Is Creative Avoidance Sinking Your Business?

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Creative Avoidance = A Good Way to Stay Busy Getting Nothing Done

Creative avoidance happens to all of us, and if I hadn’t experienced it myself, I wouldn’t be able to write about it!

It’s that limbo-land where you get stuck trying to figure out what colors or fonts to use, or what your new business name should be. It seems like important work, and it is — but if you are paralyzed by these decisions and don’t move forward, your business will suffer.

What’s Really Driving Creative Avoidance?

Creative avoidance is driven by fear. It’s fear of three things:

  1. Fear of failure
  2. Fear of success (which might be even scarier than failure)
  3. Fear of all the work you’ll need to do to market your business once these branding decisions have been made

How to Make Branding Decisions and Move Past Your Fear

The solution to creative avoidance is to remember these three realities:

  • SOME decision is always better than NO decision.
  • Branding is not a life-or-death deal. Your business won’t sink or swim because your colors are a little off, or you haven’t combined fonts correctly.
  • You can always tweak your brand in the future, or even overhaul it completely if it’s not working.

Have You Experienced Creative Avoidance?

Does creative avoidance sound like something that’s happened to you before? Are you dealing with it now? Let’s talk about it in the comments. We’ve all been there!

Are Your Brand Colors Scannable?

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Business brand colorsColor communicates without saying a word, and it does so in a split second. Are you sure your colors are saying what you want them to say?

Making your colors scannable helps make them memorable. To do this, you’ve got to follow a few rules. I’ll outline them here, and give you lots of resources so you can explore further.

Don’t worry: we’re not going to talk about analogous and complimentary, and I won’t overload you with a lot of technical terms.

We’re going to talk about how to wield color to make it do what you want, so you can make your business color scannable and memorable. [Read more...]

Sow the Seeds of Your Successful Business: Think Like a Farmer

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Marketing like a farmerWhen you talk about marketing, the conversation inevitably turns to “conversion.”

There’s something about that word that bugs me.

When people talk about converting prospects to customers, I get the impression they think it’s like flipping a switch.

You know, one minute someone knows nothing about your business and then click, suddenly they’re a customer!

They make conversion sound like an instantaneous event. In reality, conversion is a lot more like farming. It’s a nurturing process that leads people from:

  • hearing about your business to …
  • a first transaction to …
  • doing repeat business with you to …
  • recommending your offerings to …
  • helping plant the seeds for new customer relationships.

But how exactly does conversion happen?

Read on to learn the five-step process you can use to sow the seeds of a successful business, farmer style. [Read more...]

How to Draw Attention with Images: No Artistic Skill Required

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What if I told you that adding one simple image to your web page or printed piece could increase the time and attention people pay to your marketing?

You’re already spending time writing your web pages, brochures and emails. Why spend time on images?

They’re important because: [Read more...]

The $49,594 Small Business Branding Solution

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Small Business Branding SolutionStep into my time machine.

I’m going to turn the clock back twenty years, and give you some advice for building your very own big brand for your business. Ready?

First, Let’s Create an Ad Campaign

We’ll need to create a “brand awareness” campaign for your company. We’re going to start with a perfect vehicle for advertising: your local newspaper.

Here’s your budget: [Read more...]

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