Straight to the Point

Volume 2, Issue 2

This Issue's Contents:

Feature: Managing Growth from the Promise of Small
If your business' competitive advantage relies on the fact that you're small, it can be hard to grow. This article discusses how to grow your messages.

Apply It!: 9 Ways to Grow Your Messaging
Concrete things you can do right now to grow your messages and communications.

Service in Brief: Branding Bundles
Learn how Branding Bundles can work for your business, no matter what stage of growth you're at.

Don't Take Our Word For It
See how we help businesses refine and grow their marketing communications.

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Managing Growth from the Promise of Small

Start-up companies often walk a fine line when defining their competitive advantage. Many use words like "nimble" and "agile" to express the advantage of doing business with them over larger or more established competitors. "We're small enough to work closely with our customers," they assert. "We're flexible enough to build a solution just for you." Call it the Promise of Small.

It's a good message and it's a dangerous message. Good because it is an effort to brand based on value. Dangerous because it makes a dangerous promise: "We'll stay small."

Our focus in this issue is the young or small business with a solid offering and an initial customer base that the company wants to leverage for entry into a larger share of the market. Typically, that initial customer base has been carefully cultivated. The product or service may have been refined with that base's direct help and matured into a solid and well-targeted offering for a particular niche. The customers have probably also been given exceptional service. The Promise of Small has truly been delivered.

As the business grows, however, what should happen to the Promise of Small message?

Maybe Small Works

First, assess whether the Promise of Small actually IS your business. For example, the Promise of Small can be a good message to attract small-business clientele, or to attract partners that want to play a dominant role in your business. If the Promise of Small is your bread and butter, then work toward refining that message and communicating it in ways that are most relevant to existing and new audiences.

Choose Your Battleground

As you grow, carefully choose which messaging battles you will fight. And that means knowing what markets you are growing into and why. What advantage do you have in your chosen segments, and what benefit do you bring them?

Moving from a specialized "niche" market position to full-out frontal assault is not an effective way to grow your messaging. While it might get you some attention initially, in the long run it's a strategy that just doesn't add up in the eyes of your target audiences. What is appealing to your target customers, partners, analysts and media is a company with a known expertise that is logically and intelligently leveraging that specialization into new areas that make sense, and even complement each other.

Honour Your Lineage

Ideally, your growth strategy is logical and managed rather than an about-face. 180º changes in direction are costly, and if your goal is to leverage your current successes into greater successes, a 180º shift in positioning or strategy will fail.

Likewise, your messaging and communications should evolve sensibly. The trick is to make changes while ensuring continuity. To do so, you need a plan that maps out the new messaging strategy. And that plan must incorporate and honour your company's lineage - because your lineage is also your customers'.

Getting Started

An objective third-party is often one of the best ways to take stock of your current communications and plan the transition that must take place to support growth. Read our "Apply It" story this month for 9 concrete things that you can do right now to grow your messaging. And, read "Don't Take Our Word For It" to learn about some of the clients we've recently helped.

If you are in the process of planning your growth strategy, we hope you'll contact Kaszas Communications to help you plan and execute the marketing communications aspect of your plans!

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Apply It!: 9 Ways to Grow Your Messaging

So your business is growing and you want your clients to know that you've got more to offer. That may be more products, better service, improved expertise, a better facility for clients … whatever growth means to your business. But, it's still the small things that will, if left untended, blow a hole right through your attempts to gain credibility as a bigger player.

Here are 9 simple but oft forgot things you should tend to right now to help your business grow. Print out this list and delegate each job to the best-qualified person in your business.

