Branding is a marketing priority that has seen its time come and go, and now only serves as a menu item for marketing firms to sell to their clients. Countless billions of dollars are wasted each year "building the brand," when these resources could be better spent focusing on engaging with more consumers.
Contrary to the headline of this post, I think it is fabulous to have a strong brand, but establishing a staff meeting to talk about brand, or worse, adding a line-item in the company books for branding is a virus that will spoil your resources. It robs you of time, money, energy and focus, all of which could be better used to pursue more sales for the organization (which is the intent of building a brand).
Branding is used to develop a reputation with consumers that serves to make your organization and products more prominent, and most often is an ambiguous expense which companies maintain because the leaders are scared to change the way things have always been done. Branding is the impetus of many funny commercials and the witty marketing spots that we see during the Super Bowl each year, but branding only serves to make the leaders of the organization proud of their "15 minutes of fame." Branding has launched many marketing firms reputations, but the money thrown at this dated strategic concept would be far better utilized in an online engagement campaign.
Imagine an organization which traditionally spends several million dollars each year for branding. What would happen if they would invest that same amount of money into hiring a small team of copywriters to work in conjunction with the entire staff of the organization to produce literally thousands of pages of informative online content? If this information centered around the answers to consumer questions, wouldn't this company gain strong traffic to the company website and immediately start to build a reputation among the prospective customers of the company?
Of course, there would be no humorous commercials on television or giant billboards or even silly banner ads on the internet to make the marketing companies look relevant, but the benefits to the bottom line and the enhancement of the company reputation would be rewarding. This company could begin building a perpetual marketing program by producing content that would be visited for years to come, the proverbial gift that keeps on giving.
Once the company has developed superior content, the game of engagement begins. Without excellent content, the company website has little to offer a consumer who is only beginning the process of "buying" whatever the company sells. It is this critical content that stimulates the bevy of questions from the consumer (engagement) and also serves as the gravitational pull to customers that brings them to your company.
Contrary to the headline of this post, I think it is fabulous to have a strong brand, but establishing a staff meeting to talk about brand, or worse, adding a line-item in the company books for branding is a virus that will spoil your resources. It robs you of time, money, energy and focus, all of which could be better used to pursue more sales for the organization (which is the intent of building a brand).
Branding is used to develop a reputation with consumers that serves to make your organization and products more prominent, and most often is an ambiguous expense which companies maintain because the leaders are scared to change the way things have always been done. Branding is the impetus of many funny commercials and the witty marketing spots that we see during the Super Bowl each year, but branding only serves to make the leaders of the organization proud of their "15 minutes of fame." Branding has launched many marketing firms reputations, but the money thrown at this dated strategic concept would be far better utilized in an online engagement campaign.
Imagine an organization which traditionally spends several million dollars each year for branding. What would happen if they would invest that same amount of money into hiring a small team of copywriters to work in conjunction with the entire staff of the organization to produce literally thousands of pages of informative online content? If this information centered around the answers to consumer questions, wouldn't this company gain strong traffic to the company website and immediately start to build a reputation among the prospective customers of the company?
Of course, there would be no humorous commercials on television or giant billboards or even silly banner ads on the internet to make the marketing companies look relevant, but the benefits to the bottom line and the enhancement of the company reputation would be rewarding. This company could begin building a perpetual marketing program by producing content that would be visited for years to come, the proverbial gift that keeps on giving.
Once the company has developed superior content, the game of engagement begins. Without excellent content, the company website has little to offer a consumer who is only beginning the process of "buying" whatever the company sells. It is this critical content that stimulates the bevy of questions from the consumer (engagement) and also serves as the gravitational pull to customers that brings them to your company.
About the Author:
Joe Manausa authors a blog about internet marketing for brick and mortar organization at the Internet Squeeze. His writing is highly prized by medium sized organization leaders seeking to re-engineer the selling processes of a business.
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