Is Branding Important To Small Business?
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I’ve been working my way through Eben Pagan’s DVD recordings of his “Get Altitude” program, which was a $10,000 per head live in-person seminar presented as advanced entrepreneur training. It’s focused on people who already have businesses who want to grow their operation towards seven and then eight figure turnover.
One of the concepts I’ve heard Eben teach over and over again is the idea of dominating your market. This is more than just being successful, this is creating the perception that what you do is in a category all of its own. You don’t have competitors if you’re the only supplier in the mind of the customer, even if what you actually supply is provided by other companies.
The great thing about this concept is that you can dominate a market without changing anything about your product. Through a strategic marketing process, you can establish a frame of perception associated with your brand that is entirely unique. This isn’t actually something tangible, since most tangible elements can be replicated. This is a feeling that your marketing will emote from your prospects and customers when they think about what you offer.
When you establish a brand perception that is emotionally stimulating in a positive way, you have a very powerful advantage. You don’t have to compete on price, and assuming your product is at least adequate in quality, you will make more sales, even more sales than better products because you have a stronger brand.
What Is A Brand?
In my previous article from way back in December 2005 – Small Business Branding – It’s Not “We”, It’s “Me” – I defined branding, in this particular case a “personal brand” as –
Small business branding is not a good logo, a rhyming name, or special font. Small business branding is the owner. It’s what the owner does, says and how the owner’s traits come through in every aspect of the business. It’s the way relationships are built and maintained, the way a person does business and treats other people. It’s how rapport is established at an individual level, where trust and comfort exist as human characteristics, not from theme music, models or slogans.
A brand is intangible so you can’t really quantify its value. Advertising companies do their best to come up with some kind of brand value metrics, otherwise they wouldn’t have a means to value their services, but even the best technology is still making assumptions about the value of a brand.
When marketing is advertising and when advertising doesn’t have a measurable correlation to a response of some kind, then you’re making some assumptions about the outcomes you will get for your money invested. You can’t prove that X dollars spent resulted in Y dollars in new revenue from sales.
In other words, when you spend money on advertisements and you can’t directly correlate that with actual sales, then you are assuming it will have a positive impact on your bottom line, even though it might even have the reverse effect or be worth less than what you spent.
Can You Quantify Your Outcomes?
Small businesses rarely invest extensively in advertising purely for the sake of branding. We need to know that when we spend money we make more money in return. This is why the Internet is so good. Since actions and responses can be measured, you can determine how much you make based on how much you spend.
Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is one of the best examples of this principle. If you can spend $100 a day to make $150 in profit, and you can know this by directly linking traffic coming from your PPC campaign that result in customers spending money, then you know it’s worth your while.
The same goes for any kind of traffic source resulting in a sale where we can quantify a result. Since we know where the traffic comes from, even down to what keywords someone used to find our website, or what medium they came from to find us (an email, a search engine, a paid advertisement), we can assess the value of that traffic to us.
This type of advertising is called “direct response” and while it was first coined to describe offline marketing used by guys like Dan Kennedy, it applies even better online because it is cheaper and you can measure more variables.
For most small operations, direct response online advertising is the only form of advertising that people invest money in, and branding, if it is even thought about at all, is not a concern.
Even people who don’t spend a penny on advertising, focus on methods of online marketing that are measurable in some shape or form, so they can focus on what works and skip what doesn’t.
So where in this mix does branding fit in?
Perceived Differentiation and Brand Awareness
One of the very first ways I made money online was by selling banners on my websites.
Although years ago clicks on banners where at least returning a positive outcome, nowadays banners deliver terrible click through rates. It’s very hard to justify spending money on banners as a direct response mechanism, especially when there are such better tools available, like Pay Per Click.
As a result of this I started selling banners to advertisers more as a branding tool, and less about direct traffic. I was taught this lesson by one of my long term sponsors on a website I used to own years ago.
This particular sponsor paid me $100 each and every month to place their 468×60 banner all over my site, and they did so for years. I monitored the clicks on their banners, and although initially the response was good while the banner was fresh, the click-rate dropped dramatically as the banner became “old”.
I told sponsors it’s a good idea to rotate in different banner designs from time to time due to what is known as banner blindness. People become “blind” to exposure of a particular banner, and if you change your design on a regular basis you can attract more clicks.
The sponsor never adhered to my advice and explained they were not sponsoring my website for the clicks, they considered any direct traffic a bonus. What they wanted is the branding that being associated with my website provided.
In this case, the sponsor was looking for two outcomes, which I believe are the much better reasons to do any kind of banner advertising.
