Logos & Entrepreneurs

At least once or twice a month I am approached by someone who is starting a new business and is looking for help with a logo design.   A lot of design companies would lead you to believe that without the perfect logo your business has little hope of succeeding.  That’s a load of crap.  Sure, its a lot more fun to think about your logo than it is to worry about the numbers, how you’re going to fill your pipeline, and how you’ll actually SELL your services.  All that stuff is a little scary.  So it is easy to start fixating on the logo instead.

I’m here to tell you that unless you plan on selling tennis shoes to teenagers or cereal to children, your logo is the least of your concerns.  Just make sure it fits the following criteria:

• It looks equally good in black & white as it does in color
• It is easy to ready (no fancy script fonts)
• It looks professionally designed (no clip art)
• You like it

That it.  Really.  Nobody will choose to buy your services or technology because of your logo.  They will buy from you because they have a need and you have the answer.

Thanks to the internet there are dozens of online logo design services, Logoworks.com and 99designs.com are just two that I’ve recommended in the past.  The quality of the work is excellent.  Sure, you get a few really lousy logo concepts but overall I’ve been very impressed with what I’ve seen.   One colleague used Logoworks to design his logo for an online social networking site for hair stylists.  It cost him $300 and this is what he got – he’s delighted.

As part of a case study I’m conducting I decided to get a logo designed for an online business I’m launching called Peace Happens.  The goal of this project is to get a business up and running on the Internet (including e-commerce) for less than $1,200.  It has to be generating revenue before I can spend more than $1,200.  I’m doing this because I see too many start ups and small businesses spending all their marketing budget on the wrong things — like logos and expensive websites — instead of whats important, like GENERATING LEADS.  There are too many inexpensive or free tools on the market (like WordPress) to use when building a website.  And services like Logoworks and 99Designs are an incredible resource for certain types of design work. Read more

Protecting Your Company Website

I spoke with the owner of a small business yesterday who is yet another victim of an unscrupulous web development company.  She has spent thousands with this firm trying to get a simple shopping cart system attached to her website.  After six months of development, argument and tears she’s left with no budget, no shopping cart and a barely functional website that she can’t do anything with herself.

Imagine if I came to you and said, “I’m going to build you a custom designed house.  It will be beautiful and I’m going to charge you thousands of dollars. However,  I’m going to keep title to the land I’m building the house upon.  I’m going to use building materials that only work on my property.  I’m going to let you live in the house, but if you need any repairs you will always have to call me because nobody else can get on the property.  But don’t worry, you’ll own the house.”

Wouldn’t you think I was crazy?  But this happens every day with websites.

You’re too busy to learn how to buy your own domain name so you let your website company do this for you.  That means they own the title to your house.

Then the website gets built using their proprietary inhouse technology.  You are assured that it is easy to use and you will be able to update your website any time you desire.  But this means you’ve used building material that will only work on their property.  And any future additions to your website (i.e., like a shopping cart, video testimonials, etc.) must be custom developed.  So now you can’t use any other repair men on your house, you can’t negotiate the best deal or find the best offer.  You’re stuck with the builder and what ever price they want to charge you.

Then they tell you that the website will get hosted on their server, which means they now own the land upon which your house was built.

Later on in the relationship, if you get tired of working with this web development company you’re basically hosed.  The website you spent thousands of dollars building can’t be moved to any other hosting company.  They own your domain name (www.yourname.com).  If they are really unscruplous they can hold this hostage or sell it back to you for thousands more than the $9.95 they paid originally. Read more

Building a Successful Marketing Dashboard

The marketing mix is getting more and more complicated. It was hard enough to track the results of advertising campaigns, tradeshows and direct mail programs. Now you’ve got search engine marketing, banner ads, pay per click advertising, social networking, mobile marketing and a plethora of other tools at your disposal. One thing that hasn’t changed though is the need to track your results, monitor the performance of your campaigns and measure the return on investment.

Marketing dashboards are a great way of measuring the efficiency and effectiveness of your marketing programs. Simply put, a marketing dashboard pulls all the key performance indicators (KPIs) that you are tracking for each marketing initiative and displays this information in a graphical format. It allows you to easily identify those KPIs that are not meeting expectations so that you can move quickly to adjust a poorly performing campaign. Conversely, you can also quickly identify the campaigns that are kicking butt – and put more time, money and effort into expanding the successful programs. In addition to providing both recognition and accountability for the marketing function, it creates a stronger argument for budget dollars and larger campaigns when programs are working successfully. Read more