Brainstorming’s a winner, but how to do it right? Generally performed in groups, it’s a fun way to get lots of fresh ideas out on the table and get everyone thinking and pulling together. Over the years, I’ve participated in and facilitated brainstorming sessions ranging in size from just several people to about 40.

But to start out, I recommend you keep your group on the small side. The participants should be relatively at ease with one another, and as you continue to brainstorm together over time, they’ll become more comfortable throwing out off-the-wall ideas–which often generate the best results.

Begin by choosing a facilitator to record the ideas on large, poster-size sheets of paper that can be stuck to a bulletin board or along the walls of the room. This will keep all the ideas clearly visible. And follow these important ground rules:

• Suspend criticism. All ideas, no matter how crazy they may seem, should be encouraged and recorded without comment or criticism from the group. The general goal of brainstorming is to collect as many ideas as possible, making quantity much more important than quality at this initial stage.
• Postpone evaluation. Brainstorming sessions are not the time or place to evaluate the merits of the ideas suggested. So don’t suspend the process to evaluate the projected results of any single idea.
• Build on others’ ideas. At their best, brainstorming sessions are fast-paced and fun. Participants should try to build each consecutive idea on the previous ones. This can sometimes result in surprising twists and turns.

Though all brainstorming sessions should follow these basic ground rules, there are numerous ways to approach the idea-generation process. Here are three proven methods to try:

• Pose an initial question. Suppose you had created a product for small businesses and were looking for a new marketing approach. The facilitator might open the brainstorming session by posing a question such as “What do small business owners want?”

  Participants would then throw out ideas, such as “to save time” or “to increase sales.” Or you might select a feature of your new product-one-button operation, for example–and open with a question such as “How does one-button operation help small business owners?”

• Use word association. This method involves brainstorming lists of words and then finding linkage between key words on each list. For example, imagine you want to create a new slogan for a hair gel product. You could start with the root word “gel” and use word association to come up with a list of ideas, such as “flexible hold.”

  Then you could brainstorm another list beginning with “flexible.” In the end, you might have four or five lists of ideas based on word association. To build your slogan, you’d choose a word from each of the lists and creatively link them together.

• Identify a challenge. Even the most difficult questions can be tackled by brainstorming, provided you have the right group of people. When I was called in by an auto parts manufacturer to find ways to use the company’s roll-forming expertise to produce additional products, we gathered together a large group of experienced workers from throughout the plant for brainstorming.

So while inspiration may come to you in the shower, a more structured approach to creative idea generation is often the best bet. Try using these effective brainstorming techniques to come up with terrific ideas for marketing your own business.

You’re starting your own business. You know what to sell and who your customers are. But how will you decide what your marketing materials should look like or even what you’ll charge for your products or services?

You need to become an amateur sleuth and gather competitive intelligence to create an on-target marketing program and tailor your services or products to position against the competition.

It’s important to complete a competitive analysis during the start-up phase of your new business, about the time you’re putting together your marketing plan. In fact, if you get underway without performing a competitive analysis, you run the risk of creating marketing tools and product or service offerings that are way off the mark.

This can cost you valuable time and money during the critical early months. You should also plan to gather competitive intelligence as your business grows, in order to stay competitive.

Who’s Your Competition?

One of the biggest mistakes new entrepreneurs make is failing to recognize the range of competitors for their businesses. Your new company will have two types of competition-real and perceived. For example, imagine you’re a former college athlete who’s decided to start a personal fitness training business.

Your competitors will fall into two categories: other personal trainers, and gyms and health clubs that offer trainers or advisors on staff. Although you’d directly compete only with the other personal trainers, your prospects-people who want to shape up-would perceive the gyms that offer these services as a viable alternative to hiring you. So to complete your competitive analysis, you need to evaluate the marketing materials and services both types of competitors offer.

Get the Facts

The first step in your competitive analysis is to collect all the marketing materials used by your competitors-both perceived and real. Begin by clipping your competitors’ ads. Then request copies of their brochures and other marketing materials-not so you can copy their ideas, but so you can check out marketing strategies and formats, competitive pricing, special offers, the key benefits (or promises made), and clues to marketing niches that may be underserved.

If possible, you may even want to “mystery shop” your competitors-go out and actually buy their products or services so you can experience the purchasing process with their store personnel or salespeople. If your competitors are large enough, you can gather information about them on the Net.

Use major search engines to look for recent press releases and articles about them. There are even free sites on the Web that allow you to customize your own daily news page, such as NewsPage by NewsEdge Corp. (www.newspage.com).

And don’t forget to check out your competitors’ Web sites. How do your direct and perceived competitors use the Net to attract customers and sell products? This will give you important clues about information a Web site of your own should contain.
Put It All Together

Now you’re ready to draw some conclusions about the types of competitive offers and pricing your new business should use. Best of all, you’ll have clear guidelines for developing your marketing tools. Complete your analysis by answering these questions:

• What size are their materials? Do most of your competitors use standard mailing envelopes, or are they using large folders with inserts?
• Do your competitors use photography or illustrations in their materials?
• Do they have Web sites, and how deep are they? Do they sell products online or just offer information?
• How are your competitors’ products or services similar to yours? How are they different?
• What key benefits do their marketing materials communicate? Can you offer additional benefits that are valuable to prospects?
• What special product, service or pricing offers do your competitors use to stimulate responses to brochures and ads?

