Things That Small Businesses Need to Consider When Branding

Brand management is a process that helps your business produce long-lasting connections with your customers. Your brand is an establishment of how you would like people to feel about your business. A good brand provides a solid identity, which endears itself to your customers. By taking the time to adequately brand your business and providing excellent customer service, you will be able to enhance the growth of your business and increase your bottom line. The following are ten things to consider as you brand your business.

1. Distinguish yourself from the competition:

A unique brand identity will help you stand out in a crowded global marketplace. When you think of majorly successful companies and their products, you will notice they all have iconicbranding. This is not a coincidence. Add high-level customer service and high-quality products or services, and your business will outshine the competition.

2. Marketing becomes more effective:

Your brand conveys the message of who you are and what your company is about. By establishing your brand and identity in the minds of your customers, marketing your business becomes much easier and more effective. Truly successful brands need no introduction.

3. Make your business more recognisable:

A good brand will stand out in the minds of customers. Psychological theories and ideas, such as Cognitive Fluency, state that the easier something comes to mind, such as your business name or the visual representation of your logo, the more likely a person will choose it. It is therefore very important to make your business more recognisable than your competition.

4. Creates business credibility:

Credibility is more important than whether or not you’ve been in business for a long time. If your business lacks professional credibility, customers will go elsewhere. Provide excellent service and well-managed brand will come to represent that service to establish your business credibility.

5. Helps create a connection with your customer:

Good products and services establish a connection with your customers. In fact, customers enjoy the feelings they get when they purchase or use a particular item that they love. Imagine a favourite pair of shoes or car manufacturer. Establishing your brand with your customers in this manner will evoke that type of connection.

6. Helps ensure loyalty:

A well-managed brand takes the connection that is created between the product and customer and ensures loyalty to the brand. How many times have you heard a person rave about a great product and how they absolutely love the company that makes it? This type of loyalty is established through excellent branding.

7. Conveys establishment and stability:

By staying the course with your brand and providing top-level customer service, your brand will help your business convey stability and the idea that it has been established for a long period of time.

8. Helps your business look larger:

A professionally executed brand identity and logo system provides a look and feel for your business that could make it look larger than it really is. If you have a poorly executed logo and brand, it will create the feeling that the business is small and less established.

9. Attracts more customers:

Having a good brand will naturally attract more customers. More importantly, a good brand will attract customers through word-of-mouth, which is one of the best forms of advertising and brand equity that a company can receive.

10. Creating something more memorable:

A quality brand will evoke good feelings in customers. In return, these feelings will be more memorable in the minds of your customers. This will ensure that they return to your business when they need more of your products or services.

With new technologies and the Internet providing a global face for your business, brand management is incredibly important. If you focus on developing your brand for the long-term, and bolster it with superb customer service and quality products or services, you’ll ensure growth and longevity for your business.

Send Email in ASP.NET 2.0 - Feedback/Comment/Contact Form

• Download source files - 1 Kb
• Download demo project - 6 Kb

Introduction

We are using System.Web.Mail.SmtpMail to send email in dotnet 1.1 which is obsolete in 2.0. TheSystem.Net.Mail.SmtpClient Class will provide us the same feature as that of its predecessor.

This article explains how to use System.Net.Mail namespace to send emails.

Using the code

The HTML Design contains provision to enter sender�s name, email id and his comments. On click of the sendemail button the details will be sent to the specified email (Admin).

The Send mail functionality is similar to Dotnet 1.1 except for few changes

1. System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient is used instead of System.Web.Mail.SmtpMail (obsolete in Dotnet 2.0).
2. System.Net.MailMessage Class is used instead of System.Web.Mail.MailMessage (obsolete in Dotnet2.0)
3. The System.Net.MailMessage class collects From address as MailAddress object.
4. The System.Net.MailMessage class collects To, CC, Bcc addresses as MailAddressCollection.
5. MailMessage Body Format is replaced by IsBodyHtml

The Code is Self explanatory by itself.

 Collapse | Copy Code

      protected void btnSendmail_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
      {
        // System.Web.Mail.SmtpMail.SmtpServer is obsolete in 2.0

        // System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient is the alternate class for this in 2.0

        SmtpClient smtpClient = new SmtpClient();
        MailMessage message = new MailMessage();

        try
        {
            MailAddress fromAddress = new MailAddress(txtEmail.Text, txtName.Text);

            // You can specify the host name or ipaddress of your server

            // Default in IIS will be localhost 

            smtpClient.Host = "localhost";

            //Default port will be 25

            smtpClient.Port = 25;

            //From address will be given as a MailAddress Object

            message.From = fromAddress;

            // To address collection of MailAddress

            message.To.Add("admin1@yoursite.com");
            message.Subject = "Feedback";

            // CC and BCC optional

            // MailAddressCollection class is used to send the email to various users

            // You can specify Address as new MailAddress("admin1@yoursite.com")

            message.CC.Add("admin1@yoursite.com");
            message.CC.Add("admin2@yoursite.com");

            // You can specify Address directly as string

            message.Bcc.Add(new MailAddress("admin3@yoursite.com"));
            message.Bcc.Add(new MailAddress("admin4@yoursite.com"));

            //Body can be Html or text format

            //Specify true if it  is html message

            message.IsBodyHtml = false;

            // Message body content

            message.Body = txtMessage.Text;
         
            // Send SMTP mail

            smtpClient.Send(message);

            lblStatus.Text = "Email successfully sent.";
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            lblStatus.Text = "Send Email Failed." + ex.Message;
        }
      }