Small Business Promotion Coach

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The History of Brand Marketing

The process of branding livestock goes back to at least the ancient Egyptians. The indelible marks are used to identify animals as belonging to a particular farm or ranch.

Brand marketing is marketing that is designed to get your trademark, face, ideas (e.g. you brand) out in front of customers and potential customers. In other words to put a “brand” on your business. The hope is that once you have been exposed to brand enough times, you will become a customer.

Why you should avoid “Brand marketing”

Brand marketing is one of the best ways to waste your money.

Brand marketing is loved by the Madison Avenue types with their fancy ads. One of the reasons they love it is precisely because the results can’t be measured. Large businesses spend billions of dollars a year on these types of ads and have no idea if they earn more than they cost.

Except for one important exception (which I will get to later in the article) you should avoid brand marketing.

As a small business you must focus you resources on the activities and investments that have the best ROI (return on investment). Because you can’t measure the results of brand marketing you cannot calculate the ROI. So how can you make an intelligent decision?

Every promotional piece you create should have some way of measuring the results. Coupons are a very common offline way to track the effectiveness of a promotion. Webpage visits are a common way to do a similar thing online. You simply create a special page for the promotion then you can easily track how many people visited the page.

Small businesses often use brand marketing in the form of yellow pages ads. These ads put your name and number in a book (and in online versions of the yellow pages). There is no way to tell if you get any business from your investment. It is possible to track the effectiveness of your yellow page ad, but few businesses put such systems in place.

The Exception to the Rule

I said earlier that there was an exception to the rule about avoiding brand marketing. This exception is social media sites like Facebook.

These sites are very powerful because they attract so many people. Your small business should have a presence on Facebook and perhaps on other similar sites.

As Perry Belcher describes it, you should think of Facebook (and other social media sites) as a party. Imagine that you have organized a big barbeque and invited the whole neighborhood. How would you feel about someone who showed up and started giving everyone a hard sell Amway pitch? Would you invite them back again?

Social media sites are places to start building relationships. To contribute to the conversation. To let people know who you are and what you’re all about.

When you have build some rapport only then is it time to metaphorically “invite them back to your place”. Once they are at your site or at your business then it is expected that you will make some sort of offer.

In conclusion

Don’t do any promotion until you have figured out a way to track the effectiveness of that promotion. Leave the “Brand Marketing” to the huge businesses that can afford to spend money on ads with the dubious ability to create a positive ROI.