This week, I was running some market research for a small business in the MMA (mixed martial arts) niche using the same strategies of finding profitable easy to dominate keywords that can rank quickly. This time, I recorded the information to make it easy to pass on to the business owner and on this blog.

Finding Keywords In Your Niche:

Market Research to Gauge Organic Marketing Competition

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?

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.

The Small Business Take-Aways on Social Technology

Embrace your customers.

Turn negative customer experiences around.

If you have negative comments out there, find a good will advocate or find people to answer on your behalf that align with your company.

If people are complaining about your product and service, ask them directly how they could do to improve it.

Take the influencers of your market inside your company and give them a sense of belonging.

If your market is ignoring your messages. Give up control and let the market make its own meaning. GoDaddy did this by just giving talking points then free reign on the creative aspect and their company stood behind the finished work. They are now getting better results than their lagging ads.

Thanks to Simon Stapleton for the find!

Jason called it “Follow the Chefs”. The celebrity chefs have done something extremely well. And no, its not being a great chef. There are many, many great chefs out there. The difference between the famous chefs like Julia Child and Emeril Lagasse and their unknown and equally great counterparts is that the famous ones out-share, out-teach and out-contribute.

Famous Chefs Build Brands by Sharing

That’s right, they are giving away more valuable information and content than any of their competitors in a crowded industry. Famous chefs have cookbooks, cooking shows on local networks, cable channels or youtube clips. Famous chefs teach regular people at home how to use the same recipes and make the same foods that they serve at their restaurants and in their homes. They passionately want their audience to follow along and create the same dishes because they are lifting the curtain on how to cook delicious foods and giving away their secrets and styles on cooking.

A famous chef puts their name or brand on a product, and as a consumer you’ll carry that association over of what that famous chef has given you before. You have more faith that their product will be better that the next generic cookware set because of what you’ve experienced with them before.

If a small business can take the same model that has successfully worked for a crowded industry full of greatness and use the same principles. The next question is…

What’s going in your cookbook?

What are you going to tell people that you do that can work for them  about that will get them excited about what you’re doing? This cookbook idea doesn’t have to lead to a purchase right away. It can be a primer in your sales funnel, it can get your name out there along the lines of your biggest competitor. Having your eagerly sought for market pay attention to your business and receive the value you’re giving away puts you a powerful advantage over your competitors, regardless of how crowded your industry is.

You can out-spend or out-teach your competition. –Kathy Sierra.

If you’re a small business without a lot of money, don’t try and compete with your better funded competitors on their turf. Make your own playing field by giving away value to your market. Out teach them. You’ll be on the same level as they are and you’ll have a first mover advantage and build momentum that they’ll be trying to catch up to.

Share your knowledge. Let your market of future clients know what makes your company, products and services so special, and why you are so passionate about it. The means to share is available to you right now using blogs, youtube, social networks, and more. Your market is hungry for this kind of value.

If you’d like to see Jason’s talk the Follow The Chefs portion is from 20:05 to 22:12