dishes that would appeal only to people that enjoy that specific dish.

Provide Convenient Timing: Want to promote Happy Hour specials five minutes before 5:00? This is a great way to swerve people that might be undecided as to where to go for after-work drinks. You can use this same tactic an hour or so before lunch to give people extra incentive to visit your restaurant rather than your competition.

Contacts: You can format your mobile marketing materials so that customers need to respond to them in order to activate them and receive the special deals. This gives you access to the names and contact information of the exact customers that are interested in your company, letting you know where to direct your marketing in the future.

What are some other ways you have seen restaurants using mobile marketing to their advantage? Is there anything other industries can take away from these mobile marketing applications?

As mobile marketing becomes more and more necessary for small business to remain competitive, it remains abundantly clear than there are many small business owners that aren’t really sure what mobile marketing entails.

Most owners might tend to think that the key to mobile marketing is mostly about making a few changes to their website to optimize it for mobile devices. While this is certainly important, there is much more to mobile marketing than a couple of website changes.

For example:

• If you have forms on your site, they will need to be updated. Otherwise, most won’t work properly on mobile devices.

• Make sure you add in clickable e-mail addresses, links, and phone number so mobile users can get in touch with you quickly. You can also have a link installed on your sire that sends mobile users directly to your mobile site. This ensures that no matter what sort of device a customer is visiting your page form, they will have instant access.

• Implement QR technology with QR codes. These are great ways for your potential customer to engage with you; QR codes create real-time environments where you can share offers and special deals with customers.

• You need to have a miniaturized version of your site made that is coded especially to be viewed of smartphones and other mobile devices.

• Get involved in mobile-only online ad campaigns. There is a large percentage of your audience that does all of their business online. If you don’t start getting involved in online campaigns, you are missing an entire portion of your target audience.

• Find a way to implement your mobile persona with your brand. The qualities that are present on your old site that speak to who you are as a business need to be present in your mobile campaigns.

It’s important to have an online presence, and mobile marketing is an extension of that. Mobile marketing is, in many ways, a great way to bridge the gap between your offline and online personas, so make sure you’re doing it right.

One thing every small business wrestles with as they are starting out is how to best design their website in order to grab the attention of their audience. Often, you might find that there are certain elements of your company’s web design that are basically pre-determined by your industry. But even in these situations, you can still remain creative in representing your brand while also creating a site that is going to instantly grab people’s attention.

If you’re looking to enhance your existing website or start a new one from scratch, there are a few things you can do via web design to ensure you have a powerful online presence.

Looks ARE Everything: Even to an untrained eye, it is apparent when a website has been hastily thrown together. Take your time when building your site and make sure it has all of the trimmings that you’d expect to see if you were looking for a professional. If your own site wouldn’t cause you to take notice, then you’re not done with the design.

Speak With Pictures: If you can convey a point with a picture rather than 200 words of copy, do it. When it comes to web design, a picture really is worth a thousand words…and potentially a few more readers as well.

Be Particular With Colors: Color selection plays a huge part in your website’s design. Do some research into the subtle emotional values of colors. Blue, for instance, conveys calm. Red conveys urgency. Green is often related to wealth. Also, instead of using bold letters of differing sizes, use variations of shaded tones to separate certain sections of your site from others.

Have a Catchphrase or Slogan: This is just good business practice, as it’s something nice to put on your business cards and printed materials. But a great catchy slogan on your website let’s viewers know right away what you’re all about.

Use Headings: Use subheadings in your web copy. This makes it much easier for readers to browse through your content. It’s also a great way to cleverly add in some keywords.

Most importantly, make sure your website is a good representation of your brand. Anyone that is familiar with your business should be able to make the connection right away.

What are some things you have done to make sure your website is a close extension to your brand?