Is BRANDING the right strategy for your small business? by Jason Vance (pictured): What is Branding? Branding is one of those business buzz words that gets a lot of attention. In my opinion it is, in some cases, a very dangerous word for small businesses. I remember when I was first starting my window cleaning business. It was my goal to take over the world. No seriously, I paid little attention to my ROI (return on investment) for my advertising campaigns. I wasn’t doing a good job of testing and measuring my advertising campaigns. I was more focused on creating a BRAND and making sure everyone in the tri-county area knew who we were.
Only now looking back at the approach do I realize how dangerous this strategy was. Just throwing money at any type of advertising offer that came my way. I guess this is downside of being a marketing major in school. I was under the impression that more is always better.
I refer to this strategy as dangerous because of the obvious lack of responsibility that comes with this approach. OK, so what does it take to approach the subject of Branding in a responsible manner? What does it take to use the power of branding in your business without the risk of wasting money your hard-earned money?
Below are first of 2 Tips to Harness the power of branding for your small business.
1. Plan the Work, Work the Plan.
Have a marketing strategy/plan that you document and follow. An example of this would be to add BRAND related items into your annual budget. In January create a new logo. February have professional pictures taken of you, your jobs, and your team. March use the pictures, the new logo, and create a new website.
2. Testing and measuring all your advertising investments.
You can’t manage what you don’t measure. You would be surprised at how many business owners I run into that have no idea of where their customers come from. They really aren’t sure where their leads are coming from. They then wonder where they should invest their marketing dollars. Of course you don’t know where to spend your marketing budget, it’s impossible to know if you aren’t measuring it. Business is a game. How do you know if you are winning or loosing if you are not keeping score?
You also may notice that I described advertising as an investment. Advertising is just an opportunity for you to buy customers. Step 1 is to have a marketing strategy/plan. Step 2 is to keep track of your advertising and ask customers how they heard of your company. Step 3 is to calculate the acquisition costs of each customer by dividing the total advertising dollars spent by the number of customers you acquired for each advertising campaign. Test, measure and tweak your advertising to continually improve this number.
I hope you got a few good points out of Part 1. Part 2 we will discuss more tips to harness the power of branding for your small business.
- Jason has been an entrepreneur and investor all his life. It all started with lemonade stands, vegetable stands, and baseball cards.
- He’s been in the service industry since he was 16. Prior to Service Coach Jason founded, and still operates, a commercial window cleaning company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
- Jason attended UW La Crosse where he received his bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with a major in Marketing.
- Jason played acoustic rhythm guitar in a college band while attending UW La Crosse.
- After college he became involved in triathlons and today is still an active cross country skier, runner, and cyclist.
- Jason’s favorite movie charactor of all time is Ewan McGregor’s Obi-Wan Kenobi from Episode I, II, & III of the Star Wars series.
- Jason grew up in Oconomowoc and is a native of Wisconsin. He currently lives with his wife, Kelly, in the Milwaukee, WI area.
- Jason’s passion lies in helping small businesses succeed, grow, achieve their goals, and build the community and economy.
- Jason strongly believes in the benefits of business coaching. He has a great time helping business owners learn to make a lot more money, get highly organized, and in the process, become successful entrepreneurs. Providing unbiased advice, Jason will be your Training Coordinator, Marketing Manager, Sales Director, Partner, and Confidant…helping you to build the business you deserve.
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