Abigail Lucier December 20, 2019 In the digital era, society has created what I think of as a cult of leadership. Whether it’s somebody like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk (and I could go on and on), we’re groomed to worship these super-geniuses. As I think about culture, it dawns on me that we never hear about any of the thousands of people who work for these companies. Do you really think that Steve Jobs, or his successor, Tim Cook, had or has all of the great ideas at Apple? That’s silly, but it’s also where we are as a society.

As we are celebrating Celero’s first year, I’ve found a particular aspect of our emerging culture not only noteworthy, but also something that’s actually changed how I choose to interact with my colleagues here. I’ve witnessed this dynamic on a daily basis, so I know it’s not a fad or a fluke. What I’m talking about is selfless leadership.

Many of us are taught that in order to compete and win in corporate life, we need to be a little selfish and make sure we take credit for successful outcomes. What I witness here, from leaders like Jeff Brown, Kevin Jones, and many others, is a simple sharing of the wealth or giving credit to any and all who deserve it and doing so openly.  

My job is in project management, and at a startup like Celero, those projects can be anything from overseeing an office buildout, managing an integration, or guiding a workstream. When I think about getting in the weeds of a project, the day-to-day grind, and the overall amount of calories that we’re all spending together on a project, I often pause to also think of the amount of people, intellect, and the overall amount of blood, sweat and tears that can go into every project all the way through to completion. It’s humbling to think of all the people that are involved in everything we do. And then I think about the number of times that I have heard our leaders Jeff or Kevin, or Scott Farace or Jim Harris, call out people who played pivotal roles in a project’s success.  When they give this credit, they not only do so publicly, but also never take credit themselves. For our leaders, it’s all about the team. While they are all industry veterans and actual thought leaders in payments and fintech, you’ll never see cults of leadership developing around them, because they prefer to share the success.

To me, this selfless leadership dynamic is perhaps one of the most inspiring things that I’ve witnessed since joining Celero. To see how natural it is for these guys to sit there and publicly give credit where it’s due, and to really make it a point to not stand up and say “I did it, it was me,” and to actually do the opposite of that. To not take credit for anything, to stand back and say, “I could not have done this without you, you, you, and you,” well, that’s significant.

Furthermore, the people they recognize are often those who probably think that their names would never be recognized or brought up in conversation. For me, this kind of recognition, whether fulfilled or neglected, can be what makes or breaks an employee—I firmly believe that. So being able to win as a team and to lose as a team, but to also give credit and to pat someone on the back when they have done an incredible job is incredibly noteworthy. This culture of the selfless leader is one of the driving forces behind our culture at Celero, and as we grow, our leadership will naturally expand to include many others. I am confident that this element of our culture is something that we will continue to embed in who we are and prove foundational to our success as we move forward.

More than 25 years ago, Celero founder Kevin Jones left his hometown of West Jefferson, North Carolina, with a dream of becoming a CEO in the financial industry. But unlike those who leave small towns and “never look back,” Jones has kept his hometown and the surrounding High Country of western NC close to his heart, as his career has taken him across America and around the world.

Last week, Jones drove the country roads between Music City and his beloved hometown, to join Ashe County family, friends, and residents in congratulating the 2019 graduates of Leadership Ashe, the leadership development program designed to meet the county’s need for active participation of informed and educated citizens and leaders. The class enjoyed a graduation ceremony keynoted by Jones, who focused on how his hometown leaders could set themselves apart by staying true to their roots, uniquely defining success for themselves, and working with others to make great ideas become reality.

Leadership Ashe is an innovative leadership development program sponsored by the Ashe County Chamber of Commerce in coordination with the Ashe Campus of Wilkes Community College. The goal of the program is to identify potential leaders and provide them with the community information and encouragement needed to spur local action and involvement. Graduates are challenged to apply their talents throughout the community by becoming a part of community organizations, including public boards, non-profit groups, civic clubs, and the Ashe County Chamber.

