Vehicle Wrapping and Road Signs

Vehicle wrapping results in constant advertising as the vehicle drives around town, on the highways and throughout the country. Wrap company-owned vehicles or pay to wrap busses. The wrap can include compelling visuals, the company's unique value proposition, URLs, telephone numbers and QR codes. You can wrap the sides and back of the vehicle and even the roof of the vehicle for views from the sky. All of these can increase brand awareness and product sales. 

Likewise, you can work with the federal, state or local highway departments to post road signs along busy roads and highways to increase brand awareness. Consider how often a commuter will be exposed to your brand as he or she passes it twice a day every workday.

These are just two of the innovative ways to keep your brand alive via roads and highways. I left out the more common way, via outdoor advertising, as most companies have likely considered this type of advertising as a part of their marketing mix.

I wish you added marketing success as you consider vehicle wrapping and road signs as a way to constantly make people aware of and remind them of your brand.

Blog Posts for Startups and Business Founders

Here are some blog posts that may be of interest to startups and business founders.

• What it takes to be a successful entrepreneur
• Startup Insights
• New Product Development - Corporations versus Startups
• 26 of the Most Common Startup Challenges
• A Common Sense Approach to Marketing for Startups
• Branding & Pitch Decks
• How Can Start-Up Brands Beat Well-Known Brands?
• Startups and Unique Value Propositions

In addition to these blog posts, BrandingStrategySource.com has more than 700 other blog posts covering every area of brand management and marketing. You may find some of those posts useful as well. 

What it takes to be a successful entrepreneur

As you may know, in addition to my brand management and marketing consulting practice, I have also been a coach to dozens of startups over the past five years. In working with business founders, I have determined that these are the most important contributors to success:

• A great idea that adds value to a specific set of customers
• A passion for transforming that idea into a successful business
• Ample "customer discovery" to validate the viability of your idea
• A belief that you can accomplish anything
• A high tolerance for calculated risk - that does not mean that you are motivated by risk or seek it out, only that you are willing to work with risk in smart ways
• The ability to repeatedly overcome adversity - resilience and perseverance (the ability to repeatedly "pivot")
• Learning from failure
• Adaptability
• A strong work ethic
• Decisiveness and a penchant for action
• Ability to thrive in an unstructured environment - there are no directions, there are no hard and fast rules
• Some level of smarts - you do not need to be a genius
• Emotional intelligence
• Salesmanship - the ability to tell a compelling story about your new product or service
• A willingness to network with others - you will fail if you try to go it alone
• No fear of asking for help
• Along with this, an ability to seek out and gather the needed resources to succeed
• Knowing when to switch from an emphasis on product/service development to an emphasis on business development, sales and marketing - this does not mean halting work on product/service development
• Establishing a continuous loop of customer feedback and product/service enhancements
• It is an added benefit if you have some financial management skills, the most important of which is cash flow management
• It is also an added benefit, but not necessary for success (you can hire this expertise), to be a savvy marketer, understanding the target customer so well that you can think through the best messages and marketing strategies for them
• Most successful entrepreneurs also have an ability to delay gratification - many are willing to work tirelessly with little or no pay for a period of time with the vision of one day cashing out for millions of dollars (or at least managing a very successful business well into the future)

The most important of all of these skills is a "can do" entrepreneurial mindset. As an investor in startups, I always focus on the entrepreneur and his or her mindset/skills over the idea. I would rather back an outstanding entrepreneur with a mediocre idea than a person with questionable entrepreneurial tendencies and an outstanding idea.

Having said all of this, these are some of the common problems that entrepreneurs encounter:

• Not offering the right “value proposition,” that is, something people really want
• Not doing enough “customer discovery,” that is, understanding customer needs and desires
• Founder is too focused on product development vs. business development, especially when it is time to switch primary focus from the former to the latter
• Lots of uncertainty and risk and need to change course or “pivot”
• Access to funding/$
• Hiring the right employees and not being afraid of firing those who don’t work out
• “Scaling”/growing the business - investment in inventories (and marketing efforts) before sales occur is a particularly common problem in cash flow management
• Knowing when you need to hire a professional CEO who can take the company to the next level – knowing when the leadership role has exceeded your talents and abilities.

The good news is that entrepreneurship adds value to the world in these ways. It is often enough motivation for an entrepreneur to "push through" when the times get rough.

• Introduces new products and services
• Creates jobs and economic growth
• Empowers entrepreneurs to pursue their passions
• Creates wealth for the entrepreneur and his or her investors and employees
• Can address social issues
• Can advance technology, which can be used in other ways

If you have thought about becoming an entrepreneur, I hope this blog post has helped you think though what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur.