I love to dig through “how to” books, ebooks, and newsletters on marketing, especially online marketing. I’ve read a lot of pages about a lot of marketing topics, and one question I always comes away with is, “What the hell is small business branding, anyway?”Small Business Branding from John JantschSure, I’ve read all the books about it, but when it comes to small business branding is a completely different animal than branding for an international conglomerate. I recently came across a great definition of branding from John Jantsch that is perfect for small businesses. He says:”I like to define small business branding as the act of intentionally becoming more knowable, likable and trustable – in a way, much more aligned with how we might think about a personality.”To me that makes a lot of sense. After all, we can readily identify people by their personalities. For instance, a friend asks you, “Do you know so-and-so?” If the person has a strong personality, they immediately come to mind, and you reply, “Oh yeah, he’s the guy with the bulldog personality.”Small Business Branding in One SentenceThe same thing can happen around your small business brand. If you could define your small business brand in one sentence, what would you choose?In my personal life I am a complete horse-freak. I haven’t found too many horses I can’t love. I read, watch, and inhale just about every horse-oriented piece of information I can find. As with any industry, certain businesses in the horse industry are well-branded and others are not. Here is a mixed bag of one-liners from the horse world. I have heard more than one person say about each of these businesses or business personalities (please note these do not necessarily reflect my own opinions):Country Supply: “Wal-mart for horses, without the service”
Meredith Hodges: “That mule lady on RFD-TV who outsmarts mules”
Pat and Linda Parelli: “Great ground work … do their people ever get on?”
Fly Predators: “Those bugs that eat flies.”
Smart Pak Equine: “Supplements custom-made for me, the lazy horse person”Notice how each of these one-liners is a statement about the degree to which each of these businesses or business personalities is “knowable, likable and trustable.” Some are knowable without being trustable (Country Supply) while others are knowable, likable, and trustable (Meredith Hodges). Some are just knowable, like the Fly Predators.What is Your Small Business Brand?If you could make a one-liner brand for your small business, what would it be? How could you shape it so that if reflected your brand’s ability to be known, liked, and trusted? How does this affect what your business does, how it offers products and services, to whom it business markets, and with whom your business is associated?

The average business plan can take 100 to 200 hours to complete. Much of this huge time is because the entrepreneur does not understand what to include in their plan. However, it is feasible that an entrepreneur can finish a plan in just one day and use that day to create a simple business plan.

In fact if you’re using a template you can have more than just a simple plan in that one day. The goal of the template is to guide you through the process of creating your plan. So I’m going to go through for you now a guide for a simple plan for you to follow so that you can create your plan in just one day and have it be very compelling and achieve the results that you want it to.

There are ten core sections that are going to be included in your simple business plan and I will go through those sections and tell you the key points that you need to include within each.

The first section is your Executive Summary. The two most important things to mention in your Executive Summary are, one, a concise explanation of what it is that your company does and, two, why your company is uniquely qualified to succeed.

In the next section, your Company Analysis, you want to detail the background of your company and what you’ve accomplished to date. For example, how you were incorporated, what date and any milestones that you’ve accomplished already.

In the Industry Analysis section, which is the third section of your plan, you want to detail what market you’re competing in, what the size of that market is and any forces, outside or inside forces that are causing that market to expand or constrict.

The fourth section is the Customer Analysis section and in this section you’re going to detail who the customers are that you are serving or plan on serving. Specifically, you will detail their demographic and/or psychographic profiles.

The next section is the Competitive Analysis section where you’ll detail your direct and indirect competitors and identify what their strengths are, what their weaknesses are, and most importantly where you have competitive advantages over them.

The sixth section is your Marketing Plan. In your Marketing Plan you need to detail what we call the four Ps. The first P is your product of service: what your products or services are. Secondly, price: what price you’re going to be selling your product and services are. The third P is place or distribution, or how customers are going to buy your products and services. Will they buy them directly from you or will they go through distributors or retailers or websites. The final P is promotions. How are you going to get customers to hear about your products and services? Are you going to use television advertising or classified ads or direct mail, etc?

The next section is your Operations Plan. Here I want you to think through what are the day to day processes that your organization is going to have to accomplish in order to be successful. The second part of your Operational Plan is mapping out the longer term milestones. What are you going to accomplish next month, next quarter, the next half a year or within the next full year? What are those big milestones that your organization needs to accomplish in order to achieve success?

The next section is your Financial Plan where you need to identify and document how much money you need, where are you going to use those funds, and what are your revenue and expense projections for the next five years.

The ninth section is your Management Team section. Here you’re going to document who are the key players on your management team and what their backgrounds are. Finally, the tenth and final section of your business plan is your Appendix. In the Appendix you put any supporting information that can help the reader fully believe that you are a high quality company that they want to get involved with.

In recent years technology has made tremendous advancements. These advancements have reshaped the organisations by creating their business functions integrated and streamlined. Beyond the standard office computers and smart devices, organisations are now implementing new software’s and latest technology equipment’s to run their operations smoothly. One such technological advancement is Slide presentation software PowerPoint is one of the widely used Slide Presentation Software. It is a powerful tool to make your presentation more attractive and engaging. If you want visual effect, collaboration tools, easy access, then PowerPoint will be the perfect option.

Nowadays in every field, there is huge competition. Business and professional firms use the presentation as a tool to educate, train, motivate the internal and external audience. At any point in time, you may require to give a presentation. The presentation is an essential part of branding because the presentation is the primary source which companies use for communication with clients, general public etc. The presentation demonstrates the company profile, and it’s the only tool which makes sure that all your representatives are turning into sales. A well-designed presentation shows presenters professionalism and also builds organisations corporate image.

Presenters are mainly of two types. Firstly, the great ones, who with their commanding charisma, speaking skills and great presentation styles can grasp the audience attention and secondly the Mediocre one who only focuses on the content of the presentation. They come up with great with great content and speak amazingly but fails in their presentation skills. Many times, lacks in gaining audience attention.

You may have complex data for presentation, a great content will be a scrap if not delivered in an entertaining way. Templates contains layout, colour, fonts, effects. powerpoint template helps to convey the information in an attractive way, grabbing the audience attention throughout the topic.

Benefits of an Effective Presentation:

• Face to Face Interaction: A presentation enables to meet your customers and prospects. Face to face interactions strengthens the relation and bond with the customers. An effective presentation can improve sales. According to a recent survey conducted, face to face meetings is fifteen times better than other marketing activities.
• Engagement: Presentation is the easiest way to engage with the audience. Attractive slides, astonishing layouts can hold the audience attention easily. Bullet points and summary texts help the audience to focus on the main subjects.
• Flexibility: Flexibility is the vital feature of the presentation. It helps in saving the time of professionals. PowerPoint presentations allow the user to quickly change the content and change the designs based on the audience.

• Adds professionalism: Presentation can decide the success of any business meetings. The presenter should convey the information most attractively and entertainingly. Adding attractive templates can ensure maximum engagement of audience over the topic.

• Storage: After the presentation, the slides can be quickly distributed among the members for further reference. It can easily be saved on the computers which minimise the chance of loss or misplacement.

• Presentation Important for Business Growth: Having a superior product can never result in success. Advertisement of the product is also mandatory. The product demonstration should be attractive, clear to the audience. The presentation should be eye-catching and should create a lasting impression on the audience. Adding an attractive slide, Infographics icons can ease the work of the presenter.

• Adds Creativity: Nobody like a wall of text, the presentation should look interesting and conveying. The audience can easily remember visual information. Adding images to illustrate point will surely make your presentation engaging. PowerPoint allows the user to add creative clipart’s, attractive fonts to the presentation.