Leadership Ashe participants and their employers make a major time commitment to 10 sessions, beginning with a day-long retreat in August and closing with a graduation session and ceremony in December. A series of eight half-day sessions provides information about local businesses and includes tours of area businesses, organizations, and facilities. Sessions are designed to stimulate interest and awareness and will include an opportunity to interact and facilitate discussion with the speakers.

Each class of Leadership Ashe is open to as many as 20 participants, and each class represents a diverse array of entrepreneurs, executives, professionals, and public servants.

“This was an emotional night for me, coming home to address those who give so much of themselves to make my home such a wonderful place to live and work,” said Jones. “As I shared with the group, my career has taken me all around the world, and my best characteristics and lessons are from Ashe County, North Carolina. It really is the coolest corner of NC, or anywhere else.”

“Growing up here, the son of a single mom, I learned values like humility and respect, and how to appreciate people’s individuality. It’s no surprise that a county with 27,000 people is successfully emulating leadership development programs we see in much bigger places, including here in Nashville. Mountain life gives us a competitive, hardworking edge, and we know that we when we have faith in ourselves and each other, nothing can stop us.”

Congratulations to the 2019 graduating class of Leadership Ashe, from your friends at Celero Commerce. For more information on this game-changing program, visit https://ashechamber.com/leadership-ashe.php.

There are most definitely benefits to having mobile payments at your business, but what are the risks involved? How do you bypass them? While mobile payments are a great way to help your company keep up with the changes of our fast-paced society, there are potential security threats you should pay attention to. Let's dive into the risks and benefits involved below.

Benefits of Mobile Payment Processing

Quick, Convenient & Inexpensive 

Not only are mobile payments convenient but, unlike a traditional point-of-sale system, mobile payments don’t require a large investment and they come with a low learning curve. Mobile payments only take a few seconds to complete, meaning you can help the next customer faster — quicker checkouts tends to mean happier customers. 

In order to accept mobile payments at your business all you need is your smartphone or tablet, card reader and a mobile app. Bringing your own device allows you to save even more as you don’t need a terminal or point-of-sale system. At Celero, we have plenty of affordable options for your business. 

EMV Chip Card Technology 

Accepting EMV chip card technology with mobile payments gives your customers the benefit of a secure payment method due to the multiple layers of encryption. EMV chip card technology is definitely safer than a magstripe payment, but you’ll want to be sure to choose the right mobile payments partner — one that allows the support of your mobile payments with EMV, just like Celero does. Our mobile credit card processing app allows merchants to quickly and securely accept mobile EMV credit card payments from any smartphone or tablet.

Business Insights

When you understand your customer, it allows you to make better business choices. Mobile payments provide insights into your customers’ buying habits as well as give you a look into your inventory levels. Being able to see these purchasing patterns shows you what’s popular and in demand and can help you keep your inventory stocked, allowing you to cater to your customers more effectively.

Mobile payment apps, such as Celero’ mobile credit card processing app, provide great reporting tools that enable you to stay efficient and recognize purchase data to help you make smarter business decisions.

Risks Involved with Mobile Payments:

Fraud

Small businesses are a target for fraud, considering the outdated technology many of them rely upon for payment processing. But it’s not just the time or effort wasted on fighting chargebacks that causes the biggest damage — fraud can have heavy financial implications, to the point of forcing owners to go out of business. Mobile credit card processing from Celero matches the latest security guidelines, including EMV and PCI standards. 

Data Security

One risk that comes along with mobile payments is the safety of your customers' data. There are criminals all over who thrive off of hacking mobile payment systems, especially during the holiday season, to steal credentials of your customers for fraudulent activity. This is why it’s extremely crucial for your business to be PCI compliant. Being PCI compliant allows your customers’ payment details to be protected. It determines how you will store, handle and transmit cardholder data. By not meeting those compliance guidelines, you could face non-compliant fees. Luckily, with Celero, we are a compliant payment processor and will provide you with tools to help you remain compliant as well.

