I participated in one of those silly little Facebook exercises a few weeks back. For my status, I posted something along the lines of, “Pick the one word you feel describes me best and post it below as a comment. Then I’ll do the same for you.”

I don’t normally participate in these things, but this one sounded fun. A lot of my Facebook friends posted words I wouldn’t think would top the list of ways to describe me like, “strong” and “inspiring.” I was expecting more “goofy”s and “nuts”s to be honest. These things were wonderful to hear, but one of my friends who I’ve known for years in real life and in the social networking Internet world, PEI real estate agent Carol O’Hanley, left my favorite reply.

The word she chose to describe me was “genuine.”

I can’t even tell you how much that meant to me, especially since Carol knows me in person and we bump into each other all day long in places like Facebook and Twitter. If she perceives me as being genuine, then I’ve accomplished my goal because the last thing I want is someone thinking I’m completely different in person than I am online.

When I started my copywriting business, I already knew exactly the type of clients I wanted to attract because I know what kind of writing I love to do and what kind of people I love writing for. I made the decision to become a freelance copywriter because writing makes me happier than doing anything else and I didn’t want to waste a single day as a writer working on projects that made me stressed out or cranky.

That’s why I market my personality. The content on my website is me. My branding is me. Facebook updates and Twitter one-liners come from me, I share what I’m feeling and what I’m doing even when they don’t make me sound professional 100% of the time. Because ya know what? I’m not professional 100% of the time. I take breaks throughout the day to play with my children and to bake cookies. I conduct myself professionally with my clients, but not to the point of being stuffy.

I guess I found the key to attracting my ideal clients is to be transparent.

My ideal clients will love that my websites are always decorated for the holidays – it’s my absolute favorite part of the Mann Made brand. The people who appreciate my Halloween pumpkin and spider web are the exact type of people I love working with. If someone thinks it’s foolish, that’s the perfect prequalifier for me.

When someone follows me on Twitter, they’ll know right away if they like me or not. They can get a sense from my 140 character tweets of whether or not they like my writing style. When they read through my website and blog posts or browse my portfolio, they’ll like it or they won’t. And I’m just fine with that either way.

If I were to hide the quirky, fun, creative side of my personality by agonizing over every personal Twitter update I made or holding off on the silly humor in my blog posts, I wouldn’t be being me. And being Jaime has worked out pretty well for me so far. I attract awesome clients. I stand out because my website is colorful, fresh and fun. I end up working with people who want to inject their own personality into their marketing because they realize that’s what attracted them to me.

If you wish you had clients with more of a sense of humor why not focus on attracting those types? If you only want to work with people who are serious and focused, work on attracting them.

Afterall, if you’re not being authentic, do you really think you’re doing anyone any favors?

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Last week we got a brochure in the mail from what happens to be our favorite PEI pizza place, J.R.’s Pizza. It was just a plain black and white photocopied sheet of paper and inside was a plain black and white photocopied coupon for their March special. I stuck it on the fridge.

Thursday evening I was cleaning the oven and wasn’t feeling energetic besides, so we decided to order. Because that coupon was on the fridge we thought pizza would be a good option.

When the last slice was gone and my husband was cleaning up, he mentioned that J.R.’s was investing in their marketing. Their pizza normally comes in a plain white pizza box, but this one was stamped with their company name and phone number.

Our little province is packed with pizza places. There must be at least an entire page devoted to pizza in the Yellow Pages. In our tiny community alone, there are at least four places I can name off the top of my head where we can order pretty good pizza.

Because I tend to think in blog posts, I started wondering why the smaller pizzerias don’t seem to even try to compete with the larger chains.

In PEI, is word of mouth enough?

Probably.

Every weekend we get expensive glossy coupons and brochures from the bigger pizza chains but they always go in the recycling bin whereas that plain no-frills coupon from J.R.’s got stuck to our fridge and we used it within the same week we got it.

I wonder if a small “mom-and-pop” pizza place in rural PEI has to invest a significant amount of money into its branding and marketing efforts, or if providing a quality product consistently and doing a monthly mass mailing of a coupon is enough. J.R.’s has no fancy jingle (I don’t even know if they advertise on the radio), their logo looks like a piece of clipart pizza and they don’t use any unique marketing gimmicks. But when we think about ordering pizza, they always come to the front of our minds.

As an entrepreneur myself, I believe that to be the ultimate goal of any small business. You want to be the first person someone thinks of when they need [insert your product or service here].

The simplicity of J.R.’s marketing tells me that what’s really important isn’t the expensive brochures or the smashing corporate logo. Building solid relationships by leaving customers with a good feeling every time they choose to buy from you, and staying in front of them once in awhile with a flyer (email, blog post, newsletter, etc.) might just be enough to keep them coming back. And everybody knows it’s easier to get business from someone who’s bought from you before than it is to find new customers.

The more I think about it, the more I think J.R.’s is right on the money.

The last time you ordered out for pizza what made you choose the pizza joint you went with? Will you go back? Why?

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As an entrepreneur, you presumably put a lot of thought into naming your business. I sure did. It’s a very big decision. You have to try the name on for awhile and see how it feels. You have to write it out and see how painful it will be to write down a million times in the future. You have to see if it will continue to suit you as you grow. Will it make sense when you tell someone your domain name over the phone? (With my name, I always have to say “Mann with two ‘n’s and no, it’s m-a-d-e, not m-a-i-d.”)