- Brand Awareness: My site had a very targeted traffic base for what this particular sponsor offered (they had a physical shop in Sydney in this case). What they wanted was “mindshare” in their consumer base, so when the need arose to purchase something, their store brand came into the thought of the potential customer thanks to the continuous exposure their brand was given on my site.
- Brand Association: My site was a leader in the industry and thus it had credibility. Some of this credibility was transferred to my sponsor. As I said earlier, this is an intangible feeling, so in this case the association with my website brand transferred some of the “good” feeling to the sponsor’s brand.
You Are Everywhere
Although banner blindness is a problem, there’s a lot to be said when it comes to being “ubiquitous“. Although few people click on the banner, if a person is repeatedly exposed to the same image over and over again it starts to create a feeling of association with that particular product category.
When a potential customer sees your banner everywhere, and I mean not just on one website but on many and some of the leading websites in your industry, you become cemented in the awareness of people for that particular product. That doesn’t mean they will buy from you of course, but it does mean they will consider you.
Trust is also enhanced by being ubiquitous because people infer that you are successful and credible, since it appears so many people support you. This increases the likelihood the prospect will choose you to buy from.
Seth Godin, in his usual succinct and eloquent style, summarized this idea in a recent blog post of his – On becoming a household name.
The Branding Power Of Affiliates
I’ve written previously about the power of having your online peer group support you when you do a launch, in this case the leaders in your industry (see You Are As Good As The People Around You), but smaller affiliates play a role too.
Although the majority of affiliates never make a sale, they are valuable because they help to enhance your brand by plastering your banners all over their websites. Although each individual affiliate has minimal traffic, the collective exposure from an “army” of affiliates all promoting your banners, creates the intangible branding benefits that I’ve discussed in this article.
It’s through repeat exposure that your brand can become synonymous with a product category (awareness) and position you as the leader (trust).
Does Any Of This Matter?
Most of what I’m talking about in this article refers to elements of your brand that are intangible. What I’ve written of course makes sense – it’s logical – but it is hard to measure since you would need a direct wire into the brain of every customer you have to figure out their motivation when buying your product.
Most good branding occurs as a side effect of good marketing and it’s not likely as a small business that you will invest money on marketing or advertising that is purely about branding. It is however worth considering the impact on your brand whenever you evaluate the effectiveness of an online campaign.
Positive branding can lead to an increase in sales, but more important is the underlying psychology behind why that is. With a strong brand perception, people will choose your offer above everyone else because of the “feeling” associated with you and what you do. Much of this is developed in the subconscious within the mind of your prospects and customers as they go about their business online.
Keep this in mind next time you do any marketing activity – have you considered what impact it will have on your brand?
Yaro Starak
Branded
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Thanks for another interesting post Yaro!
Use of social networks continue the ‘being everywhere’ theme. Because they’re mostly free (from cost anyway), small business owners can build brand awareness and develop relationships very quickly.
Yaro, you are quite famous in my county and we all love your advice.
Yaro this post has given me plenty of food for thought!
I’ve typically focused on activities that can be measured but you’ve helped me see many benefits that come from branding in the online world.
Also your mention of smaller affiliates helping with the ‘everywhere (AKA ubiquitous) factor’ was the nudge I needed to prioritise the creation of some affiliate resources for one of my businesses.
Truly helpful Yaro, thank you.
Branding is as important of yourself having a name to be called on. Branding is the tool you can develop and use to stand among others in your industry.
I also read it and I am convinced that small organisations need branding even more than big companies to differentiate themselves. The church is very good example. They started as a group of very few people. But they hat two symbols : The fish (in greek ichtus which like a mini confession senctence) and the cross. I am still struggling for a branding for my small blog. But after reading the Masterplan, I decided to make membershipsite about marriage. Lets see. I already wrote the 2 first pages of my ebook
in two weeks ….
Branding is critical to small business success. Where many small businesses get it wrong though is they think their brand is their logo, or their marketing message, or what they sell. They build a brand around those items, when in fact a brand is defined by their customers. Customers decide what your brand is, what you stand for in their minds, and small businesses that can shape their brand around their customers definition will have a much greater chance for success.
Matt
Yaro, Branding (that is, the owner as well as the business as You say above) is critical for customers (past and present) and also prospects to Refer you to their friends and colleagues.
Branding is also the package of USP, Logo, taglines, etc, etc that is promoted over all the media you advertise in.
Just a few thoughts, I guess!
Yaro, good idea to link to the definition of ubiquitous
And that’s an interesting point about “banner blindness”. I’ve had a sponsor on my blog for a little over a year now so I might recommend they update their banners.
Yaro,
Branding is essentially making you the “go to” answer. The problem is that many marketers care about “been everywhere” and forget the goal of branding which is to generate leads and increase revenue. This is actually what my blog topic focuses on (thanks for the MM conference call yesterday by the way, it really helped).