Conclusion:

While there are both benefits and risks involved with mobile payments, there are ways for you to reduce the risks —  take proactive security measure to be sure that your business and your customers' information is safe. Making sure you keep yourself educated and prepared will certainly set you up to run a successful business! Mobile payments are a cost-effective solution for millions of small and mid-sized businesses. Stay ahead of the competition and grow your business with your new mobile payment solutions!

Kevin Jones November 26, 2019 Growing up in the High Country of my native North Carolina, I’ve always loved to ski. For a mountain boy like me, being on a snowy slope with friends or family is truly my happy place.

I can remember the first time I went skiing with a few good friends, included among them was Travis Mash, my best friend to this day. My first trip to the local slopes was a big one—we skied for three days straight. The first day, we all fell down A LOT, and we laughed about it together that night. The next day, Travis and I continued to fall quite a bit, while one of our friends fell a little, and two guys in our party of five didn’t fall once!

On the final day, Travis and I still fell down a ton, one guy fell a few times, and those same two guys didn’t fall at all.  You’d be accused of being reasonable if you thought that the two guys who quit falling after day one were the smart ones in our group. And maybe they were, in the eyes of some.  But only two of us were skiing the most difficult slopes—known in ski parlance as black diamonds. And while I don’t know about those other three, I’m still skiing those black diamonds.

There are a few good lessons here. First, you need to set high goals for yourself, and everyone knows this to be true. But the second lesson is just as important, if not more so:  to succeed, you have to be willing to fall down to progress. Third, it’s always easier to push yourself to take risks and succeed when you see others around you doing the same. Thanks, Travis, for inspiring me way back then and even today. 

As we continue to talk about building a high-performance culture, I’m often asked what the driving ethos of a company should be, in order to reach this aim. Many people mistakenly think that it’s simply down to setting big goals and holding people accountable to them. While pushing people to achieve big things is certainly a fundamental behavior to success, every behavior stems from a mentality or philosophical approach.

Not all of these mentalities or approaches are good. Many are as simple as giving big rewards to those who close business and firing those who don’t—think of it as the Glengarry Glen Ross philosophy (“Coffee is for closers!”). While that makes for a fun movie experience, it’s not a recipe for leading people to big, sustainable success. Neither is the “getting people to buy in” approach—leading people to achieve new heights isn’t about persuasion.

So, what’s it all about? If you think about it, building a business successfully, whether you’re performing a role here at Celero or working in a small business, is about freedom.  It’s about the freedom to think, the freedom to create, and the freedom to necessarily reinvent yourself and your strategy on a daily basis. To achieve sustained growth, you can’t just repeat what made you successful yesterday. Every business in America has competition, and those who rest on yesterday’s ideas get their lunch eaten today and tomorrow.

So how do we get this freedom we’re talking about, if we’re not the CEO or business owner. In the case of Celero, it’s about granting every person here that freedom. And it’s not just saying, “Be free and have success!”  That’s as silly as it sounds when you read it aloud. Rather, it’s the opposite—we have to free each other of fear. We can’t be afraid to take risks, make mistakes, and be bold.

I say those three things—taking risks, making mistakes, and being bold—in a certain order for a reason. My team has set some pretty high goals for themselves by which we measure our performance. In fact, like most good teams, we’re constantly raising our standards, based on where our competition lies and especially on customer needs. In order to maintain this commitment to continuous improvement, we don’t need buy-in. We need for people to take risks. It’s only when we take risks that we can better what we did yesterday.

When you take risks in business, as Travis and I did on those black diamonds, you sometimes make mistakes and fail. I happen to believe and know that we hire really intelligent people at Celero—people like Deidra Parsons make sure of that. One thing I’ve observed through the years is that intelligent people aren’t submissive, and they don’t shrink from the challenges they face simply because they’ve failed or made a mistake. They come back harder and stronger—they’re emboldened by their failure to produce and what they’ve learned from it. While nobody likes failure in the moment, the kind of people I’m describing—those true high performers and leaders—begin relishing the challenge all over again even before the wounds have healed.

