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Branding is the single most crucial element to a successful company. Branding is not any one thing; rather, it is a theme that permeates everything. If you are no longer in tune with your brand’s message, your clients feel it too.

A branding workshop can help you uncover your core mission and guide you through creating a long-term plan. You’ll fall in love with your business once again.

What Is Branding?

Branding is one of the most difficult terms to define. The American Marketing Association defines branding as:

A name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s goods or services as distinct from those of other sellers.

Some of the biggest brands in the world, such as Apple, Nike, Amazon, and Netflix, have built instant recognition into their products and services through branding. Even their names evoke certain feelings in consumers. This combination of both physical and emotional triggers is what ties the name, the logo, visuals, and even messages together to form an effective branding strategy.

It may not be an easy process, but branding requires a clear understanding of what your brand is all about. It’s about defining a strategy to help people quickly associate your products or services with a message. It’s about making them stand out from the crowd.

Your branding also gives people a reason to choose you over your competition and allows you to grow by attracting and retaining loyal customers who love what you do. That’s where a branding workshop comes into play.

If you’ve been questioning future goals and are ready to have a clearer picture of your vision, a branding workshop may be just what your business needs.

What Is a Branding Workshop?

A branding workshop is an experience. It brings together a team of teachers, trainers, and creatives to help with paradigm shifts and behavioral adjustments. If you’ve been doing things the “old way” for a long time, it takes a jolt to the system to wake things up.

Branding workshops are perfect for startups looking to define their business and provide the proper framework for growth. Branding workshops are also ideal for brands looking to revamp their images. In either case, a branding workshop will help you as a company define:

• Who you are as a brand
• What your customer truly needs and desires

Branding workshops bring together employees who will align the brand with their core values. It gives your team the strength to move forward in a positive way. It aids in creating the right design to attract new customers while retaining the core customer base that is already loyal to the cause.

What to Expect From a Branding Workshop

Branding workshops pair an experienced team with a solid marketing background with the leaders from your company. You bring in-depth knowledge of your products and services, while the marketing experts bring their knowledge of diving deep into strategy and design.

While every branding workshop is unique, there are core components necessary to define. They include:

Core vision and values

Before you move into branding, it’s necessary to fully define your company’s core vision and values. An authentic and genuine brand comes from knowing what the company stands for, and it can easily share this with consumers. It’s the foundation for building business strength, leading to higher engagement and customer retention.

Start with these core questions: Why was this brand created? What’s the purpose? Not only will the answers guide your customers to do business with you, but the answers will also help attract better employees who can stay true to your mission.

With your answers in mind, you can start setting long-term business goals and deciding where you want to bring the brand in the future. A core vision allows you to create immediate, 5-year, 10-year, and even longer-term goals. It provides a purpose for what you do today and where you’ll go tomorrow.

Positioning

Once your core vision is defined, you can start to see how it fits in the marketplace. Who is your audience? Remember that who you served in the past may not be a perfect fit today, so look to who your ideal customer is based on your new values and vision. What problems do they face, and how will you provide a solution?

As you see your ideal customer, you can start defining demographics. Start with the basics, such as gender, age, and location. Narrow it down by diving deep into personality traits and characteristics. What motivates them? What are they searching for on the internet? You can create engaging experiences once you have clear definitions.

This is also the time to determine how your competition targets this same audience. What’s their approach? How can you do it differently?

Define your marketing activities and how you’ll reach out to your audience. This can help you further align with your branding, as you can let your personality shine in different ways.

Personality

Thanks to social media and the engagement levels of our current business practices, every business has a personality it shares with the world. It might be sophisticated and serious. Or quirky and fun.

It’s about your business being on target with every message it sends out. You are clearly defining what you choose to project to the world and how you want to sound.

With this in mind, you’ll want to make a tagline or slogan that tells the world who you are. Examples include:

• Apple – “Think Different”
• Nike – “Just Do It”
• Amazon – “From A to Z”
• Netflix – “See What’s Next”

It’s more than a look or feel. It’s about emotion and the way people engage with your business. It’s about color, font, and design. It’s about words, copy, and voice. Get it right, and you’ll find a deeper connection with the image while connecting more deeply with your customer base.

As you finish your branding workshop, your core message will come together. You will feel confident you’re moving in the right direction.

If you’re looking for a team to help with your branding workshop or just need some great marketing mojo, reach out to the experts at InnoVision. We’re a full-service marketing team ready to help you find your core values and build them into a brand.

Most business owners have a hard time taking their eyes off the bottom line. While keeping your business profitable is extremely important, you shouldn’t ignore more qualitative aspects of building a strong business. Many small businesses fail to have staying power because they put all of their energy into growing profits and very little into quality branding, marketing, and management. So, in today’s guide, we are going to look at 5 ways to make your small business stronger!

