What are some good resources for growth and acceleration of a child-based education/creative brand?

I believe past history is a great predictor of future work, so I would ask 1) Have you worked with anyone in our industry or similar project? 2) Ask for their complete portfolio 3) Ask them how many full time vs. contractors 4) Ask them who on the team (or individual) did the work you like and if they would be available for your project? 5) Ask them to asses your idea and come back with 3 highlevel ideas via email or powerpoint. If you're going to be spending $10K+ then I think it's fair to ask them to do a bit of work to demonstrate how they would approach your project. My rule in life "I can't work with you, till I work with you".

What a great question! You are on the right track. First, lets define Avatar as "An icon or figure representing a particular person." In business application, an avatar is a representation of your ideal client/customer. A business may have multiple avatars representing several target demographics. Some prefer to distill this down to one person as an “avatar.” I recently interviewed super entreprenuer John Lee Dumas of EOfire.com and he has a very clear Avatar he calls "Jimmy" that he uses for business decisions you may want to check out. I hope that you have already gone through the exercise of your UVP, or Unique Value Proposition. If not, may I suggest the worksheet on this page, first: http://bit.ly/1kYTLbf Ok, so once you've clarified the why choose me, then start working on your Avatar, that's the who, or as we marketers like to call them: personas that represent segments from your target market. You have to start somewhere, right? So do. Are you going to first focus locally in your zip code and surrounding area? That can be one piece in helping you visualize your Avatar's lifestyle. Target marketing has to do with breaking your potential global audience into segments, specifically only the potential buyers of our product, service, or cause. As much as we might be tempted, we can’t be all things to all people. We have to commit and put some stakes in the ground. Are you ready to write your personal ad? Who are you looking for? Some of the most basic questions you should ask in forming an idea of Customer Segmentation has to do with what these people want, need, think, and feel. No time is wasted from this exercise because it will ultimately lead you to where and with who they hang out (their tribe.) Why is that our desired end point? Because that virtual or real (coffee shop, tradeshow, website, search engine, twitter feed, health fair, street location, podcast, meetup, traditional media) is where I should be hanging out with my product, service or cause and shouting my UVP from the rooftops as part of the conversation! Taking this thought experiment all the way through will also assist you in the critical understanding of whether the segment is large enough for you to be successful. I like using the Personas app (available on iPad) to put forth a visual representation of my potential target markets, but a white board works too! Literally put in a photo representation of your Avatar with a Name, and start brainstorming out: Think and Feel? See? Hear? Say and Do? Hangs out with/where? For you, offering your B2B services, maybe explore linked in to find where your peeps hang out and get a clearer idea of, let's call her, Samantha. Samantha is a small business owner of a growing service business whose revenues just got in the black. She has two employees and she's looking to hire another. She is struggling with getting her website up and mobile friendly and feels like she needs to be more effective in communicating what she does. She is overworked, in her mid 40s and recently divorced with 2 boys ages 10, 12. She has little time for fluff and needs guidance in creating a system that will help run her business. Can you help Samantha? :-) If you'd like to get more tips that sound like this, I'd be tickled if you let me know if Sell Local. Think Global. speaks to you. It's my first book and I'm feeling very vulnerable putting myself out there! eep! Available now on Amazon: http://bit.ly/olgasbook

Several things to consider when coming up with your product's brand identity: 1) Who is your customer? That will drive the look and feel, as well as the language of your brand. 2) Who are you? If at a gut level, you and your company(employees) are rednecks making the highest quality broadheads for elk hunting, you aren't going to button up your brand in a shirt and tie or develop an artsy-fartsy website. (See Duck Dynasty) 3) What specific aspects of your product and/or service are different than the rest of the market offerings? Ie. Why are you special? These 3 questions, answered candidly, begin to make up your brand story. The most powerful brands have learned that their messaging, packaging, sales process and customer experience delivery is less about what their product or service DOES, and more about how it makes the customer or user FEEL. Branding a product or service is about carefully crafting a story(or a promise), that you are confident you can deliver on once they choose to buy. In other words, branding is the discipline of aligning what you say about your product, service, team... with what customers actually get on the back-end. Once you get really clear on these big picture questions, then the tactical stuff becomes rather easy (what should our website look like, colors, advertising channels, promotional pricing, referral programs, warranty language, etc, etc, etc.) Of course you may be smart to hire a specialist to help you brainstorm and execute on this stuff- but the actual decision making becomes pretty obvious: which option in front of us best reflects who we are?

If you are going to lead the workshops: Start with personal branding. Workshops and coaching are by experts and I'd recommend building a personal brand first. People should build trust in you. Then your offerings. Each offering that you have - a workshop, a coaching program etc. - should have it's own branding. You may even have separate websites for each of your offerings. If you are only organizing the business and not going to lead the programs yourself: then you got to do a corporate branding. So people relate to the organization more than individuals delivering the programs. The coaching / self help / personal development / health industry is full of examples of both branding strategies. If you study a few cases, and their business models, you will gain better insights on why they chose their branding strategy. And you can even question if the strategy worked or not. I hope this gives additional perspective to what you are thinking. Feel free to contact me if you want to discuss this further.

Your strategy should encompass at least four components: (A) Complete Visual/verbal/social/technical audit to find/create needed assets for transition: know which assets need to be retired or replaced and what transitional assets are needed to bridge the gap. Prioritize: not everything always needs to change at once and the more you have the longer it will take or cost. Plan to convert brand book concepts/guidelines into tangible or digital deployables: how much "stuff" do you need?; vendor selection; budgeting; designing production files; ordering; quality assurance etc... (B) Internal (team) awareness & asset deployment program and monitoring compliance. (C) External publicity plan: aimed at existing clients & prospects, and any other stakeholders: social networks, media, affiliate partners, etc... Timing should be coordinated with industry / sector calendar (trade shows, if applicable), and major app update for maximum effectiveness. Do you need specialized short term PR/AD help? How can you leverage your 10K+ users to buy in / get the word out? (D) Technical migration & Monitoring Plan: seo strategy & tracking including all affected url redirects, landing pages, email changes, whatever is affected. Monitoring & analytics to see how effective the transition is (compared to old name stats) and when transitional assets can be retired.