The best people, who are leaders no matter where they function within an organizational chart, are what I like to call “battle-hardened,” and you can’t be battle-hardened without losing a few along the way. Losing breeds resilience, and resilience is what fuels us for the long haul in life and in business.

Every day, I approach my teams and individuals, listening to their approaches—to see if they’re thinking big enough—and watching how they go about achieving their goals—to see if they are taking those necessary risks to achieve more than they did yesterday. If they’re not thinking big enough and risking enough to sometimes make mistakes, it’s my job to give them that freedom all over again.

And while for each of them it’s about that freedom, for me, it’s simply about cashing that check that I’ve written. The way you give freedom often has less to do with encouraging risk than it does to do with punishing failure. While we can’t tolerate recklessness, we have to give grace to those who abide by these principles of taking risks, making mistakes, and being bold. I find that when you give people even just a little room to see their ideas through, their wild successes far outweigh any temporary setbacks.

Abigail Lucier November 22, 2019 As I continue to think about our culture and what will make it strong, I notice that many companies fall short of creating great cultures because they only focus on the positive. While positive recognition is certainly very important and completely missing in many workplaces, it’s only half of the equation.

It’s important to recognize hard work, great efforts, and outstanding performance results, but you’ll fail to optimize your culture if you neglect to recognize and accept mistakes as genuine human error. This second piece is equally, if not more, important as you give people the time to find the right answers and prevent the same mistakes in the future. To achieve this, our leaders must extend a measure of grace to each of us, and they should know our capabilities and motivations well enough to know that we’ll get things right when given the opportunity to grow and learn from a mistake.

Personally, I don’t think that all leaders are capable of this. In fact, this is probably one of the biggest factors that separates the great leaders from the mediocre ones. One thing that seems to unite all of us as humans is not our capabilities, but rather our ability to fall short of a goal. We are united in the fact that we all mess up from time to time. Nobody is perfect. We messed up yesterday, we might mess up today, and we could fall short tomorrow! I think what’s important is what you learn from these shortcomings and failures. If you have a leader that’s there to coach you through a mistake and help prevent it in the future, that’s worth its weight in gold. Instead of beating you over the head with your mistakes, a great leader will position you for success moving forward. You’re ultimately going to win in that situation, every single time.

Don’t get me wrong, while I firmly believe we should all extend a certain amount of tolerance for honest mistakes, that does not excuse poor performance on a consistent basis. The employee must display an aptitude for personal and professional development for these methods to work effectively, or you could find yourself spending calories on someone that would be better suited in another position altogether.

When leaders work with their people to create a culture of grace and equip people to do better—as good people want to do—the right culture is going to emerge. Then, you will have a cultural cornerstone of honesty, where leaders are free to say, “Hey, you made a mistake and I didn’t like it, but here’s what we’re going to have to do to make up for it as we move forward.” At the end of the day, if that same leader can stress to you how important you are to the team, and how they cannot do this without you and they don’t want do this without you, you’ll be able to forge a genuine bond and trust. Leadership that understands human error is inevitable and coaches their team through failures, will not only create a happier workplace but a more productive one as well.

Honesty and trust. Grace and equipping. These are the values upon which we are building a great culture here at Celero.

Scott Farace November 20, 2019 If you’re a small business owner, there are a lot of different marketing tools that are available for you that happen to be high-performance, cost-effective, and easy to execute.  Some of these methods are tried-and-true, while others are newer and already proving to deliver.

Cause Marketing

I’ve always loved cause marketing for the reasons it helps connect you to your audience in a meaningful and impactful way. There are so many ways to get involved   in the community where you do business.

For a small business that could be anything from sponsoring a local high school fundraiser, the local relay for life event, or working with the local homeless shelter. What’s great about this marketing tool is that it enables your business to meet your customers where they live and reside, touch them close to their hearts, and in many cases, involve your entire company, too. Instead of always being salesy, you’re promoting the organizations and missions they hold dear. 

Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is a newer option that’s available to all business owners, no matter the size of your business, due to the democratizing effect of technology. You can find options at any price point

Once you define your target segments, you can set a realistic budget, test messages and different delivery techniques like pay-per-click advertising and banner ads, and track your results to see what resonates with your target audience.

Content Marketing

Using content marketing to express your brand and value proposition is now essential for businesses of all sizes. When you’re able to have the right content, whether it’s a blog, a podcast, a white paper, or short video, you’ll be able to find out quickly what resonates with your audience.

Best of all, today’s digital world provides you with low-cost ways to distribute this wide spectrum of content, whether it’s through an optimized website, PR distribution engine, and especially social media. Social media is the optimal no-to-low cost  (by boosting posts or promoting tweets, for example) vehicle  to  deliver content to a very homed-in  target audience.

At Celero, we enjoy helping small and mid-sized businesses, the backbone of the American economy, compete and win. I’ve been there myself, running my own boutique agency for several years, and I know the pressures that small business owners face. I’m always happy to share any experience or expertise that might help relieve those pressures and foster growth!

Have you ever thought about how much it really costs your company to process paper invoices? It’s important to take into consideration the time and potential errors involved with processing invoices manually versus electronically.

Studies have shown that companies spend an average of $12 to $30 to process an individual invoice. What you want to think about is that this price involves the complexity of your accounts payable function and its efficiency. Another thing this price range depends on is whether you’re using an automated invoice system or doing things manually.

It’s important for your small business to research electronic, cloud-based options that will ultimately save your company money and stress. There are great benefits involved with electronic invoicing. Maybe you’re not ready to make the switch until you see what it really costs your small business. Let’s take a look at the expenses involved with paper invoicing.

Direct Expenses

Direct expenses are those expenses related to paper, ink and postage costs involved with paper invoicing. While these expenses vary from business to business, the postage costs of mailing a first-class letter will put you back. It might not seem like a lot of money but keep in mind how many invoices you send out per week — you can see how this could add up for a small business.

Indirect Expenses

An indirect expense involves what it takes to complete a specific task related to invoicing. For example, what are you paying your employee to put paper invoices into envelopes? Think about how much time it takes for your employee to enter all of the relevant data needed to put together an invoice. These are the costs that matter when you take into account how much you’re actually paying for paper invoices.

Hidden Costs

There might be several hidden costs that you’re not thinking about when it comes to invoicing. You want to remember the time involved with sending invoices and then the time waiting to receiving a payment — don't forget to take into consideration if a check (or invoice for that matter) gets lost in the mail. This could cause your small business to slip into a negative cash flow situation, incurring some unwanted and unnecessary fees. If this happens frequently enough, it might hurt you to the point that you’re not able to pay your other bills.

Be sure you think of how much it costs to store invoices, the investments of storage and scanners, all while you pay someone to organize these documents — all of this adds up, whether you’re aware of it or not.

Calculating Your Costs

To get a more accurate calculation of your own invoicing expenses, consider examining the following:

• How much time is spent on invoice processing (including time in the post office)
• Total time spent assessing invoices
• Time spent identifying and correcting data entry errors
• Storing and shipping costs for physical invoices
• The number of hours of productivity lost
• Discounts lost and penalties incurred due to late payments, errors, etc.
• Time spent by staff performing invoicing tasks
  
  

Conclusion:

Saving time and money is important for your small business and switching to electronic invoicing will definitely aid in those efforts. You’re starting off great by minimizing the costs with paper, ink and postage. What’s even better is that you’ll be saving on time spent for a staff member to create, process, manage and organize these documents. Not only is electronic invoicing beneficial for saving time and money, but it accelerates the cash flow and can be safely backed-up on the cloud for easy access. After all, who doesn’t love helping the environment while also helping themselves? Just another added perk to electronic invoicing.

Simplify your invoicing with Celero Commerce today. With our Pi Integrated Payments solution, e-invoicing allows merchants to invoice via email and SMS while allowing customers to make payments via an embedded link. Widely used for B2B and direct customer billing, invoices are generated with line by line detailed information and the ability to customize/brand the email sent to the customer. Learn more today!

