Climbing to the Top of Your Small-Business Tree

We’ve previously discussed two sections of the small-business tree, the roots (your business life-support systems) and the trunk (your USP and your ideal customer). Now we’ll move up to the leafy canopy and explore the branches.

Branches (and twigs, and leaves) are the most visible part of the tree. When someone else learns about your business, they are seeing the branches (or perhaps one specific branch, or even just one leaf on one branch). So the business term that matches up most closely with “branches” is “marketing.”

Remember, however, that marketing is more than just advertising. I agree with Seth Godin‘s view, which is that everything your business does is marketing. Every interaction with the world, whether it’s with a current customer, a potential customer, an employee, a vendor, or other business owners, is marketing in action.

Some fairly obvious branches of your small-business tree:

• Your website
• Your business card
• Your logo
• Your advertising
• Your office or store
• Your email signature
• Any profiles you maintain online (such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

And here are some less-obvious ones:

• The colors and fonts on your website…and whether you make it easy to search
• The way you answer your business phone, and your voicemail greeting when you don’t answer
• How you pay your business’s bills, and whether you pay them on time
• Your privacy policy (is it in English, or legalese?)
• How often you email your subscribers, and how easy (or hard) you make it to unsubscribe
• What you call yourself (not just your business name, but your title: Are you the CEO? The Chief Vision Officer? The Headmaster?)

Branches are a great metaphor because they can contain sub-branches, twigs, and leaves. So your website might be one of your business’s main branches, a branch you spend a lot of time and energy maintaining, and each page or post could be called a leaf. The placement of your images and navigation are leaves. The way you link to other sites can be a leaf too.

Some of these leaves, such as sales pages (or, in the brick-and-mortar world, stores), have an obvious function: They are an entry point for outside energy, in the form of money, into your business. But even non-transactional leaves, such as regular blog posts, your “About Us” page, etc. are an entry point for outside energy, in the form of attention, into your business. Yes, setting up the sales page(s) is important. But don’t neglect the branches and leaves that surround them.

Finally, each leaf and branch, no matter how high up in the tree, is connected directly to the roots. In a real tree, a chain of connected cells brings water up from the roots to keep the leaf firm and shiny, and another type of cell has the job of sending sugars (made in the leaf from the sun’s energy) down to the roots for storage.

For a business, this connection is accomplished by constantly asking a simple question:

Is this business leaf congruent with my business roots?

You can evaluate any business decision by connecting with your own roots. Don’t forget that you need to travel through the trunk to get there. Does the leaf you’re contemplating serve your ideal customer? Does it match up with your USP? Will it send energy to your roots, and is it a natural, organic growth from those roots?

Food for thought, eh? Even as I type this post, I’m finding leaves I want to fix and change on the Your Web Coaches site. Did any of the items in this list inspire you to think differently about your marketing? Tell us with a comment!

Related posts:

1. Your Small-Business Tree
2. Packing the trunk (of your small-business tree)
3. Small-Business Tree seasons of growth and change
4. Disguised Learning, or Real-Life Business Tree Roots
5. The Small-Business Tree (Heart-Centered Technology Tip #16)