3 Important Words To Understand in Your Business

Mar­ket­ing, Adver­tis­ing & Branding

Three words, or ter­mi­nolo­gies, are kicked around often in the mind of many small busi­ness own­ers when it comes to grow­ing one’s busi­ness: mar­ket­ing, adver­tis­ing & brand­ing. Many times brand­ing and adver­tis­ing are com­bined into the one word, ​“mar­ket­ing.” So when one thinks of brand­ing, he is think­ing ​“mar­ket­ing.” Or anoth­er might say, ​“I need to do some adver­tis­ing”, he typ­i­cal­ly is think­ing, ​“I need to mar­ket my busi­ness”. These impor­tant ter­mi­nolo­gies are actu­al­ly quite dif­fer­ent from each oth­er and yet play a sig­nif­i­cant role in work­ing together.

Mar­ket­ing

One of the best def­i­n­i­tions I’ve heard to describe the word mar­ket­ing came from a speak­er who said some­thing like this: ​“Mar­ket­ing is every­thing you do or don’t do in your busi­ness.” In oth­er words, we are always mar­ket­ing. How you greet a prospect in per­son is mar­ket­ing. Do you come across friend­ly and per­son­al, or shy and stand­off­ish? How you cre­ate and send pro­pos­als is mar­ket­ing, too. When peo­ple come in con­tact with you or your employ­ees, they will come away with either a pos­i­tive, neg­a­tive, or neu­tral mind­set. So the goal here is to always be think­ing of ways to mar­ket your ​“brand” in a way that your ide­al prospect will become a loy­al customer.

Mar­ket­ing also involves the plan­ning, orga­niz­ing, and strat­e­gy of how you will pro­mote your busi­ness. You might decide to use sev­er­al dif­fer­ent forms of ​“adver­tis­ing.” ​“Mar­ket­ing is brand­ing build­ing.” (22 Immutable Laws of Brand­ing, Introduction)

Brand­ing

Your brand­ing is typ­i­cal­ly how you want your ser­vice or busi­ness to look in the eyes of your poten­tial cus­tomer. It involves your logo, the col­ors, yard sign style, web­site, vehi­cles, and so forth. Again, quot­ing from the Immutable Laws of Brand­ing book, ​“Brand­ing ​‘pre-sells’ your prod­uct or ser­vice to the user.” It typ­i­cal­ly can be looked at as a first impres­sion. When a prospect comes to your web­site, will he (or she) find what he wants right away and feel con­fi­dent you know what you are doing? When a prospect is sit­ting behind a com­pa­ny truck in traf­fic, will she feel any emo­tion to remem­ber your brand (i.e. 800 Num­ber, easy web address, clean logo?).

If a busi­ness has no brand, there real­ly is noth­ing to sell or a way a prospect can remem­ber your busi­ness. I recent­ly spoke to an indus­tri­al coat­ings con­trac­tor who com­plained he was get­ting beat­en out of work more than ever before by young com­pa­nies. He admit­ted that they had good brand­ing and he had none. No real­ly. He did not have a brand. You could not find a logo, or real­ly a name, and what he did any­where on the web. He spent most of his 30+ years in the indus­try rely­ing on his skills of being a real­ly good indus­tri­al coat­ings con­trac­tor. What he does not real­ize is that his com­peti­tors are brand­ing their busi­ness­es and their mes­sages are sticking.

Adver­tis­ing

Final­ly we come to the word Adver­tis­ing. This is basi­cal­ly the ​“how” one mar­kets a brand to con­sumers. Will you decide to adver­tise using a pletho­ra of things such as: post­cards, social media, blog­ging, yard signs, com­mu­ni­ty events, trade shows, or a web­site? Adver­tis­ing is pay­ing to spread your brand. You either pay for it with your time, your mon­ey, or a com­bi­na­tion of the two.

A Great Exam­ple in the Paint­ing Industry

All three things are cru­cial in run­ning a suc­cess­ful ser­vice com­pa­ny. You need to always be aware of who your ide­al cus­tomers are and who they are not! Don’t mar­ket your brand to the world. Nar­row the focus to those who are most like­ly to hire you. Start by decid­ing what you want your cus­tomers to know about your con­tract­ing busi­ness that is dif­fer­ent from your competitor.

My friend, Steve Bur­nett of Bur­nett 1 – 800 PAINT­ING, mar­kets his brand with this slo­gan, ​“Home of the 9 Year War­ran­ty.” I don’t know of anoth­er painter in his area that has a 9 year war­ran­ty. If there is now, it won’t make a dif­fer­ence, because Steve is relent­less at mar­ket­ing that slo­gan every­where he goes. He uses a num­ber of adver­tis­ing out­lets to pro­mote his brand such as his famous ​“iClass” where he gives free iPhone/​iPad train­ing class­es to senior cit­i­zens. It took him awhile for the iClass idea to take off. Yet he now gets a steady flow of leads and clos­es almost every job. His cus­tomers love his 9 year labor and mate­r­i­al war­ran­ty, too!

Your Turn

How do you mar­ket your con­tract­ing com­pa­ny? Do your prospects know why you are dif­fer­ent? Are you the leader in one key area that you can pro­mote? You don’t need to tell peo­ple how great you are at paint­ing or remod­el­ing. No. Your cus­tomer just needs to feel that your com­pa­ny is a good fit for his or her needs. It is not always about the low­est bid! Take some time to review your brand­ing this week. How is your web­site, your busi­ness cards, brochures, sales booths, vehi­cles? Does your logo need to be updat­ed? I’ll close with this quote from Chap­ter 4 of The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding:

“Adver­tis­ing may not pay for itself, but if you’re the leader, adver­tis­ing will make your com­peti­tor pay through the nose for the priv­i­lege of com­pet­ing with you. Many won’t be able to afford it; those who can won’t both­er. Instead they’ll be con­tent to nib­ble on the crumbs around your huge piece of the pie.”