Once you discover the answers to these questions, create the marketing tools that will work harder than you do.

It’s a mistake to think logos are more of a luxury than a necessity. Businesses once attracted customers because they were the only game in town, so to speak. But that’s no longer the case.

Today’s highly competitive industries, global markets and visually oriented consumers have catapulted the logo to prominence. Now your logo is one of the most critical components of your brand. So how can something so little make such a big difference to the success of your business?

1. Your branding efforts not only start with your logo but are dictated by it. Your logo appears on all your sales tools, from your business cards and stationary to your website. As a result, your logo design influences the design of all your sales tools–for better or worse. A professional-looking logo can be leveraged to create professional-looking materials. A poorly designed logo can’t. In other words, you need a “brandable” logo–one you can make use of when designing other materials to brand your company.
2. Your logo is a quick visual cue that conveys the essence of your brand in an age when image is everything and time is short. Perhaps you’ve heard the writer’s lament that “nobody reads anymore.” In today’s markets, not only do you face ever-increasing competition, you also face an audience accustomed to visually stimulating media, convenience and instant gratification. Sure, a few people may read your entire ad, more may read some of it–but everyone will SEE it. The overwhelming amount of choices faced by time-crunched consumers forces them to identify shortcuts. Your logo is such a shortcut: it instantly conveys your brand message and emotional appeal.
3. Awareness and familiarity are keys to growing your business, and your logo is instrumental in both areas. Your logo is your brand’s most basic graphic element. It ties together all your sales materials–in fact, your logo may be the only visual element your materials have in common. The right logo helps solidify customer loyalty while differentiating you from the competition.
4. Your logo may be the only thing by which a potential customer can judge your business. Think of small newspaper or Yellow Pages ads. Often all that fits in these small spaces is your contact information and your logo. If your logo projects the right image, it may be the sole reason someone decides to try your company. Conversely, if it looks unprofessional or unclear, it alone may be the reason they choose to look somewhere else.
5. Your logo affords a unique opportunity for you to look like a bigger (that is, more established) business than what you are. With the right logo, you can look like a larger company that’s been around for awhile even if you have only one employee and just opened your doors last month. People who see it will associate the positive attributes of big companies–like security and financial stability–with your company. And you can still deliver the entrepreneurial qualities–like personal attention and superior customer service–that you’re known for.

Building a solid brand identity is pivotal to success in business today. Lay the right foundation with a professional, brandable logo.

Set up an e-mail marketing program for a highly effective, yet low-cost way to up-sell or cross-sell current customers. Since it can cost as much as five times more to win a new customer than to keep an old one, retention programs using e-mail are a solid small-business marketing tactic.

E-mail programs to in-house lists perform at least as well as direct mail–and often considerably better–without the postage or printing costs. And results are easy to track and measure.

Here are the steps that can help you build an e-mail marketing campaign:

1. Build your list. Today, having a terrific website is simply not enough. You need a marketing program that drives traffic there and keeps visitors coming back. And since e-mail to rental lists is often kicked out as spam, it’s essential to build your own opt-in list of customers and prospects. These are individuals who have visited your site and given you permission to contact them.
2. Send the right message. For many e-mail marketers, it’s beneficial to alternate promotional messages with softer-sell communications, such as newsletters. This helps avoid list burnout and may increase the frequency with which you can successfully communicate with your customers and prospects. The most crucial element is to make the content of your e-mails relevant to the needs of your recipients, because off-target e-mails and those that come too frequently are generally treated as spam.
3. Design and track like a pro. The two elements that most dramatically affect your e-mail “open rate” are the “from” and “subject” lines. So it’s essential to make it clear the e-mail is coming from you, a valued source of information. And the subject line must contain a benefit, or at least convey what your e-mail contains–otherwise your open rate will plummet. Comply with all CAN SPAM regulations by including your company’s name and physical address in the body of the message as well as an unsubscribe option at the bottom.

When it comes to design and execution of your e-mail campaign, it’s not necessary to go it alone. In fact, it’s difficult for an entrepreneur to send more than 50 e-mails at a time, since higher numbers are usually blocked as spam by ISPs.

Fortunately, e-mail marketing services that cater to small businesses, such as Constant Contact or those available through major web hosting services like Interland, will generally e-mail up to 5000 subscribers for $50 a month or less. The service will also maintain and clean your list by removing bounces and addresses of people who choose to unsubscribe.

Choose an e-mail marketing service that provides design templates for e-newsletters, promotional offers and coupons that are easy to customize. Since only about 56 percent of internet users have broadband, it’s essential to design full-color, high impact HTML newsletters or promotions but still give recipients the option of receiving a text-only version.

Best of all, most e-mail marketing services will provide all your campaign metrics, which are vital to evaluating the effectiveness of your mailings. You’ll be able to identify who opened your e-mail and clicked on each link. Then you can fine-tune your key elements–from your offers to your subject lines–for maximum ROI, and compare your results from one mailing to the next.