In many ways branding is similar to your preeminent concept. Appear to be superior or is what people remember. I’ve gone out to lunch/dinner with indecisive people and when it comes to ordering drinks, many simply say “Coke” because it’s the simple and easy choice that comes to mind.
Funny you mentioned Dan Kennedy, one of my client’s partner recent attended his event. And event at the event, he is able to fill his own hype doing all kinds of tricks to keep people feel emotionally attached to his brand. He is old school but he is all about ideas and creative marketing. He is the godfather that invented the mailer with a $1 million dollar check that’s got your name on it like some 20-30 years ago.
I think, that brand is something that occurs natural, when you are succesful. It is easy to lose though. And if you lose trust, you lose sales.
I think it’s something you’ve got to work at, rather than it being natural. Yes, if you happen to create the best of something you may find that branding follows on, but in a crowded market you need to make your product/service stand out and if you can make it into a recognized brand then that can only help.
So I’m not saying you’re wrong, just that I think it’s something you should work at as it doesn’t always follow, or may be a long time coming.
You have clarified some of my misgivings about branding. I am in full agreement with you. Thank you.
Building you brand these days can and will be a time consuming process. You have to reach out to your customers through advertising, blogs, ppc etc. Once they visit, keeping them and converting their visit to a sale and eventually a loyal customer would be vitally important.
wow, $10,000 similar? … you couldn’t find that information online through a few searches?
Yaro, here are the words coming from a Rich Dad advisor: “Your brand goes before you so that you don’t have to sell so hard.”
Robert Kiyosaki says he believes in branding, that’s why the Rich Dad books keep selling without any promotional effort from him. He got a whole team of experts who become his Rich Dad advisors because they know they’ll sell more books under his brand. And their books also keep selling without any personal promoting.
I admire Dan Kennedy, but he knows nothing about branding, or else he wouldn’t need to work by now.
Rich Dad says branding is important to small businesses. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather believe him.
For me, branding plays an important role in every business– be it small businesses or even large businesses.
Thanks for this wonderful insights you’ve shared. As usual, you really created a whole new perspective to what branding is all about and what it can do to every business out there. This is really a good eye-opener…
Small businesses certainly SHOULD focus on direct response marketing, but often get caught up in “Nike” or “Kellogg” style branding sucking in their money.
Too often Small businesses get caught up in “Nike” or “Kellogg” style branding sucking in their money, and don’t spend time watching the returns.
Without branding there can be no sales period. Customers no longer trust strangers.
I liked the Brand Awareness/Brand Association part, which makes an excellent selling point to advertising on blogs (if your blog is on a level that advertisers want to be assosiated with you in addition to the clickthroughs and direct sales).
I think the lesson here, branding-wise and in the small business online scope, is that everything you do, has an impact on you, the owner and thus, your “brand”. So whatever you do, whether it’d be marketing, writing on your blog, blog commenting,etc. you must consider what impact this will have on your brand. In the end it doesn’t matter if you call it reputation, authority, brand, or something else, but it will do you good to think about it a bit when taking actions.
If you are passionate about helping people with their health, and help them become financially independent as well as you, then i strongly feel I have a link that might help you out.
Let us take an example – Does entrepreneurs journey sell or does yaro sell?
Not sure what you are trying to suggest by that question Nicole, I am interested to hear your feedback on that.
Till then,
Jean
Banner Blindness is a very apt term….our eyes (brains) are so used to ignoring ads that the repetition causes them to get ignored very quickly. Change is good here, but it would be better for a blog that has lots of recurring traffic, rather than a small startup type site.
Branding is easier in small niches so beginners are wise to start and test it out on a small scale. After achieving success go for a larger market.
Most products tend to have up to 3 major brands, all others don’t manage to get over the ‘trusted’ hill.
Look at cola, everyone knows Coke, Pepsi, and to a lesser degree RC (royal crown cola) and every store (US anyway) stocks them, but that’s it for the last 50 or so years. Not that no one else has tried, but these brands will probably carry market domination for at least another 50 years.
When you need a tissue, is it a Kleenex. Do you even call it a tissue anymore, or just ask for a Kleenex even if your stocked with Puffs tissues.
Before the all in one printer/copier/fax my guess is you’d rather have a Xerox.
Another great post Yaro, those who dominate their niche reap some mighty big rewards.
Thanks for the interesting read Yaro. Before reading this I had the misconception that branding primarily just related to the company name, logo & slogan. I never stopped to realize that your brand is developed by everything your business does. One can develop a memorable brand without spending millions putting that brand name in people’s faces everyday. It all comes down to connecting with your customers and standing out.
