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Branding Your Company - Building Value Into Its Name
by Ron Roberts and Ranger Kidwell-Ross
The term is familiar to us all: BRANDING. But what does it mean and, more importantly, why should you care?
Branding means just what it meant down on the ranch
in the wild west days - well except you replace the
branding iron with your business' name and you replace
the cow's butt with your prospects' minds.
In other words, branding is burning your company's
image into the minds of past and future clients.
That's the what. Now for the second question:
Why should you care?
Because branding can make you A LOT of money.
By branding successfully, yours will be one of the
first names prospects think of when they need your
type of services. Isn't that the whole point of
marketing?
Even better, if you ever want to sell your business
for more than the value of its hard assets, you'd
better build a strong brand. People pay big money
for well-branded companies. We'll get into this a
little further in a second. Let's first dive into what branding entails.
Your clients and prospects use a recall method
called positioning to remember your company.
Positioning means they rank you against your
competition. Actually, they create several different
rankings: price, quality, customer service,
friendliness, promptness, your concern and empathy
for them, and so on. On each, they mentally slot you
between a contractor who is slightly worse and one
who is slightly better.
Your prospects go through their list(s) and match up
what they need to who they have positioned there.
When you're not branded, you're not in their list.
You can't get the work. When you are branded in
their minds, you stand a much greater chance of
being selected. Some people will even choose a contractor with a well known 'brand name' over and over even though they have spotty service. That's one of the values of a brand. On the other hand, when that's the type of service provide very often, it won't take long for your brand to be equated with 'bad service.'
Now, I'm guessing you've already figured out the
bad news, that branding takes money. Lots of money. At one point in time, back in the '90s, AT&T was
spending over 50% of its revenue on advertising. Coke's advertising budget was equally enormous, as
are most other well known national brands. That's not something you, or any other contractor,
can afford to do. Fortunately, you don't have to.
Because you are in a relatively small marketplace, you have a variety of other options that can be affordable. For example, you can start programs to prompt referrals, send out greeting cards, print and send periodic
mailers, develop an email newslist, advertise what's new on your website; in short, there are many other means of maintaining relationship
so that your prospects and clients remember you.
All of these will improve awareness of your brand.
One of the terms used in branding is 'drip.' This means that you find a way to remind your customers about your company in a periodic fashion. You send the next item to 'drip' on them before they're too dried from the previous one. In other words, you stay in their consciousness -- without being annoying -- such that when they need sweeping or some other service you provide they'll be able to think of you right away.
Let's move on to point number two, how the brand of
your company can and will affect your exit strategy.
Here we have one obvious issue and one not-so obvious
issue. The first is purely financial, the second is
almost purely emotional.
Buyers are ALWAYS willing to pay more for a well-known
name. They assume the company's strength of brand will
carry over for years to come. This often turns out to
be true. Once a brand image is well established, its
momentum will usually carry it forward for years.
This explains why consistently poor customer service or
poor quality is a death sentence. You just can't shake
the bad reputation. That's also why you will
occasionally see an "Under New Management" sign on marquees and in ads. They're trying to shake their past (it rarely works).
The emotional issue involves your legacy. If you put
your name on your company and develop that as your brand, you WILL lose
control of what people associate with your good name
after you sell the company. My advice? If you plan on selling your company to
anyone other than a family member, don't name it
after yourself.
As you move forward with the development of your
business, pay attention to the brand image you are
burning into your prospects' minds. It can work for
you or against you.
In the end, it can be an asset or a liability. It's
your call on how aggressively to pursue branding and
whether you brand yourself -- or your company.
Until next time, best of luck with your business!
Ron Roberts,
The Contractor's Business Coach
More information about Ron Roberts' and his company may be found on his website FilthyRichContractor.com. Ron may be reached via email sent to ron@filthyrichcontractor.com.
If you have new information to provide on this topic, let us know and we can add it in as an addendum to this article.
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