Ideas into Brands. Entrepreneur and Marketer for Startups, Pre-Startups, and Growth-Minded Businesses.
Reach your customers when how and why they want to hear from you. I have deep experience (over 20 years) in CRM, and have helped clients find the best solution or tune up the solution they already have.
Your brand drives your entire business. Whether a startup, pre-startup, or mature business, I create your Brand Story Book. Positioning, Messaging, Personas, Value Propositions, Copy, Creative Cues and more. Everything you need to create a plan for success.
Your brand is more than your logo. Your brand's story, your core values and your purpose will impact every aspect of your business. I can run a complete brand analysis, find gaps and lay out a roadmap to get you on track.
Persona Development, Insights & Engagement. Getting to the detail of who your customers are and what are their problems that you can solve. What is their customer journey and what is your best value proposition for each segment.
What a great idea! Of course, right now at the moment there is probably less demand, the beauty of your service, i am guessing, is that it can be outdoors and somewhat weather resistant. I would encourage you to reach out to event managers and planners with the idea - i feel as though there is something like this with tents, but i don't think i've seen this exact type of full-service approach. Especially not with the added industrial 'cool' factor. You may run into event spaces that provide this kind of service, so getting to them with the idea to use your service to offer to their clients might be a B2B model worth exploring. -JL For straight-to-customer approach,
Actually, if you have limited resources, there are many app-builder programs that have templated base apps for you to start with. You customize, add content and launch. I'm involved in building one right now for a client who needs to launch fast and cost-effectively for an event, and we are looking at using this same approach. While they may not get you all the bells and whistles you want, it's a great way to do a proof of concept or support for an event. Later, you can look to hire a development team to expand on what you've started. A good place to go to find support is Upwork or other freelance sites like this. Upwork shows other jobs and reviews. Hope this was helpful - feel free to reach out to me for more help here! -JL
I love Leslie's answer, so I will add to hers by going a level above, back to your product. Who is your product built for and what problem are you solving? This seems like a basic question, but when I work with clients on their brand and product development, we spend a lot of time on exploring their target customers. By developing a key persona or personas (an Avatar, or example of your customer), you will also create a profile that answers this question about your demographics and goes further to roadmap the best way to reach them. Most importantly, what to say to them. Then, for audience sizing and more specifics, Leslie gives you great guidance in her answer. I would be happy to talk you through an exercise to get to this strategic answer if you'd like.
I have a secret naming panel that I use to help brainstorm names for companies without spending tens of thousands of dollars. But naming can be very tricky. As mentioned in the other answers, there is much more to consider beyond memorability and trademark. A good starting point to do it yourself is to make three lists of single words: 1. function, 2. feeling, and 3. fun. Then pull back and look at those words. Do any go together? What speaks to you as the essence of your business? What synonyms do you find for each of those words? I usually will work with my panel to develop a short list. That short list needs to be memorable, but also be relatively uncluttered with competitive search traffic and domains. An SEO strategy is a crucial part of this. Hope that was helpful! Happy to tell you more about my approach as well.
Lead generation is very important - more importantly, being aware of what works best to keep a steady stream of leads coming in to the top of your sales funnel. There are a number of ways to ensure you have leads, but before you get there, it's important that you understand your customer. By creating a thorough persona for your customers, you will have a better idea of how to reach them and what to say to them. After this foundation is set, there are many different lead generation techniques you can employ. Usually this will involve a content strategy and lead nurture approach that will keep your company top of mind for the moment your lead is ready to convert to a sale. Additionally, by having a content plan, you can give your sales team the support they need when making those connections. I would be happy to talk with you to better understand your business and help you by laying out a lead generation and lead nurture plan. Hope this is helpful! Thanks -JL
Hi - i would first start with your goals. if this is to be a group for your team to interact and share, a system like Teams, Slack or Monday are good alternatives that have cloud interfaces and have a ton of functionality. For more open groups, Facebook groups are pretty robust. Could you tell me a little more about how you want to use the group and the overall goal as that may help define your solution better. -JL
I think you are looking for a small button to go alongside Facebook and LinkedIn? Great idea! While this is not an official answer, I would think you could create a button that links to your clarity profile and add it to your site, ie, "Find me on Clarity," depending upon your technical expertise.
Hi Peter, one key pointer that I always offer my clients working in HubSpot is to remember that the platform is very flexible. This means that there are many different ways to set up your programs and accomplish your tasks. Once you remember that, it's important to establish your business rules and guidelines up front so that you don't end up with a "frankenstein" implementation. Hope that is helpful! -JL
I can feel your frustration and I understand. This is a loaded question and I encourage you to go back to your basics. What is your business model and is it not solving the right problem, or is there not a problem to be solved? Perhaps a shift in the model is needed. If you have researched your model and it's solid, then some research into your prospects to drill down to the problem you are solving would be helpful. That will inform your value proposition. Unfortunately, this is an undertaking that won't be an easy answer and you likely would not get a lot of volunteers without paying for consulting. Do you have an advisory board? Have you looked into any of the startup accelerator programs? Those may be additional avenues for help. This is clearly time to buckle down and invest in your business to find the problem and fix it. All the best! -JL
I'm actually in the middle of doing this exact same thing, ie, converting my in-person brand workshop into online modules. I would be happy to have an informational call and I can share what I've done so far about converting the workshop into modules and lessons with worksheets. If interested, message me and we can connect. -JL
Sometimes a country that is generally in your market region may be better set up to support startups. I know, for example, that Israel has a tremendous startup infrastructure and accelerators, as does Latin America and Asia. So I would begin by asking about your industry and your target region to better advise you. When you say 80% Lithuania, is that your planned sales base? Happy to chat in more detail. -JL
