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Photo by Andrew Beierle, http://www.sxc.hu/photo/857313

So, you’ve invested, time, money and effort into starting your business.

You researched your business idea, wrote and implemented your business plan, put together all of your funding, found somewhere to set up shop, and bought all of your equipment & inventory, you are ready to open your doors, right? Not so fast! What about marketing?

Do you remember that movie “Field of Dreams”? “If you build it, they will come.” Unfortunately, with starting a business, that technique doesn’t work. You have to tell people that your business exists, and then you have to tell them why they should buy what your selling.

In this short series of blog posts we will go over marketing ideas and techniques for a small business start-up. So, stay tuned, stick around, and check back for articles that will help you get started.

source: stock.xchng, photo by Shannah Pace

When I was in primary school we had a flavoured popcorn stand to raise money for charity. The popcorn was 25 cents a bag, and was sold daily at afternoon recess. It was an honour to be asked to volunteer to be the popcorn “cashier.” I remember being asked when I was only in grade 4. I was thrilled, and thought that I was quite the adult. I had BIG plans for this little popcron stand, I was going to make the school charity a fortune!

As the marketing genius that I was, I decided that the best was to do this was to jazz up the popcorn. I noticed that most of the powdered flavour for the popcorn shifted to the bottom of the bag (we received the popcorn in huge bags already flavoured). I had an idea, reserve the extra flavouring from the bottom of the bag, and sell bags of popcorn with double the powdrered flavouring for 50 cents. It was very popular, and we soon had line ups all the way down the hall.

Well, I was going to do one better. I decided we needed a marketing campaign. I made up a snazzy name for this new flavour concoction, and made up signs. We added extra products (layered flavouring, 2 flavours mixed, I think we had about 3 different “special” popcorn flavours) The line got even longer.

Unfortunately, I didn’t exactly have permission to act as popcorn manager, and the teachers somehow got wind of my business expansion plan, maybe it was my marketing campaign, or maybe it was the sudden increase in money. But they weren’t as happy as I thought they’d be. I was soon shut down.

But from Grade 4 on, I knew that I loved marketing.

Photo by lilieks, on stock.xchng

People say, “You can’t judge a book by it’s cover.” But most people do. A quick look through Amazon Kindle’s ebook store, or any of the popular ebook stores, and you will clearly see that an attractive ebook cover will certainly help. So what does that mean for self publishers? I means something great, that if your book is well written,  an attractive cover can help you compete with the big dogs. This is exciting because an ebook cover that can compete, is not out of range. This something that’s actually quite easy and not as costly as you might think.

So what what makes a good ebook cover? Here are some rules:

• Try not to use fonts that are difficult to read.
• Remember “contrast.” People need to be able to see what your book is about in a split-second. If they can’t tell what the picture is, or what the title of your book is, they won’t click on it. Make sure that you can see everything clearly against the background.
• Make sure all of your elements are aligned. Choose an alignment and stick with it.
• Read up about “proximity.”  The goal is to group like things together. Like your book description and title, for instance. Here is a great explanation from Smashing Magazine.
• Pay attention to visual hierarchy The goal is to lead the reader’s eye. For example you may want the reader to see the title first, the authors name second, and the book description last. To accomplish this you could make the title text large, the author’s name medium, and the book description small (but that’s just one way). Take a look at this link for a great description of visual hierarchy.

Some Resources:

• The Non-Designer’s Design Book at Amazon.com
• GIMP for Windows, and GIMP for Mac. A free open-source photo editor.
• Stock Exchange, free stock photos (read the licenses carefully, some may require attribution or have restrictions, when in doubt ask the photographer)

Thursday Midday Links: What’s a Little Cover Art Copying Between Friends? – Dear Author.

What do you think?