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Busted: 3 Myths About Branding

July 26, 2009

Today I'm kicking off a three-part blog interview with my friend and former colleague Maria Ross. I had the pleasure of working with Maria in the field marketing department of Business Objects where we were responsible for helping the enterprise sales team genereate new leads and move existing deals forward.

Maria has since started her own branding, marketing and communications consultancy called Red Slice where her mission is to engage, inform and delight audiences to keep them coming back for more.

In Part One of our series, Maria and I talk about the importance of brands to small businesses. In part two we tackle how to re-launch a brand that is no longer relevant, and we'll wrap it up with discussion on how to help consumers embrace and understand your brand.

Sima: Hi Maria, thanks for making time to share your thoughts on branding with us. Let's start our conversation at the very beginning. In your own words, why do you think small business owners and entrepreneurs tend to pay so little attention to establishing their brand?

Maria: Thanks Sima, I'm deilghted to be working with you again! When it comes to small business brands, I've found that there are three common myths that stop entrepreneurs and business owners from making time to create a strong brand strategy:
 
Myth #1: Branding is expensive. 
This could not be further from the truth.  You can’t afford NOT to have a strong brand strategy. Your brand is your essence, your core, your story.  It’s what space you occupy in people’s minds. So your company will have a “brand” whether you mean to or not – wouldn’t you rather create the impression that generates the most sales? It’s not just the visual pieces like logo, business cards or website, but also the experience that people have doing business with your company. 

And everything people see, hear, and experience about your company should be clear and consistent with that brand promise.

Virgin America totally gets this – every detail is meant to convey the brand, from the look of their ticketing counters down to the fun and sassy safety video they show onboard.  They have not wasted one opportunity to hammer home their hip, stylish, young brand to their customers.

If your visual look and feel screams “playful, whimsical and hip” but when people walk into your shop or visit your website, the colors, product selection and messaging are boring, cold, or serious, you have a brand problem.  Or you also have an identity crisis if you say you are committed to the best customer service, but people get lost and frustrated within a voicemail routing labyrinth when they call your help line.

You need to be consistent with every customer touch point – and that includes little things like your voicemail message or email signature. People need to experience consistent marketing messages about 7-10 times in order for the perception to stick.  If not, you are wasting your time and money on  a scattershot approach and small business owners are normally operating on razor-thin budgets.
 
Myth #2: Building a brand strategy is hard.
Brand building is not rocket science.  You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars and six months working with a big name branding agency.  You can do most of this work yourself, quickly and easily, before engaging with a designer, writer or marketing firm by simply thinking through your intended brand experience. After you create this strategy, building a website or writing a brochure will be a piece of cake because you will know where you are headed.  Any road looks like the right one when you don’t have a map – and you’ll be left wandering around for days!  Who can afford to spend all those billable hours on revisions with designers and writers when they don’t need to?
 
Myth #3: Branding is all fluff – I need leads!
If you try to create a marketing plan without a strong brand strategy, again, every road will look like the right one.  The brand strategy is your Litmus test, your benchmark for deciding where to invest your marketing dollars.  Otherwise, how will you be able to tell which of the myriad marketing opportunities are the best use of your dollars?  That event booth that only costs $500 might look like a bargain, but if the event does not attract your target audience or does not align with your company personality, then is it really a bargain or just throwing $500 down the drain? With a strong brand strategy, you are in a much better position to gauge which investments are worthwhile – and that goes for other investments like employees, décor, products, etc.

About Maria Ross
Maria Ross is the founder of Red Slice, LLC and author of Build Your Own Brand Strategy in 10 Easy Steps, an eBook to help business owners  build a strong brand foundation that will save  time, money and heartache on all  future marketing efforts.
 
Maria has more than 15 years experience in all aspects of marketing including branding, advertising, field marketing, lead generation, events, messaging, press and analyst relations and communication planning. Maria received a B.S in Marketing, with a minor in Spanish from Indiana University, Bloomington. You can learn more about Red Slice and Maria's eBook here.

Stay tuned for Part two on refrehsing a brand that has become irrelevant.

Posted by Sima Dahl on July 26, 2009 | Comments (8)