Phantom CTO

Sam Decker wrote a great post on how contribution is greater than communities.

I agree that you can’t build a community just because technology makes it easy to do so, that it is actually useful to your market and to your business. I wanted to point out to small business owners and start ups that a better hook into getting a loyalty within your market is by fostering contributions.

It’s like asking do you have many friends that you can see on the weekends. Then asking how many people would you call at 3 am to help you through a crisis? It’s about the quality of the relationship.

You want your business to cultivate the 3am kind of friends.

The three reasons Decker listed as weighing contribution greater are:

Contribution creates volume.

Lower the barriers to getting into your space –web or offline. Let people interact without having to commit to your projects. Let people do something and be involved in whatever you’re talking about. Don’t make them log in to contribute. Don’t make them go through hoops just to write or voice their opinion on what your work.

Contribution means a commitment to your business

The value of a contribution is in the time and attention someone gave you. That time is valuable. It’s one step closer to building a relationship. It’s one step closer to having a sense of belonging.  Even a small action takes a commitment to move out of an observer to a higher level of interaction. Your business will grow to the extent that people in your market commit to you.

Contribution means authentic marketing assets.

This is something that I’ve seen work directly. One of the fundamental principles of marketing is building credibility not from yourself but from others. A contribution is someone publicly saying something about your company, product or service that you can take and put into your marketing campaigns as a credibility booster. A conversation doesn’t turn into a sale automatically but each contribution can increase the likelihood of others to believe in you.

A great visual explanation of the difference is from Marty Neumeier, author of Zag.

Let your market take ownership of part of your message, let them contribute. Its a long term growth strategy for your business not a new shiny technology that will help your business.

Rohit Bhargava made some compelling illustrations of what the Obama campaign did with their main Obama brand and how it was modified to include special interest groups, many special interest groups. They go one level deeper to serve the interest and give a sense of belonging that matches the main Obama Change brand.

He also compiled Obama’s branded call to action that visually tied together his Change brand and the action needed on a grassroots or one to one level.

While I’m not interested in politics, I am interested in well executed campaigns that I can learn from.

Takeaways I’d ask my clients and small business owners are these.

First, the givens: I’m giving that your business has meaning. I’m giving that your business serves not the mass market but one or many sub-niches in a market.

• How are you combining your message with the interests of your market?
• How easy are you making it for your current clients to take you up on your call to actions?
• How well does a prospective new client in your market feel about your ability to serve their needs?
• How well can your market describe what your business stands for?
• How well does your branding carry your company mission?

After watching Tony Hsieh of Zappos talk about what his strategy was for building web presence, I got to thinking how many other companies are so transparent in what they believe in. How many companies can you tell what their core values are?

I thought I’d have to go far to see an offline example of a company openly sharing their values to their customers but I didn’t. Instead I looked over at my Panera’s bag. On the back was their “recipe”. It was all the things they value that they want their customers to know about. Sure, I knew about the free Wifi and their artisan bread but that’s just the surface of what they want their customers to know about them.

A small business can show their values by listing them where their customers are. If your customers are on your website, let them easily find where you stand on your convictions, your passions and your business purpose in serving them. Your core values should be listed clearly like Yahoo, Google, Zappos and Whole Foods.

But don’t just list your core values. Live and breath the things you stand for. Let your employees and customers know what are your guiding principles. It’s what builds relationships between people and businesses.

What ways does your small business publicly demonstrate their values?

Seth Godin had written on the new logos that Best Buy and Pepsi have pumped big budget dollars into creating for the purpose of capturing market share.

He says that a logo is more akin to a first name or short identifier. I would add to it and say a logo should be a trigger. It should lead to an association with the relationship you have by delivering your brand to your market.

If Pepsi and Best Buy are worried about market share is their attention on a critical marketing factor that will strengthen their brand? No. It’s not. The critical marketing would be renewing and establishing relationships their brand should embody. If those companies don’t know what their brand means or to whom they are building a relationship with, then no amount of logo revamping will help them connect to the people who make up that market share they are looking to call their own.

The Small Business Branding Reality Check

So here’s my reality check for small business who are drinking that Pepsi for their afternoon pick-me-up or who go to Best Buy to look at new computer gear. A logo had nothing to do with your next interaction with those companies. As small businesses look to grow and serve their market, stay focused on fulfilling the expectations that your business wants to project onto your market.  That’s your brand. Its bigger and more important that what your logo looks like.

Big Businesses Have Money to Spend on Non-Core Branding Activities. You Don’t.

Steven Cardinale put together a concept that I think most small business owners should focus on.

I think Pepsi or Best Buy or any of the large brand corporations out there are having a hard time trying to figure out why people connect with their product and consequently they simply spin their wheels working on the external facing components of their brand.  And since they have these huge budgets they have the resources to expend chasing non-core branding tasks.

What you think a logo says about your business, probably isn’t what your market thinks.

Jay Ehret of the marketing spot laid the cards on the table for small businesses who put too much thought into their logo.

The deal is that no one, outside of your committee or focus group that thought up these explanations, will have a clue to those meanings.

So if you think people will look at your logo and see “fluid connections with upward growth” you are deceiving yourself. If you want these explanations for your own internal use, go right ahead. But I think you are spending way too much time on that. You just need a simple visual that relies mainly on a unique font presentation.

Build your brand, spend the money and the time to grow those relationships with the people in your market, not the symbols behind them.