Improve Your Personal Finances

 

As a small business owner, you probably rely on revenue from your small business to pay your own bills. This is not unusual, as most businesses are designed to make a profit for the owner and any investors. However, if you rely very heavily on your business to support your personal finances, you could end up siphoning too many resources from your business to pay for personal expenses. So, the first step to making your business stronger is to make your own finances stronger. You can do this in a variety of ways, but cutting costs and budgeting are two of the best ways. For example, if you’re planning to move into a new home, you can save time and money by contacting the experts at Black Tie Moving.

Connect With Your Customers

 

Customers don’t like businesses that feel like distant, unapproachable institutions. Instead, they want to feel like they’re interacting with real human beings who understand and care about their needs. Make an effort to connect and communicate with your customers. Even if it is just an occasional email, it is good to keep in touch with your customers and form a connection that will improve the public perception of your business.

Network With Professionals In Your Industry

 

Even businesses that have been around for 50 years could always use advice from others. You should never try to take on everything by yourself, especially when it comes to running a small business. So, don’t see professionals in your industry as competitors or adversaries. Instead, reach out to network and potentially even collaborate with your business peers.

Be Active (& Creative) On Social Media

 

These days, social media can be a business’s best friend or worst enemy. Fortunately, it is relatively easy to use social media platforms to promote your business without angering potential clientele. However, you do need to think of ways to be creative and interesting. Otherwise, people will be less inclined to follow, subscribe, share, or like your content.

Reduce Wasteful Business Spending

 

Finally, you have to remember that a business should be able to make money. If your business is in the red, it could be a short-term hiccup or a long-term problem. Either way, you can find ways to reduce cash flow problems by reducing unnecessary business spending. For example, if you use accounting software to manage your business finances, consider shopping around for cheaper solutions that can offer similar results. This way, you’ll have more cash available to invest in other areas of your business.

Looking for even more great articles like this one? If so, be sure to check out some of our other posts on Business Plus Baby today!

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

There are many reasons why someone would want to post to social media. Individuals post to social media to keep up with family and friends, businesses post to bring in more business, and scammers post to gain access to personal data. If you own a small business or have something creative to sell, like crafts or art, posting to social media is a must. Beyond Facebook and Instagram is the latest entry into the social media arena is Tiktok. How to repost on Tiktok is simple, but there are a few best practices you will want to follow.

Why Use Reposted Content

There are several reasons why you will want to use reposted content on your social media page. The first reason is that you can’t possibly create enough content daily to draw new users to your site. You could hire someone to create or find new and useful information, but that could become expensive.

Another reason to use reposted information is to ensure you obtain the highest quality graphics and content. This helps to draw in more customers, those who would be willing to pay for your products.

Visual Content

According to a recent Twitter survey, Tweets that contain a graphic, picture, or a short video will get retweeted more than 35 percent over those Tweets without any photos. Choosing the best content for your brand is important and can help move your products into the right hands. You want your customers to purchase your items, but you also want them to spread the word about your brand. You are not only building a business based on something that a consumer can use or enjoy; you want them to tell all their family and friends to also purchase your brand.

Altering Content

If you are going to change original content, you either need to get permission from the original creator or change the content completely to make it your own. Never take credit for content you did you create yourself. Stolen content could lead to legal problems with hefty fines.

Permission and Credit

It is important to get permission from the original poster of the content to use their creation. However, some photos and graphics are simply “out there” as public domain and can be used by anyone without credit. To be safe, it is suggested that one always gives credit to the original place where you found the content. You can add a line at the end of your post, giving thanks to “@so-and-so” for this content. You could also comment on how much the content was found or liked within your post. Whichever you decide to use, always err on the side of caution, and thank the website or person you took the post from.

Creating content or gathering it from other sources will help to promote your products or services. Taking time to curate the best content for your website may take some of your valuable time, but it is worth it to keep your brand at the forefront of trends, which ultimately leads to sales.

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Taxes are one of two certainties in life. Just because they’re inevitable, that doesn’t mean taxpayers can’t limit how much they pay the government. Capital gains taxes can significantly erode yearly earnings, but it’s possible to reduce or eliminate them. Here, we’ll offer some information on capital gains taxes, as well as some tax avoidance strategies and implementation tips.

What’s the Capital Gains Tax All About?

When people own real estate, stocks, land, businesses, and other assets and sell them for a profit, they’ve achieved capital gains. The government will want their share of the proceeds, which is known as the capital gains tax. Depending on the classification of gains and your yearly taxable income, the rate may vary.

