Small Business Marketing And Advertising: Branding vs. Direct ResponseGet The Edge Marketing on theedgemarketing.com. Small Business Marketing And Advertising: Branding vs. Direct Response topic will increase your understanding on The Edge Marketing. We at theedgemarketing.com only provide news, articles, information in The Edge Marketing. The Edge Marketing at theedgemarketing.com provides the most up to date news and articles. If you have questions please do not hesitate to contact us.
Small Business Branding Advertising and Marketing an Oxymoron? Unless you're a ubiquitous consumer products company, the value of branding is far, far less than the value of direct response. What good is impressing someone with your brand if he or she never comes into contact with your business again? Why would they come into contact with your business again if you haven’t gotten a direct response? Branding is essential for Coca Cola and Microsoft and all the other consumer giants because they don't need direct response. Their offering is available every time you drive down the street, so burning their logos into your eyeballs will actually make you more likely to buy. But if you have to search out the business, having a logo floating in your consciousness won't be enough to motivate you. Even if branding alone could drive business, how long will it be before that logo or slogan or jingle has left your memory forever? A few hours? A day? One of the basic requirements for branding is repetition. Numerous repetitions. Like seeing the little Microsoft flag every single day, in the lower left corner of your screen, on your computer's case, in magazine advertisements and on television commercials. One visit to your website or one glimpse of your advertisement won't accomplish this—and remember, unless you have Microsoft’s budget, one exposure is all you’ll likely get if you don't get a direct response. In reality, even numerous exposures to your brand might not be enough. There's only so much room for logos in people's minds, and you've got an awful lot of deep-pocketed competition for that space. In contrast, if someone requested a whitepaper from you, or called in for more information, you would have their attention for much longer, even if you never followed up--which you could do, since you had their contact information. The Two Cases when Branding Makes Small Business Marketing Sense 1. When branding enhances direct response rather than detracting from it. Good branding enhances trust in your business. A good tagline, graphic design, and logo can also make it instantly clear what your business does, allowing users to go directly to your message without having to decide if you’re worth listening to. Simply put: if you’re a watchmaker, put a watch in your logo, and the word “watch” in your name and your tagline or slogan. When you’re selling services picking a logo can be trickier, but it can be done. UpMarket Content’s logo is a scroll and pen. Just make sure your logo communicates what you do, rather than something foolish like a black rocket for an advertising agency. Yet while branding usually enhances direct response, you should not hesitate to sacrifice branding if it hurts your response. If you find that a different tagline or font does significantly better in getting responses, run with them. 2. When you actually do have the opportunity to impress your brand on the same person dozens of times over the course of an average month. For branding to work, you don’t just have to maximize total exposures, but exposures to unique individuals. Let’s be absolutely clear: in terms of branding, exposing 1,000,000 people to your brand once each is infinitely less valuable than exposing 1,000 people to your brand 1,000 times each. You have to maximize exposures to the same individuals. Aim for a hundred exposures per individual if you want to really enter people’s consciousnesses. Of course, it may take far fewer than a thousand individual exposures. If someone is sitting in front of your branding advertisement for more than a few minutes, they may in fact be exposed to it dozens of times, each time their line of sight crosses it. But this kind of long-term exposure is likely going to cost you more. How can you ensure that your brand advertising will maximize your brand exposure per unique individual? Place your brand advertising where users will come back often to see it. For instance, a banner on a website that has a strong following of returning users, or an advertisement on the local diner's placemat. Even when branding does make sense, direct response will often also make sense, so you should combine the two if possible. For instance, at the bottom of a banner advertisement with your logo and tagline looming large, put a button labeled “get more information.” Or, underneath your businesses sign, put a telephone number with an offer to get more information. Because if they never visit or call, who cares if they have your logo burnt onto their retinas?
|
Advice Home Business Technology Online Advertising Motivational Internet Marketing SEO Help Online Games Science Articles Happiness More Articles:1. How to Know if Direct Mail Will Work for Your Business Here's a great lesson that applies to direct mail. Ready? Some people say one thing and do the opposite. In other words ...One shouldn’t pay attention to what people say they’ll do as much as what they actually DO. For example, it seems most readers of the National Enquirer don’t want to admit they read it. Just ask people, “You read that tabloid stuff?” 'No way! Not me.'Maybe they’re afraid of looking silly to others? Maybe their embarrassed to … 2. Consumer Buying Behavior and Manipulation By Lance Winslow We all know there are ways that that businesses use to manipulate our buying behavior to get us to buy more. We know there are many techniques and other stimuli, which affect us and we know that they are often employed in businesses.Generally we accept this even if we actually stopped to think about it, we probably determine that it is inappropriate and somewhat unfair. Yet we all participate in the impulse shopping and it seems to make us feel… 3. Practice Marketing: How to Answer What Do You Do? to Increase Prospects, Publicity and Profits By Jeff Herring "What do you do?""I'm a CPA. What do you do?""I'm a stockbroker."End of conversation.And the end of an opportunity to promote you and what you do in a way that will increase your prospects, publicity and profits.Some like to call it The Elevator Speech" as in something you can say in the time it takes to ride on an elevator.What I found is that many many people never ride on elevators. So the term Laser Speech really gets at what you want to do… 4. Top 10 Benefits of Hiring a Marketing Writer to Write Your Marketing Materials By Maggie Dennison 1. It costs less to delegate to a professional than to waste your valuable time trying to do it yourself. How many prospective clients could you call in the time it takes you to put the words together yourself?2. You’ll stop wasting thousands of dollars on material that doesn’t work.3. You can stop struggling to find the right words.4. You can be confident that you have a professional product, and that you’ll be perceived as professional.5. It … |