House of Istria does PR Week - Repeat after me...

Evening all!

Hope youve all had a productive day! Tonight is going to be a short but sweet post as I'm having a little break while I prepare for tomorrows bullet point list extravaganza! Before we start, I'd like to say a massive hello to all my blog followers and my new readers in America! Was great to look at my blog stats today and see so many readers from the good old US of A. So, hi everyone. Thanks so much for your support x x



REPEAT, REPEAT, REPEAT!

So by now, you should have all hopefully had a think about your business aims, desires, and values, which might have led to you thinking about how your portray yourselves visually as a company. Like we said yesterday, if you are a wedding jewellery maker with values of luxury and femininity, you might choose signature colours such as lilac, white, and grey, you might have a 'feminine' font style on your marketing materials, your packaging might incorporate these colours, etc etc. From these aims, desires, and values, you need to create marketing materials. These include (but arent limited to) your logo, slogan, colours, fonts/typeface; and you should consider them when making your choices in everything else as well; for example, if you are business that creates quirkily shaped pottery, and one of your company values is quirkiness, you might do well to have a quirkily shaped business card, or round-edged corners on your stationery instead of normal corners.

Today I want you to understand the concept of REPETITION. This is the key to great PR. I would say this is probably the most significant of all PR tools. So, now you have a great business foundation in the form of the above things, and now what you need to do is let people know about it. There will be more about this tomorrow in my bullet point list of best marketing materials but right now the word is all you need to remember. REPETITION! This means, now you have your business logo, signature colours, maybe even a slogan reflecting your value/s, you need to now learn to 'walk the talk'. You have to BECOME your business by making every single thing that you do in your realm of business activity relate back to these aims, desires, and values.

So, for example. You leave your business cards everywhere (by 'everywhere' I mean places that attract your target consumer; if you produce handmade cupcakes you might want to leave them at wedding fairs, ask party planners if they can distribubte them with their marketing materials, ask local cafes (obviously ones that dont make cupcakes) if you can leave some there, cute bars, independent shops... anywhere your target buyer might frequent, as well as directly such as always attached within the wrapping of your product and stapled to any stationery- one clever person told me about how whenever they go to a restaurant they actually give one back along with their bill)!
Basically, you look for opportunities to distribute your marketing materials in any possible place and way you can. Note; this potentially may drive 'other halves' slightly insane.

What you are doing here is building brand awareness. Everytime someone sees your instantly recogniseable logo, colours, and font, they think 'House of Istria' or 'Sprinkles Sparkles' or whatever. OR, if they dont, even better. That's subliminal messaging, where your marketing is seen and taken in, but not actually acknowledged. But it's there, resting inside the brain somewhere. Inside your head, your magic muscle is linking your colours and typeface and logo and company name together, so that when it next sees similar colours/logos/or subjects your company might be the first thing that springs to mind. The more often your marketing materials are seen, the more the brain compounds this information, until we reach a point of mass awareness of your product. Think of fast food and you automatically think McDonalds (even if you hate it). Why? Because it's advertised everywhere. Coffee? Starbucks or Costa. Because they are on every high street and discussed weekly by some journalist who is determined to prove coffee chains are evil. (Note; all PR is good PR).
How can a small craft business do this? Easy. You harness the immense power of the internet. At the end of every blog post you write your company name, not your personal name. At the end of every email you do the same. E-PR the best and most accessible form of marketing for small business owners, every piece of e-information has the potential to bear your logo, colours and name. Particularly within social networks such a facebook etc, or blogs, or forums... wherever there is an opportunity for you to write something there is a PR opportunity for you. Which is why the majority of my posts sign off 'House of Istria' rather than my name. Charlie? There are a million charlies out there. House of Istria? One (to my knowledge). Which would I rather have you remember? And dont worry about coming across as impersonal. The content of what you choose to write shows that you are anything but. Remember, you are a business!

Again, the best way to repeat yourself is ONLINE! Not just on your website. But you can create spaces for yourself to advertise (e.g leave your name) by constantly updating your stores, replying to messages on forums, leaving your own posts on forums, creating email newsletters, twittering, facebooking everyone you know (with your name at the bottom yes even though the posts have your name at the top. Tomorrow, my big list of PR + Marketing tools will have a huge array of spaces and places for you to repeat your company name, logo, slogan, colours, whatever; so you can build your brand.

Here are some useful references;

to learn what makes a good logo click here and to find the best ever in-depth resource for logo design click here

to find out a bit more about colour theory for business click here and here

For a very basic but all-you-need link on what makes a good website click here for more click here

Hope this has helped for today... see you all tomorrow!

Lots of love

House of Istria (see what I did there) ;)

xx

ps once again, if this has helped you at all... please leave a comment/add us on twitter/facebook xx