Great post Yaro. Branding is essential to being successful in any business and essential to online businesses. I was very taken by the idea of domination and becoming your own category. Thank you!
thanks 4 the post yaro
Like you said, small business branding is the owner. When you build trust with people, treat them with respect, and maintain that, you will have relationships in your business that reflect who you are. That’s doing business with comfort and confidence.
Incredibly bizarre. I was just this minute working out an article I am writing on this very subject. I happened to be listening to Yaro’s audio version of “The Roadmap To Become A Blogger” which as usual leads me over to this website which I always find incredibly packed full of detailed, highly valuable information. Anyway, the idea had been running through my head all day about “branding”. I guess in a sense it really started off with some thoughts about market share. We all talk so much these days about micro niches and focusing on finding what I like to call “exotic” niches. While I completely agree that this research and discovery is important when trying to move into any given field especially when it comes to trying to create some streams of income, and bringing products to a targeted market and thoroughly knowing your competition. However I do have a bit of a different philosophy in a sense on this subject, and I would love to hear what you all think. I always find it a good conversation starter. ( Yes my life is THAT exciting)
So when it comes to branding and moving your brand into any given market, I feel that regardless of the amount of competition there is always room for another player or um…..”provider” shall we say. I think that as long as you are out there day after day providing quality information, quality products, quality training, whatever the case may be. I think the entrepreneur that does not at least provide a similar service will soon fall by the way side especially in niches where there is a larger competition pool, but I beleive that could speak as much to the broad spectrum of choice as it could the product or seervice specifically. Relating to the customer day in and day out on a more human level and creating some kind of emotional connection is to me more important and has more relationship to the end result, be it measured in sales or membership etc.
I wrestled my entire primary school career, I was damn good. Boney and Wirey my friends, much MUCH different then now but that is another story for another time. I was thinking the other day though if how many pairs of wrestling shoes I went through and I think I honestly came up with about a hundred pairs of shoes. Now I am pretty finicky about foot ware especially wrestling shoes, but in all honestly for me it was all about STYLE as opposed to comfort. Also being the rebel (aka pain in the ass) that I am I specifically remember when one brand became pretty much the “wrestling shoe of choice” that I defiantly switched brands. I mean do Nike Air Jordan’s make you play basketball as good as #24 His Airness? Well for me personally that would be a downgrade, but I digress!! NO!! Do they sell a boatload of those shoes every month to a bunch of middle class teenagers who’s parent’s can’t afford USED shoes much less these works of average? YES they do.
You see it everyday, in everything we do. Branding is so important and in many ways one of those somewhat mysterious and untangible traits. If it was a muscle could we figure out how to build it, how to maybe just add some tone? Being genuine certainly goes a long way toward relating to a customer more than the next guy. In this day and I age I find most of the time, that is the best you can do. Keeping that in mind though does that not mean that there is room in any market and any niche no matter how big or small the pool may be? Always a good topic. Love your site Yaro!a
Great insights about branding Yaro.. Its definitely important no matter what you do..
Interesting post, I appreciate the information. Also, you write very lengthy posts, on most other sites I tend to lose interest after reading about 5-600 words but I typically find myself reading your posts that are much longer from start to finish, so kudos to you for finding a way to stretch out my attention span lol.
As for branding, i personally feel there is very little that is more critical to the success of any business, small or large.
Amazing Yaro!
This new look in cool…i wish i could have one blog like ur’s.
Great post. It’s just a little hard to come up with a brand if you’re not very creative, but in the long run, after you’ve created one, it’ll be well worth it.
If you con’t come up with a creative or catchy way to brand your site or products etc, you can always brand yourself. Bringing a personal touch to a site can be very beneficial. Site visitors, especially those that frequent blogs love to feel a sense of inclusion.. Sharing information about yourself, your family or anything personal that lets your visitors feel included is a great way to go, and will likely get you a lot more repeat traffic.
Is branding as important to small businesses as it is to big corporates?
your small business “brand” may very well start with just your name. Your first branding activities may consist of developing a “logo” treatment of your name and website address and then ensuring that this “brand” appears on everything you produce and distribute. You will also want to make sure that your business is referred to in precisely the same way in everything you produce. Early branding can start out that simply.
I loved the banner-blindness example you gave, an example in which the blindness is beneficial to the sponsor.. their constant presence there, almost at the edge of vision helps to cement their place in the mindfs of consumers.. Great stuff!
you are quite famous in my county and we all love your advice.
Yaro, you are so right about branding. Perry Belcher in his social media training also talks about this. These days with social networking sites there is lot more focus on branding for marketers.
Facebook, twitter, youtube, linkedin – Its all about branding these days and giving same message everywhere.