Scheduling Wizard Blog

Everybody wants to look like a million bucks. Well now you can and it's free. At least if you are a small business owner and want put some enticing freshness in your logo.

I have found a great website which let's you design your logo in just minutes. It's free to design and download your logo, but a donation is greatly appreciated by the genius creators of this gizmo.

So I let my imagination fly, and this is the my new amazing business logo.

I am using the symbol that is in Health + nutrition > Contemporary category and the Frutiger font. I have to say that it looks pretty awesome to me, keeping in mind I only spent 5 minutes designing it.

Go ahead, make my day (and your logo)
Now it's your turn to amaze me with your brand new logo. So make your way to LogoSnap.com and feel your inspiration flow!

When starting your business, one of the most important aspects is the ability to brand yourself effectively. When done correctly, branding separates you from the competition in a way that will undoubtedly launch you towards success. Each and every successful business has efficiently conveyed their unique trademark or brand to their customer base, thus attracting customers on a consistent and regular basis. And while many people may think of a symbol or logo when they hear the term "branding", it is in fact so much more than that.

Branding is truly a feeling and an experience conveyed through your marketing materials, websites, communication and services you provide to your customers. Create and cultivate an effective branding strategy early on to successfully attract your ideal customer. Here are 5 simple steps I recommend you exercise to get started in branding yourself.

1. Have a Unique Vision or Mission
This is the most important aspect in branding. Each business must stand for something in order to remain unique in the marketplace. The biggest threat in business is no doubt competition. But if you brand yourself correctly, with a true vision that shows you offer your services in a unique special way, you will naturally attract customers. Think about your vision, or ways that you and your services are unique to your customer and build on that. Do you specialize in something special? Do you offer your services in a unique approach? We all have something unique to offer in business. Convey this effectively and it will pay off.

2. Your Image
Image is very important as it shows a certain level of professionalism in conveying your vision. Creating a bold and visually appealing logo is an important part of your image. Make sure you place your logo on all of your marketing materials including your business cards, brochures, website etc. The interior decorating of your place of business is extremely important in communicating your brand as well. The way you dress and the cleanliness of your office is one of the most important decisions you will make. Customers will feel a sense of confidence towards you when you dress professionally, decorate professionally and provide a pristine, clean office environment.

3. Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
Another very important factor in branding your business, a USP conveys a direct statement about your business to the marketplace. You want your USP to make a specific claim such as "buy our service and get this benefit". You also want to make sure that your USP is unique and has not been used within your marketplace before. Also, make sure your offer is so strong that it has the ability to pull people towards you. A great example of a well know USP is "You get fresh, hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less -- or it's free." Domino's Pizza.

4. Consistency
Being consistent in business is one of the main reasons a customer will continue seeing you. Not being consistent truly can break your business. Customers come to expect certain things from you when doing business and you must deliver each and every time. Make sure everything you do flows in a consistent manner. From your marketing pieces, your phone etiquette, the service you provide and the way you treat each customer, every single moment your customer interacts with you needs to always be reliable and consistent. The moment you start letting this slide, your customer will notice. Make sure your business always runs consistently and delivers the finest experience.

5. Define Your Target Market
This is one of the key factors in branding. Without customers you don't have a business. Figure out your target market by looking at what unique qualities you bring to the table and what unique problems you are able to solve. Your target market or ideal customer is one who needs you for an issue or problem they are having. Because you are uniquely qualified to solve people's problems and/or eliminate pain in their life, target those people specifically. For instance, suppose you are a massage therapist that specializes in pain management. Targeting a pregnant woman with low back pain through your marketing efforts will attract those specific clients to you like a magnet. Target marketing is extremely important in attracting your ideal client and developing your brand.

Your brand lives in the minds and hearts of each of your customers. It is the sum of each aspect of your business carefully packaged and delivered. Effectively branding yourself will take you to great places in business. Do not overlook this important factor in building your business. Taking the time to cultivate this will surely launch your business to great heights!

About the author
Ann Ross is a successful massage therapy business owner in Seattle, WA. In addition to her massage practice, she is a marketing and business building coach for massage therapists. Her website http://www.MassageMarketingMentor.com is a valuable resource for self employed massage therapists.

We just finished the TimeCenter customer survey of 2010 and we got a lot of helpful feedback and suggestions from you, our beloved customers. Here is a summary of the survey questions and answers, and also some interesting quotes from our customers.

Have you seen an increase in appointments since you started using TimeCenter?
The most amazing fact is that 4 out of 5 businesses get more appointments now than before they had TimeCenter. The chart below shows that a third of those have a LOT more appointments than before. That's really great news, proving that online scheduling actually makes you more money!


How did you handle appointment scheduling before TimeCenter, and what were the major challenges you faced?
A few businesses used TimeCenter right from the start, which we think is awesome. But for the others, there were a lot of reasons to switch to online appointment scheduling.

Most businesses used to receive appointments by phone, and wrote them down in an appointment book. The challenge with this is that they were hard to reach, since most of them don't answer their phone during an appointment. Many believe that this made them miss out on several appointments.

