The key goal of your small business’s marketing efforts, particularly when you’re just getting started, is to make an impression, is to be remembered by your customers or potential customers. To be memorable you need to find something your customers or potential customers can identify with, an image that you can own. Then you have to deliver that image in a unique and memorable way, especially in a way that is different from your competitors.
One way you can present your marketing messages in a unique way is to adopt a corporate color and use it on everything you can. Paint your storefront and major interior walls in that color. Print your logo in that color. Use the color on your vehicles, on your baseball caps and coffee mugs, on your signage, on your brochures. Use it on your product packaging. Again, make sure no one else is using that color in your product category in your marketplace.
Just think about it: What’s the dominant color for Coca-Cola? Here’s a hint, it’s close to the same color used by the Target stores. How about John Deere? Or maybe UPS? What about Harley-Davidson? What color do you associate with Shell Oil?
While a corporate color is not a part of any of their official logos, the color, consistently used over time and across their marketing efforts, has become an integral part of their overall identity and has made it easier for customers to recognize their marketing messages, whether a TV ad or an in-store display, whether a delivery truck or uniform worn by an employee.
Dave Ramacitti is co-founder and chief content developer for Marketing Over Easy, a new website dedicated to helping small business be smarter marketers.
To receive a free copy of our information-packed special report “58 Free & Low Cost Tricks to Effectively Promote Your New Small Business” visit us at www.marketingovereasy.com.
© 2010 by David F. Ramacitti. Excerpted from The All-Important Stuff You Gotta Do First to Effectively Market Your Small Business © 2009 by David F. Ramacitti.