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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?
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Advice Home Business Technology Online Advertising Motivational Internet Marketing SEO Help Online Games Science Articles Happiness More Articles:1. Fail Your Way To Small Business Marketing Success! By Kevin P. Dervin Are you willing to fail your way to great marketing Success?Success is a learning process. It's an ongoing process - a continual quest.Do you believe that marketing success is a learning process? Then you must be willing to accept that you'll stumble (i.e., fail) along the way - sometimes a whole lot. But if you're willing to pay attention to what works and what doesn't, you can learn from your mistakes. You can fail your way to success!I hear … 2. Five Most Common Mistaken Beliefs About Joint Venture Marketing By Habiba Abubakar Apart from being the fastest, easiest, and most profitable strategy for attracting clients and boosting profits in any small business, there are so many other advantages of joint venture marketing for all parties involved. So, why aren’t all small business owners implementing joint ventures?Here’s a partial list of the most common mistaken beliefs about joint venture marketing. I’ve picked the top five to shorten your reading time, but you ca… 3. Mortgage Marketing - What Your Client Wants By David Wells Your business depends on the success of your marketing efforts. If your marketing works, you’ll get rich. If it doesn’t you’ll go broke. It’s simple.The key to pursuading your customers is knowing them. You have to understand them inside and out. While I don’t pretend to know your market as well as you do, there are a few things every customer wants.Your customers want a good deal. Sounds like a no-brainer but there’s a lot that goe… 4. Internet Marketing Success Requires a Business Plan (Part II) Formal business planning is a process that takes that 'great idea' and subjects it to rigorousscrutiny. It either validates your premise or else shows you where the idea falls apart. Businessplanning forces you to identify costs and develop a sensible marketing strategy before you startspending money. Having a solid business plan will also help you to acquire funding, if necessary.So what should an Internet marketing business plan address? At min… |