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The Square Orange Blog

What Is Your “Brand”?

As a small business owner, you might think that "branding" is all about big businesses. But that's probably because when you think of a company's brand, you think of its logo. In fact, a company's brand is a lot more than a logo. It is all about what your business stands for, and how you portray it to the world as you do business - buying, selling, hiring, growing. For example, Apple's "brand" is not just their logo or even their device designs. The Apple brand includes all that you feel as soon as you hear of the name - their designs aim to make tech look like art, they aim to simplify, to combine, they "think different", they make the release of new products art, you expect them to say "and one more thing" as made famous by Steve Jobs. When you think of "big businesses" and their brands, you will actually see that everything about their business aligns with the brand - the way they act in the market, how they appear to customers, their public values represented by the way they do business, their business model, the messages they give out in advertising and even the look and feel of their...
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Small Business Marketing – What and How

What is marketing if you own and operate a small business? Most people think it's all about advertising. It isn't - that's just one of your marketing channels. You could market to them using seminars or sales events. You could engage with them through direct mail or social media. The appropriate marketing channel depends on who they are, and what they want to hear. (more…)...
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Get To Know Your Numbers

I always tell my small business clients that they can't afford to "leave the numbers to their accountants." Most people start their business to achieve a great goal, whether that be to serve their customers well, or to build a great product, or even just to do something they love while finding a way to enjoy life and spend time with family. So it's not surprising that small business owners with no formal training in accounting think that they can leave the numbers to their accountant. But you can't really, and this is why. (more…)...
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Increase Your Sales By Increasing Just One Variable

All businesses want to increase sales! As a small business owner, you may be calculating next year's budgets right now as this financial year ends. You may have aspirational goals that you want to challenge yourself with by setting a sales budget for next year that is a significant percentage increase from this year. Then, when you have set it, the doubts start to creep in! "Can I really achieve that", you ask yourself, "it looks too much to achieve in just one year!" However, if you break your annual sales into three components, you can increase your sales by just increasing one variable, and you can increase it exponentially if you tweak an increase to all three. (more…)...
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