Many hours each week was being spent on phoning clients who left a message on the answering machine. This takes a lot of time at the end of each day, and some makes calls to their clients when they're on a break, making it hard to really relax. Several business owners also felt the need to answer the phone and take appointments when at home with their family, which causes stress.

Some were half way to online scheduling by using e-mail to accept appointments. The biggest challenges with this were that the clients didn't get a confirmation right away, and if it took too long, the client sometimes made an appointment with a competitor.

For the businesses with several staff members, there were a lot of papers everywhere, and trying to assist each other with making appointments often led to double bookings and confusion.

Another challenge that was mentioned was no shows. The clients simply forgot about the appointment. Several business owners thinks it difficult to charge for the missed appointment, with the risk of the client never showing up again.


How has TimeCenter helped your business?
They threw out the appointment book and shut off their phone. They started sending text messages to clients who made appointments. What happened next?

Thanks to the text reminders sent to the clients cell phones, many businesses have noticed that they have much less no shows. The ability for the business owners to receive text messages when they get new appointments is also appreciated.

Several of our customers, especially beauty salons say that they get a lot more customers and appointments. They think it's because the clients have so much services to choose from. Services that they didn't know existed when booking by phone.

The self-employed companies says that it's a great relief, now that the phone rings less. Businesses that have a receptionist have noticed that the receptionist's work load is greatly reduced.

Another interesting point is that very much time was previously wasted in collecting the client's contact information, which had to be done manually. Saving all of this in a database really helped a lot and made the appointment booking more efficient.

The biggest benefit that most business owner mentioned is that their clients can make appointments whenever they feel like it, regardless of whether they're working, they're on a break or in bed at home sleeping.



Why did you choose TimeCenter?
The benefits of online scheduling are pretty obvious, but why do our customers choose TimeCenter? There are several appointment scheduling services to choose from. What makes us so special?

The main reason mentioned by many of the respondants is that it's really easy to use. They think it's user friendly, and their clients thinks it's easy to make an appointment. Great! This was and still is the cornerstone of the development of TimeCenter.

We also got a lot of comments that TimeCenter has a very good price, and the fact that there were no starting fee was appreciated.

Many of our customers think that we have a quick and very helpful support, even before buying a subscription. We appreciate these comments, because we put a lot of effort in helping each and everyone, even if it means explaining why TimeCenter might not be suited for them.

A lot of our customers switched to us from a competitor. Either because they were too expensive, too hard to use, or that their service had a lot of technical problems. One user also noted that TimeCenter has less features, which they prefer from other over-complicated and feature-flooded services.

One respondent made us raise our eyebrows. He said he chose us because he liked our name. "It makes sense and sounds professional". Well thank you! :)


Have you recommended TimeCenter to anyone?
It's great to have a community of loyal users, and knowing that you recommend us to your friends, is a confirmation that TimeCenter is really good. We're very happy to hear that 90% of our users have recommended TimeCenter to a friend or collegue. We're even more happy reading how they described it:




Anything else you would like to share with us? We'd love to hear your feedback.
As most online services, we get a lot of feature requests each week. We try to keep TimeCenter as simple as possible, and create only the features that are useful for everyone and are really good.

One of the most requested features is what could be called My calendar. A button/link somewhere to access your calendar in one click. This is a really good idea. We admit that it might require a few extra clicks to reach your calendar in some situations.

Many users appreciate the ability to sync with iPhone. Since you can't make appointments directly from the calendar in iPhone, some have shown an interest in an iPhone app, which basically is a stripped version of the normal TimeCenter, but better suited to the small screens of mobile devices. We like this a lot, and this will probably come sometime in a not too distant future.

For those of you working with events, like Yoga or other events where several people meet at once, there were some requests. One is to make it easier to send an e-mail or text message to everyone signed up for an event. It's a good idea, and we'll probably make it easier to handle event registrations in the future.


Some interesting questions and answers from one of our customers


This is all really cool, but did i win?
If you've been reading this far, you're probably wondering who the lucky winner of the 12 month TimeCenter subscription is. All survey respondants were put together in a bowl. We shook it around, and out came a note with a name on. The lucky winner is Karins Nature clinic from Sweden. Congratulations!


TimeCenter in the future
Our vision is to make TimeCenter easier, faster and more fun to use. Keep in touch with us and let us know what you like and dislike about TimeCenter, and we'll keep on making the best online scheduling software for you!

Feel free to post a comment and tell us what you think about the survey.

Did you know that 37% of Twitter users update their status from their mobile phone? Here are some more fun facts from Ev Williams, Twitter's co-founder:

If you have a cat, you might have noticed that the cat writes you some secret message on the keyboard sometimes. It is said that a monkey could write the complete works of Shakespeare if the monkey was to hit random keys on the keyboard for infinite amount of time.

But I am sure that you probably never heard of a less known fact, that cats have a very high computer IQ, or CAT-Q if you will. Here is a document proving that cats are in fact the smartest animals on our planet.

How can you prevent your cat from taking over the world?
We managed to put a man on the moon, now it's time for the next step. Discover when it's you or your cat typing on your keyboard with this cat messaging detecting software. Now you can finally chat with your friends without having to worry about... WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE? Wait! no! ffffgffffffgg+´+´´caaattttsstaaaaakooovrrddwwwwwldddnooowww