Things to Tend To as You Grow

1. The volume of your messages. To compete with bigger companies, your messages need greater volume - by which we mean impact. That does NOT mean that your messages must become more obnoxious as you grow. And, do NOT enlarge font sizes, use capital letters or exclamation marks to make your marketing messages more competitive. Rather, you must revisit your messaging frequently, and especially during periods of growth or to compete at a different level. Call in the experts for help!
2. Your customer support voice. Your brand is communicated long after the sale. Every contact a customer or partner has with your company counts, but the customer support "voice" is often overlooked. A mature customer support voice has these characteristics:
1. It is the voice of a team, not that of a single person.
2. It is reliably accessible through a single phone number and one e-mail address.
3. It keeps the same business hours as your customers. If you've got global customers, that may mean 24/7 support.
4. It's easy to find. Support information and hours should be on the web site, on contracts and in product documentation.
3. Your management bios. When was the last time you read ALL of your management team's bios? Do they do the job they need to do? When added up, do they present an experienced, well-rounded and visionary team? Is your team's highlighted experience appropriate in your market space? Don't overlook this small but important detail of your communications.
4. The company history. Read your marketing communication materials - your web site, your brochures, even your RFP response template. Does your business appear to have sprouted from nothing, or do you tell the story of a company with some relevant history behind it? Every company came from somewhere. Make sure that story is working in your favor.
5. The photos you use in your marketing communications. If you're growing, it's time to get rid of amateur photography in your marketing materials. Company picnic photos do not belong on your public web site or in marketing collateral. Grainy, poorly lit and poorly composed photos don't, either. Invest in professional photographer or stock photography to help you communicate.
6. Your contact information and location. If you call yourself a "worldwide" company, you'd better have some worldwide offices - or at least phone numbers - or at minimum a toll-free number. If you support customers in other countries but aren't yet ready to set up shop elsewhere, then look into the various virtual office services that are available (search the Internet).
7. Your news & events communications. There's nothing sadder than a "news" page on a website with old news. Maybe the company is out of business. Maybe they let go of so many staff that there is no one left to update the web site. Maybe they're in receivership. Whatever the reason, it doesn't look good. If you choose to include news and events on your web site, make sure the information is current. Post at least one press release each month, and let the world know when you actively participate in events.
8. Your phone system. What do people hear when they call into your business? If they hear the same voice they do when they call the President, or when they call for support, you'll look small. If they are punted to a single, general mailbox, you'll look small. Not-small companies have individual employee voice mail boxes and phone extensions, as well as a centralized greeting. Look into a new system, a refurbished system (available for a song these days), or a virtual answering service.
9. Your receptionist. As the first and often most frequent line of communication into your company, your receptionist must be integrated into your communications activities. The receptionist should be trained to:
1. Properly and clearly pronounce the company name
2. Greet people pleasantly and answer questions efficiently
3. Talk at a high level about what your company does. Be sure your receptionist is well versed in your key messages to the general public.

Kaszas Communications can assist you in many of these areas. Contact us about our communications audits, branding services, messages, positioning and effective marketing writing. Let us help ensure your growth is managed through messaging.

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Service in Brief: Branding Bundles by Kaszas Communications

Branding Bundles are combinations of our services that make sense. Overtime, we've noticed that many client projects fall into three general categories. So we've taken those most popular sets of services, combined them in a way we know will deliver the greatest value, and given each one a price. Branding Bundles enable you to:

• Effectively budget for a comprehensive branding or messaging project
• Achieve a complete, integrated result with a single-source provider
• Save money! Branding Bundles are priced significantly lower than if you combined various individual services. They start at just $5500.

Today, Kaszas offers these three Branding Bundles, suitable to clients at any stage of growth:

The Bundle	You need it if...	Details
Brand Me The complete new-brand starter kit	"I don't have anything!"	Includes a complete and affordable starter combination of strategies and tactics to get your new brand off the ground. Competitive analysis, key messaging, design of your logo and look & feel, a starter web site with content management system built in, a starter brochure kit, stationery and more. Inquire for pricing and details.
Brand Tweak The interim messaging tune-up	"I just need to refine the way we get our messages across."	Includes the tools you need to update your messaging. Competitive analysis, interviews with your customers, key messages, new customer success stories and an edit of your existing communications collateral. Inquire for pricing and details.
Brand Aid The brand overhaul	"Our whole brand needs help!"	Includes everything required to overhaul your brand. Competitive analysis, new key messages, a marketing communications plan, refinement of your look-and-feel, a web site overhaul including search engine optimization, a new positioning paper, new customer success stories, advertising, brochures and more. Inquire for pricing and details.

Contact us to customize a solution for you, and to obtain our rate card.

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Don't Take Our Word For It

Three Clients That Grew

Kaszas Communications helps clients at all stages of their communications, including start-up and growth phases. Here, we highlight three clients as good examples of how we help businesses refine and grow their marketing communications.

Roaring Penguin Software

We've worked with Roaring Penguin, an anti-spam software company, from its start-up phase. Marketing communications planning and messaging has remained a key component of the company's growth. Recently, we launched a new approach to Roaring Penguin's marketing communications. We added VOLUME to cut through the noise of a saturated market, using humour and bold imagery to communicate the company's offering. You can check it out at www.roaringpenguin.com.

They say: "By refining the messaging and identifying the early-market adopters, [Kaszas] focused Roaring Penguin onto the all-important early successes that everything else is built upon." - Bill White, VP Marketing & Sales, Roaring Penguin Software

PointShot Wireless

Six months after getting its marketing off the ground, Kaszas returned to help PointShot Wireless update its messaging. As the company and its customer base grew, the messaging needed to be refined. For PointShot Wireless, growth translated into greater focus. You can read the full story here.

They say: "Kaszas Communications intuitively understands the value of a key message and how to craft marketing content that conveys those messages effectively to target audiences." - Wendy Kennedy, Virtual VP Marketing, PointShot Wireless

PMC

PMC was established in Asian markets and turned to Kaszas for help penetrating the North American flash memory market. We helped PMC identify and leverage its corporate history, technology milestones and product differentiation while turning that into an entirely new market presence. Read more...

They say: "Our new website and collateral clearly communicate the benefit and difference we offer, and our new look-and-feel is modern, bold and competitive." - David Chen, Director of Product Marketing, PMC