There are more than 5 rules for Brand image-makers but these 5 are the essential rules for small businesses. Business people and professionals often scoff ‘everyone knows that, it’s basic’ and then they give them a cursory ‘lick and a promise.’ Not so fast, these rules are what makes your business successful or not. If you want to call it ‘getting back to the basics’ so be it. Just do it.
1. Make marketing a priority
Marketing is important but not urgent. Getting CPR for your heart attack is urgent. Working out and eating right is not urgent.
Business owners often give lip service to marketing. They will tell you they believe in marketing. But the minute sales drop, instead of adding more dollars to support marketing, marketing is the first place they cut. You need a brand image-maker on staff or at least on call to guard against rash cuts.
Instead of looking for places to cut look for ways to improve your visual image. Make your marketing easier and more effective by using good design because “we buy with our eyes.”
‘Brand image’ is a subset of Promotion, which is one of the 4-P’s of Marketing: Product, Price, Place and it is probably the most dynamic ingredient in the mix. Almost 50% of your brain is involved in visual processing. Visuals are processed 60,000x faster than anything else in our brain. 70% of all our sensory receptors are in our eyes. Research confirms that users make aesthetic decisions about the overall visual impression of web pages in as little as 50 milliseconds (1/20th of a second). *
Make marketing a priority with good design… “We buy with our eyes.”
2. Develop a marketing plan
Marketing forces positioning—focus. Focus means sacrifices. Marketing doesn’t happen because you are not sure what you should be saying.
The wrong way to begin marketing is to start without research or a plan. That ‘strategy’ is to simply go after whatever business might be available. Grab the low hanging fruit and start working.
Marketing is about control, not growth. Marketing is about getting the kind of work you want: profitable, enjoyable, rewarding, prestigious, fun, challenging and targeted for growth in a specific area.
Marketing is about narrowing your focus and going after fewer prospects but finding a way to serve them better, finding a way to be unique to them. Get our eBook on Seven Steps to Create A Brand.
3. Make it interesting
The first rule of advertising is repetition. Remember 6×6=36? Repetition is one of the primary ways we learn.
The only time your prospect will be interested in you is when he needs your services or when you create a message that seizes his or her attention.
It takes 5x more time and money to get results with boring ads than with creative ads. You know this. A funny story gets your attention and stays with you longer than a grocery list—creative advertising grabs the mind and inspires the imagination producing greater awareness and a pleasurable experience. WOW —it costs less and does more.
4. Continuous marketing
Stop and start marketing is ineffective and costly. It is better to spend a small amount of money every month than it is to spend a large sum and make a big splash, and then stop all activity, and then a few months later make another splash. It is like continuously putting a small amount of money in a savings account and letting the magic of compounding interest do its work.
‘Compound interest’ works for Brand image-makers just as it does for money managers. If you are not going to invest on a continuous basis, don’t advertise.
5. Create a differentiation or use great design
If you are the same as your competition then there is nothing that differentiates you. And there is no reason to buy your services except price. A brand is a promise. It exists in the mind of the consumer. It is either created deliberately or it exists by happenstance.
What is your brand? Can you articulate it in one short sentence? If not, start a discovery process to understand what makes your product unique in a meaningful way. You have to understand your brand in order to communicate it effectively to your prospects. Lots of products are differentiated only by their design. “At Sony we assume that all products of our competitors have basically the same technology, price, performance and features. Design is the only thing that differentiates one product from another in the marketplace” Norio Ohga, former Chairman and CEO, Sony.
If you have difficulty finding or creating a differentiation, think design. Brand image-makers use design because it is the easiest, most effective and maybe the only way to differentiate.
Good companies are great by design.
Advertise, it pays.
About Ken Gasque
Ken Gasque is a brand developer, brand image-maker, marketing planner and designer. Ken works with small companies and Fortune 500 companies who recognize the need to differentiate their products and services to stand out in a cluttered market. Ken is a highly visual, outside-the-box-thinker on advertising, branding and marketing—his work reflects his belief that “We buy with our eyes.” Ken writes and lectures on brands, design, images and brand development. www.Gasque.com
* Visual Decision Making by Patrick Lynch published in Graphic Design, 2009.
