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Brand Smart from the Start
Often entrepreneurs don’t know or acknowledge the importance of beginning their service businesses with a cohesive and consistent brand and positioning strategy and implementation.
Signature Strategies has helped a lot of professional services - from attorneys and doctors to mortgage brokers and realtors - establish their new business. We can do the same for you. If
you are beginning a service business, we can help you design a branding and positioning program that will help to differentiate you from your competitors, determine your best market targets, create the
elements necessary to penetrate and make a positive impression on those markets.
Though we normally tailor our services to the exact needs of our clients, we do provide a
professional service startup package, and deliver those elements for a lower combined price with a convenient payment plan.
Basic Package: This is a set of eight elements and
activities normally required to establish a new service brand. If you have already determined a name, or if you believe you don’t need all components of this package, go back to List of Services to select the activities you do need our help with.
- Consultation pertaining to target market segmenting and to differentiating your services to
compete effectively. (4 to 6 hours by phone and email, including written plan and recommendations for positioning and branding your practice.)
- Creating a name that reflects your business vision, brands your services
and positions your business in the collective minds of your prospects and customers.
- Creating a logo to reenforce the name and provide a visual signature for your business in keeping with your
positioning strategy.
- Creating a positioning statement that states the major way you differentiate your product and provide a unique
benefit.
- Creating stationery (letterhead, business card, label and envelope) design incorporating your name and logo, and
reflecting the identity which comes from consistent design elements in all marketing communications.
- Developing a simple graphic standards document to help you and your suppliers use your name, logo and promotional
materials in a consistent and professional manner.
- Writing and designing a promotional brochure, and producing printer-ready art for that one-sheet, two-sided piece,
as well as a template for future marketing literature.
- Writing a press release you can sent to your local and trade press announcing the business and why it’s different.
(This can also be used in another format as a direct mail piece to prospects).
Options: There are three options that can be
incorporated in this package at additional cost that are eligible for the packaged price payment plan. They are:
- Performing positioning research which provides basic information about what attributes are most important to customers about the kind of service you will offer, and how present competitors of yours are thought of in fulfilling those attributes.
- Performing name preference research to determine target market members
associations, interpretations and reactions of your top three or four names you are considering for your business.
- Create and host a 5-to-10 page website. This is a basic informational site for the purpose of promoting your
business. A site with ecommerce capability can also be designed, but is not part of a startup package.
Pricing: The basic package, all eight elements, if purchased separately from
our List of Services, comes to $4,100. That assumes five generous hours of consultation.
But with the Professional Services Startup Package, the total cost for these elements, including up to seven hours of consultation, is just $3,500. You save $500! That’s like getting
stationery design, graphic standards and your press release for free!
In addition, we don’t demand full payment upon completing the work. With a $700 upfront payment, we’ll divide up the remaining $2,800 into ten monthly credit card payments. Yes, we’ll
automatically bill the credit card of your choice every month in the amount of $280 for just ten months. It’s no more than most car payments, but unlike car payments, our payments only lasts for ten
months. This initially frees up over $2,500 cash to help you buy other needed materials and equipment.
Pricing the options: Because of the out-of-pocket expenses associated with
research projects, we’re not able to bill you monthly for research.
Nor can we set a price without knowing the scope and method of research we will need to use. However, we will discount the price of completed questionnaires from $25 to $20. That’s a 20% discount off the single largest cost component of research. If we determine we need 100 completed interviews, the discounted price for completed questionnaires will be $2,000, not the normal $2,500.
We will discount a website design
by 20% as well. Design includes establishing a site style and then placement of elements page by page. Normally there’s a $200 charge for style development plus $100 for designing and populating each page. Thus, our regular design price for a 5-page website is $700. If ordered and implemented as part of the Professional Service Startup Package, those design costs will be slashed by 20% - to just $560. If a 10-page site, you pay $960 instead of $1,200. In addition, these costs will divided into 10 payments and billed to your credit card monthly along with the Basic Package charges. Remember though, for a website, only the design costs, not hosting, maintenance or initiation charges, will be discounted and billed in this way.
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