Avoiding Capital Gains

No one wants to hand over a significant portion of their profits to the government. Fortunately, there are several ways to reduce the amount of taxes paid after selling assets, and we’ll go over them in the sections below.

Invest in Opportunity Zones

Since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was established in 2017, qualified opportunity zone funds near me have given investors an incentive to work in distressed communities. By investing in underserved areas, you can potentially reduce or eliminate capital gains taxes. These savings are only available, however, when an investment is retained for the required timeframe.

Select Long-Range Investments

A capital gain may be short- or long-term, and each type has a different tax rate. Any asset held for a year or less is classed as short-term. These gains are taxed at the ordinary rate, which may be up to 37%, depending on your taxable income. To avoid that big hit, pick long-term investments when possible.

Start a Tax-Deferred Retirement Plan

For some investors, most assets and savings are tied up in retirement accounts. It’s best to optimize these accounts to the extent possible by using tax-exempt and tax-deferred plans to eliminate capital gains taxes. When contributing to traditional IRAs, 401(k)s, and other tax-deferred plans, you’ll get a deduction on all contributions made during the tax year.

Be Patient

With this tax elimination strategy, you’ll save now and in the future. Money put into retirement accounts will also grow with time. When you’re ready to make a withdrawal, account growth is taxed at the ordinary rate instead of being assessed a capital gains tax.

Offset Gains

Those holding a range of assets can sometimes offset some gains with losses, thereby reducing or eliminating the capital gains tax. For example, if an investment decreases in value by $5000, but another one is up by $4000, selling both assets would reduce capital gains. You’d only pay the tax on the difference, or $1000, instead of the full $5000 gain on the first investment.

Keep More of Your Hard-Earned Money

Reducing or eliminating capital gains taxes paid on certain assets will help you give less money to the government—and keep more of it in your own pocket. The capital gains tax may range from 0% to 28%, depending on the asset class, your income, and other factors. Tax-deferred retirement accounts, offsets, patience, and long-term investments are all effective ways to reduce or eliminate capital gains taxes. While taxes are an inevitable part of life in America, paying too much isn’t. By following these strategies, investors can reduce tax liabilities and save more of what they’ve worked for.

Image by Rob Owen-Wahl from Pixabay

Cash flow is the number one thing to get right in business. You can’t keep the lights on if you don’t have money to pay the bills. And when 82% of businesses fail because of cash flow issues, it’s more common than you think.

You can’t afford cash flow problems if you want to set your business up for success. Keep reading to learn the typical cash flow issues and how to fix them.

1. No Cash Reserves

It’s not enough as a business to have money coming in. If all you do is pay for expenses and invest in growth, you won’t be able to set aside cash reserves. What happens when something happens that requires an expense you can’t pay for?

While investing in growth is not a mistake, don’t do so without growing your reserves. Ensure you have a minimum amount of money in your business bank account to handle unexpected issues.

2. Late Invoices

Invoices are a must when you sell to other companies. The problem is that those companies will generally pay using net terms. You may not see your payment for between 30 and 90 days.

While this isn’t an issue most of the time, it is when people don’t pay on time. Inevitably, you’ll run into companies that have problems meeting their payment terms. Come up with a way to track unpaid invoices and stay on top of the companies that are late.

3. Excess Purchases

You probably won’t have a problem scrutinizing large purchases. You don’t make them often, so you do everything possible to vet the need for the purchase. The same isn’t always true for smaller items.

Small purchases can take away much of your net profit if you aren’t careful. You’ll need to invest in business spend management strategies to avoid too many small buys.

4. High Overhead

You won’t get away with overhead in your business. You’ll need to pay for utilities, software, and other things to keep your business running. The problem is that many services will raise their price over time and drive up your monthly expenses.

However, you don’t have to accept those price increases if you have other options. Contact your vendors regularly to see if you can negotiate a lower monthly rate. If you can’t, start looking at other vendor options to switch to.

5. Excess Inventory

Yes, it’s a wise decision to carry more inventory than you believe you need. You never know when you’ll get a surplus of demand. You need additional products to meet that demand.

However, there is such thing as too much inventory. Every dollar you put towards your inventory is cash tied up that you can use elsewhere. Keep your inventory levels only as high as needed to preserve your money.

Do Everything You Can to Fix Cash Flow Problems

You can’t afford to get caught off guard in business and not have the cash to deal with immediate problems. Without enough money in the reserve, you’ll suffer from devastating setbacks that put your business at risk.

You need to avoid all the common cash flow problems if you want to see business success. Keep the issues above in mind to make cash flow management easier.

Check out the blog for more insight into managing business finances.