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By: Daniel Janal
You're having the gang over on Sunday to watch the football
game on TV. Which pizza parlor do you call?
Your child needs braces. Which orthodontist does everyone
in town go to?
You want to sell your house. Which Realtor do you call?
The answer is the same in each case: the one that has the
best brand. Branding is important because it makes sales
easier!
Realtors, dentists and restaurants all have brands. So does
every small business in the world. Sure, we think that only
Fortune 500 companies, like Coca Cola and Procter and
Gamble have brands. But that's not true. Every company has
a brand image. Whether the brand image is good or bad, or
if it is well known or invisible is up to you.
If you're involved in marketing in any way, shape of form,
you've heard the term "branding" but you probably couldn't
define it. And if Regis asked you "Is that your final
answer?" you'd probably take your money and run rather than
risk losing your cash.
That's because if you asked 50 marketers to define
"branding," you'd get 50 different answers. Very few people
agree on what branding is, but they do agree that is
important in building sales and profits.
So what are brands and why are they important to you?
Brands make selling easier!
Plain and simple.
To understand branding, we need to understand what branding
isn't.
>From my studies and research that includes hundreds of
interviews with top marketing managers at large and small
companies, I've come away with several conclusions:
1. A brand is not a logo, slogan, catchy saying, mission
statement or publicity campaign.
2. A brand is about trust. You select a company because you
trust them and the companies have credibility. These are
two issues that are important to every company of every
size.
When you travel along the highway and need a quick meal, do
you stop at the local diner for a meal featuring the local
cuisine- or do you pull in to McDonald's because you know
the fries are always going to be the same?
People trust McDonalds. They will give up the chance for an
innovative meal in favor of the trusted resource every
time!
That's because people buy on emotion and justify with
logic.
"Gee the local diner might be good, but it might take a
long time and we're in a rush."
Is it any wonder why McDonald's is a multibillion-dollar
enterprise?
Look at the best brands on the Internet: Yahoo, eBay and
Amazon. What do they all have in common? People trust them!
In my seminars at Stanford and Berkeley, I always ask if
people have bought books from Amazon. Most people raise
their hands. I then ask if anyone has ever had a problem
with Amazon. In one out of three seminars, one person out
of hundreds will raise a hand. But they quickly say that
Amazon resolved the problem in their favor, quickly and
courteously.
I then ask if people have telephones. Everyone raises their
hands. I ask if people have ever had a problem with their
phone company. Most people keep their hands up! You
probably have the same experience. Phone companies have bad
reputations for customer service.
Good companies create good brands by creating trust.
Do you need a lot of money to create trust?
No way!
Yet hundreds of companies have blown through more than a
billion dollars on TV ads during the Super Bowl and other
major events trying to build a brand image.
I attended a top-level seminar on branding and a venture
capitalist on the panel said a consumer company must spend
$50 million dollars to build a brand identity today.
However, in my seminar on branding at Stanford, I asked the
participants - all brand managers at major companies, to
name 10 search engines, 10 consumer web sites, 3 pet
supplies sites and 10 business-to-business web sites.
No one could!
And these are the very people who are in the industry, and
are exposed to the millions of dollars of advertising to
create brands!
What does this mean?
Buying your way to brand awareness does not work!
The net is littered with those failures: Dr. Koop,
Priceline's grocery service and Boo.com stand out as highly
publicized failures.
So, as a small company, you don't have to worry about not
have a treasure chest full of cash to buy a reputation -
because it doesn't work!
How do you create a great brand? That's where brand assets
come in to play. Brand assets are your slogans,
advertising, publicity, promotions, characters, spokes
people, as well as your customer service and sales people!
These tools help create a meaningful identity that creates
an emotional bond with your audience that compels them to
take action - and provides the logic that justifies their
choices.
The Internet has a treasure chest of tools to create brand
awareness, brand identity and brand loyalty including your
e-mail address, website name, signature file. You also need
to transmit your own personality and identity to create
trust.
When you build trust, you build a great brand. If you can
do that, then you will build sales and create customers for
life!
About the Author
Daniel Janal is an internationally-recognized speaker,
Internet marketer and best-selling author of Branding on
the Internet. http://www.roibot.com/tk_bn.cgi?bnfreecontent
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