Small Business Branding Manifesto

Marketing. A 20th century relic originally meant to connect a business to its customers. Yet, with it’s invasive nature and clinical talk of prospects, targets, segments, and USPs, it’s actually become the barrier between a business and it’s customer. Perhaps it’s time to think differently about marketing. No. Perhaps it’s time to stop thinking about marketing altogether.

1. Forget Customers and Prospects. Think Partners. Think network. Better still, think Sally Helgesen’s “web of inclusion.” Invite people into your web and feed them. Marketer vs. prospect/customer is a dead-end. Get used to it.

2. Forget Marketing. Feed Your Network. Stop trying to get/acquire/attract clients. It’s too 20th century. It’s dead. People don’t want to be sold. They don’t want to be marketed to. People are hungry, and they want to be fed. Find or build a network of people with common interests and needs. Find out what they’re hungry for and feed them (wasn’t there a Jewish guy who did that a couple thousand years ago?).

2a. Forget Marketing. Think Conversations. “For thousands of years, we knew what markets were: conversations between people who sought out others who shared the same interests . . . Conversation is a profound act of humanity. So once were markets.” (The Cluetrain Manifesto by Doc Searls, David Weinberger, Chris Locke and Rick Levine)

3. Forget Control. It’s an Illusion. Some marketers dislike blogs because they think it gives too much control to the consumer. “If I don’t have their email address, how can I send them my newsletter? How can I market to them? What will make them read my blog?”

Forget control. It’s an illusion. Surrender control to the god of value. Make an impact. Feed your network. If you do that, they will find you. If you don’t, they might read your newsletter (if it gets past the spam filter), but they won’t buy from you. This doesn’t mean forget email. If you can get an email address, get it. But forget control.

4. Forget Selling. Connect. Show up. Do you. Care deeply. Have fun. Add value, and offer it to your network. That sells itself.

5. Forget Logos. Think Gut Feelings. Logos are not brands. They are symbols. Marty Neumeier: “A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or company.” Every single interaction you have with someone contributes to their GUT FEELING about you. Have a logo, because people expect it, but aim for the gut. What gut feeling are you helping to create about yourself?

6. Forget “Think Big.” Think Small. Church of the Customer’s “bite-sized chunks.” Go ahead and offer your $100-$500 per hour service, but know that’s a lot for most people to swallow. Feed your network in bite-sized chunks:

• Free articles
• $25.00 Audio Recordings.
• $15.00 PDF Special Reports.
• $39.00 Email Course.
• $99.00 Live Teleclass

Smaller pieces of value feed more people. Smaller pieces of value are the bread crumbs that lead back to you. Smaller pieces of value build your brand. Smaller pieces of value are easier to share. Smaller pieces of value can be passive revenue. Your $100 - $500 per hour service is much more valuable when you have a solid foundation of passive revenue to support it.

7. Forget “Think Big” (again). Think Be/Do Me. It’s trendy to “think big” about who you are, who you can become, what you can do and what you can offer people. Forget it. Just do/be you. That’s good enough, and it’s all people really want. Test the edges of your comfort zone, and be willing to stretch, but forget TRYING to become anything. It just slows down a process that happens naturally in its own time.

8. Forget “Next Big Thing.” Think Just This Thing. Trying to be/create the next big thing is a distraction. Just do the thing in front of you. Respond to your network’s needs. That’s big enough. Expand your skill sets. Relentlessly. If you do that, one day you may look up and realize you’ve actually created the next big thing.

9. Forget Professionalism. Think Humanism. Stop hiding the best parts of you behind the wall of professionalism. Stop saying “just the right words.” Stop being a stuffed shirt, stuffed skirt, talking head, Mr/Ms. Roboto. Stutter. Stammer. Be vulnerable. Be pissed. Be real. Be human.