Whether you are answering your call from your cell phone while enjoying coffee in your living room or not, it is vital that your customers believe they are dealing with an idea-generator and problem solver that can make their business soar. How? Well, there are four things that you need:
• Website basics: You don’t have to be a Wall Street giant to have a targeted, powerful website that magnifies you and your professional excellence to your current and potential customers. You don’t have to create it yourself. In fact, unless that is what you do for a living I recommend you find a true professional to do that for you while you take care of your own bottom line. Most of the better designers will have templates you can choose from and they will walk you through the process and make it easy to understand and use.
• Pick a great URL: This is a critical and often overlooked part of your branding and corporate identity. The primary URL should be short – not more than about 12 characters and easy to remember and spell. This is not the time to get cute with dashes, underlines, unusual spellings and uncommon extensions . While you will want to purchase all the extensions available with your name, your primary extension should always be .com because that is what most people will type in automatically anyway.
• Logo: The thing about a great logo that is vitally important is that it needs to communicate who you are and what you are expert at doing from the first glance and every single time your potential customers see it. The best design in the world won’t work for your business if it does not represent your capabilities well. Don’t do this on your own, get professional help to design a quality logo that works for your business and make sure your contract with the designer includes producing and delivering your mark in every useful format so you will be able to apply it to any and every application you choose.
• Business Card: Now you need to put these tools to work for you in the most used piece of collateral you will probably ever use – your business card. This little piece of paper combines the brand, the message, hits the target consumer right where he lives and makes a great impression. Things like color, the weight of the paper you print it on, placement of the logo, font size and creative use of the back of the card all matter. This is another one that I strongly recommend you consider bringing a professional in to help you design and produce. After all, it is just your business we are talking about here.
OK, there you have my top four. Let me know if you find these useful and we can add another list to help you after you have these basics down and are ready to move ahead. How about social media, self-PR or closing the sale?