Abigail Lucier November 8, 2019 A lot of companies talk about their culture, and it’s often a misapplication of the term, when they are really talking about values or drivers of their work. Values without daily action is just an empty gesture, but the way we live our values—and do so together—is when you begin to cultivate a culture. 

When I think of culture, in the world as well as in the workplace, the one word that comes to mind is unity. I think of people coming together with genuine acceptance of one another and individuals being recognized and appreciated for who they are.

Celero is a large and fast-growing company with a wealth of diversity in thought and backgrounds. It’s this unique combination of individuals coming together that makes working at Celero special. I’ve developed an appreciation for this diversity that helps me become a better project manager.

It’s important to recognize that diversity brings many life and work perspectives to the table. We see the value of diversity, in our operations at Celero, on a daily basis. Each employee has something different to offer the company, whether they have 20 years in the industry or are coming to Celero fresh from other sectors.

I think that we, not only as a society but also as a working team, must recognize that it is through our differences and our individual qualities that we can actually become united in one thing. And that one thing is that we are all different, and we all have something unique to offer.

At Celero, unity doesn’t mean we all have to think or believe the same things; it’s quite the opposite, actually. We welcome a variety of thoughts and opinions, and we believe that our differences make us a stronger team. A strong, unified sense of teamwork can be felt in both our internal communications as a company, and in what we do for our clients.

When it comes to culture, I don’t believe that one person is more impactful than the other as none of us can do this independently, without the help or assistance of other team members. The moment you try to identify the impact one can have or contribution one should make, based on something like title, is the moment you will start to limit one’s ability to make an impact. This could be counterproductive to establishing a strong culture as I believe a healthy culture is one that empowers each team member to be held to the same standard.   

The power of having a strong company culture shouldn’t be underestimated, as there is a remarkable amount of trust that transpires for this to happen successfully. We don’t just work alongside each other at Celero; we take individual ownership in what we do. Each person is expected to carry their responsibilities by owning them. We’ve found that team members are genuinely happier, as well as more productive, when they can cultivate freely. When you are trusted to do a job, you feel empowered and inspired to do more and this is a significant indicator of what our culture is like at Celero. 

Every company culture is going to be different.  Regardless of the individual characteristics that make your company special, unity is an inherent part of any strong company culture. It is through these differentiating, individual characteristics that we can come together as one team.

As you’re preparing for year-end payroll tax duties, it’s important to keep in mind the new year tasks involved as well! TIP: If you use Celero’s full-service payroll, you'll only need to focus on distributing W-2s to your employees — we handle the rest of your tax filing!

Keep yourself organized with the checklist below and be sure to finalize the required payroll tax tasks on time. We have provided a downloadable and printable End-of-Year Payroll Checklist for free!

Before Year-End

If you haven’t completed the following year-end payroll tasks, we suggest you reach out to a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) to determine the best way to abide by all tax laws and regulations. You want to avoid facing costly IRS penalties by incorrectly handling your payroll and employment taxes. If you find that you struggle with taxes, outsourcing payroll is a reliable option that could work for you.

𝥁 Confirm identifying information for all employees.

𝥁 Legal names

𝥁 Social Security numbers

𝥁 Current addresses of residence

𝥁 Make sure all paychecks from the year are correctly recorded. Include:

𝥁 Commissions, bonus pay or anything run outside of the normal payroll

𝥁 Handwritten checks

𝥁 Voided paychecks

𝥁 Verify employee wages, benefits and deductions.

𝥁 Look up remaining sick days, vacation time and other permitted time off for each employee.

𝥁 Based on your policies, find out if employees want to roll over the time to next year or cash it out. If you have a use-it-or-lose-it policy, notify employees of how much  time they have left and when they need to use it by.

𝥁 Order Form W-2 and Form W-3 from the IRS or another authorized provider.