Twenty years ago (yes, it has been two decades) the New Kids on the Block appeared on the scene, weakening young girls knees everywhere. They were five young guys who have been credited with starting off the boy band craze in the 90s. (They seem to disagree, saying there were lots of boy bands around before them and perhaps they were the first “white” boy band. ) Whatever they were, they were a phenomenon. I was absolutely nuts over them. I spent every dollar I had on their tapes, ‘Teen Beat’ magazines with posters of them, earrings, t-shirts, even socks and sunglasses. I had a club and we had t-shirts and binders…spending lunch hours swooning over our favorite ‘Kid’. It’s really a good thing that twelve year old girls can’t get tattooed, cause you can bet I’d have the NKOTB logo somewhere on my person.

I don’t recall what happened to NKOTB, but they have reunited and are going on a reunion tour this summer. How exciting! And how brilliant. Their concerts are selling out, and why wouldn’t they be? They already have a huge fan base, made up of 25-35 year old women who have been loyal to them for 20 years. We have more money now to sink into their music and concert tickets and we still love them…even if our husbands think we’re dorks.

My point here is that perhaps the name “New Kids on the Block” wasn’t brilliant. It seems odd to choose a name that will not make sense after a couple of top ten hits. How ‘new’ can you be when you’ve been on the charts for a few years? And now with the guys ranging in age from 35-40 something, they sure aren’t kids anymore. I wonder if they’re sorry they chose that name. It doesn’t seem to be hurting them much, but it seems kind of silly to see a bunch of 40 year old men called the New Kids.

Anyway, think about your name before you brand yourself

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I’m not sure why, but I get sucked into American Idol almost every year.

Last week, or this week (we tape them to watch later sometimes so I don’t remember) I overheard someone on the show ask whether this was a talent contest or a popularity contest. Hmmmm.

It brings me back to student council elections in high school. Did the best person always win? No. Well – if they were the most popular person they did.

How does this relate to business?

You could have the best singer in the world preforming on American Idol. But if they choose the wrong songs for them, if you’re a fan of the show, you know they always get voted off.

If there was a competition for you, in your business, and you are offering the wrong types of services – services you don’t excel at – would you be crowned the winner? Probably not.

If I tried to build my business on offering desktop publishing, I wouldn’t have made it past year one. I enjoy it, but I’m not great at it. I don’t offer it unless it’s through one of my skilled associate VAs.

When you’re in business you must have a clearly defined target market, and you must offer only services to that group that you do exceptionally well. Anything less just won’t stand up.

Again, if the best singer in the world was on the American Idol stage, but every week they came out there looking unkempt and sloppy and acting obnoxious, they would not last. People wouldn’t vote for a person they find annoying.

This brings us to branding. A business needs a professional polished image to  make it. It’s that simple. You could be the best wallpaper hanger in the country, but if you have a website with lots of annoying pop ups and graphics, inconsistent branding, poor grammar and bad navigation, visitors will move on. Today’s consumers don’t have time for that kind of thing. Not with all the choices they have.

Consider this. There’s a new competition for your industry. You make it through the first round of eliminations, and then the second. You find yourself in a group of the twelve best (your profession here)’s in the country. You are given 90 seconds each week to demonstrate to your nation why you should be crowned the winner.

What do you do to make yourself shine?

Those are the things you should be doing everyday for your clients.

If you’re currently doing things that you wouldn’t showcase for that audience, maybe you should consider whether you should be doing them at all….

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I have spent many hours in February entering business cards into a spreadsheet for one of my clients. The stack of cards was several inches high, and since data entry doesn’t take all that much mental focus, I did a lot of thinking.

This wasn’t the first time I’ve had this type of project, but this time the caliber of cards was really interesting to me. I think it’s because the longer I’ve been in business, the more it puzzles me why people even bother to print off some of the cards I come across.
I saw several cards with those perforated edges that were printed at home, on a very lightweight stock that I wouldn’t even call cardstock. I would estimate more than half did not use the back side of the card, which is just crazy to me. Why not use half of the real estate of your business card to include a marketing message, service list or something. Anything. Wait, I take that back. One of these cards really made me lose focus – to the point that I had to pause my timer.

The card was a plain white perforated one and had no mention of a business name. Just a woman’s name, phone number, email address and website address. On the back of the card (which I was checking for additional notes to enter in the spreadsheet) was written “the red head”. In all small letters, and it was actually part of the card, it wasn’t a note my client had made.

Now…it’s really hard not to make a judgment when you see something like that. I’m sure your first thought was probably the same as mine was. I knew there was more to it, though, knowing my happily married client. The site belonged to a business brokerage (I had to check out the site of someone that would print that on the back of their business cards) which kind of shocked me.

I believe the description on the back of the card was meant to be cheeky, and that woman wanted people to remember her as ‘the red head’ they met with. Red heads are rare, right? Lucy, Sally Jessie, Nicole Kidman. I can only name a handful of famous red heads. Putting “the brunette” on the back of my cards wouldn’t mean much, right? Chances are, at a networking event, people might only meet with one red head among all the brunettes and towheads. So I understand the intention, I just don’t think it worked in this case. Maybe if the card was a bit more professional, or if there was at least a business name or description.

Anyway, what do you think about this? Do any of my readers use a tool like this to make people remember you in your networking efforts?

You know what? That red head may be a genius. I will probably never forget her name, website address or what she does. Hmmm. Something to ponder.

I would love to hear your comments.

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