𝥁 Get updated labor law posters to hang up next year. You must meet both federal and state labor law posting requirements.

𝥁 Check your tax rates for federal, state and local taxes.

𝥁 Federal income tax

𝥁 Federal unemployment tax (FUTA tax)

𝥁 Social Security tax

𝥁 Medicare tax

𝥁 State income tax

𝥁 State unemployment tax (SUTA tax)

𝥁 Local income tax

𝥁 Have employees review their withholding allowances for federal and state income tax withholdings.

𝥁 Employees indicate federal withholding allowances on Form W-4.

𝥁 Employees might also need a state withholding allowances form.

𝥁 Determine next year’s deposit schedule for federal income tax and FICA taxes. You must pay these taxes on a monthly or semiweekly basis. Your deposit schedule is based on a lookback period.

After Year-End

Don’t forget those New Year tax responsibilities as well! You want to be sure that as you complete everything for year-end, you keep in mind what needs to be done for the beginning of the year as well. Keeping yourself aware of what needs to be accomplished in the future is a sure way to help you stay prepared! Remember, you don’t want to face the risk of costly IRS penalties.

𝥁 Update new wage rates, withholding allowances and other deductions.

𝥁 Give a Form W-2 to each employee by January 31.

𝥁 File Forms W-2 and W-3 with federal, state and local governments by January 31.

𝥁 For the federal government, file with the Social Security Administration.

𝥁 For states or localities with income taxes, file with the appropriate state and local governments.

𝥁 Some employment taxes from the previous year are filed in the new year.

𝥁 File FUTA taxes on Form 940 by January 31. Fourth quarter FUTA taxes are also due by January 31.

𝥁 File federal income taxes and FICA taxes by January 31. Most employers will use Form 941, but some employers can use Form 944

Scott Farace October 28, 2019 For small business owners just beginning their marketing journey, setting your company’s brand apart should be the number-one priority. In nearly three decades of strategic marketing for businesses and nonprofits of various sizes, I’ve seen day-in and day-out the importance of developing a unique and consistent brand message to connect authentically with audiences. A strong brand can drive growth and it starts with determining your business’ point of difference.

Starting out, building your brand will take some analysis of where your company stands and its biggest strengths. It’s crucial to ask yourself, “What makes my business special or different in the market? What makes it the best of its kind?” After homing in on that factor, your next step is to expound upon it to create a brand message. Then, you can circulate that message to your entire organization from sales to customer service, and product teams. It’s vital that the message be cohesive across all corners of the organization for brand consistency. And even if you’re a solo entrepreneur, branding yourself can pay huge dividends early on. When people can tell you take yourself and your business seriously, they’ll respect you for the professional you are.

Once everyone in your organization is familiar with your brand message, you can begin conveying it across various marketing tools. Utilize digital marketing, social media marketing, and traditional marketing methods to reach the widest possible target audience on a daily basis. The more prospective customers you reach, the better. And once again, I can’t stress enough how important it is for your messaging to be consistent and fully integrated, across your sales materials, product sheets, websites, direct mail programs, and anywhere else you talk about yourself.

If you’re not sure where to allocate marketing funds early on, you can make things simple. Think about where you touch the most customers, and then work backwards from there. Whether that means your staff, your website, your store, or your team members who are out visiting people, you should always play to your strengths so you can sharpen them. Just keep it simple, and then build as you go along. 

Focus on those touchpoints where you already have strong audiences who are likely to be loyal to your brand. If your website gets the most visitors, allocate dollars toward web design. If a particular team interacts with the most customers, put in the time to train them on speaking to that brand message. That way, regardless of whether you’ve got a dollar or ten million dollars to spend, you can focus on getting the most out of it with the most effective possible use of your marketing dollars.

These steps will help set your business apart by creating a cohesive, distinctive brand to build loyalty, which will in turn boost revenue. If you follow this path, there’s no telling how far your business’ success will take you. Just focus, keep it simple, and execute. While the rewards of branding aren’t often immediate, you’ll be surprised by how quickly you do see results.