Episode 46 – Why Branding Isn’t Just for Big Businesses

Introduction    00:00:03    Marketing, explosive growth, and revolutionary secrets that can catapult your business to new heights. You’re now listening to The Underground Marketer Podcast with your host Tudor Dumitrescu, the one podcast devoted to showing new businesses how to market themselves for high growth.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:00:25    Welcome to the underground marketer. This is the place where we deliver the real truth about marketing and explore big ideas that can help new businesses thrive and grow into big ones. I’m your host Tudor. And today I want to discuss branding in the context of small businesses. Many people say that branding is not important, that in fact, it’s non-existent among small businesses that small businesses simply don’t have the resources for branding to ever be effective for them. And if you’re a small business, then you wasting any money that you actually spend on branding, because branding is never going to work for you until you grow into a big business like apple or Coca-Cola, or, um, those big companies that have enough resources to be able to invest a ton in branding to get it to work for you. And this idea often comes actually from the direct response side, a lot of copywriters are going to tell you, especially if they’re direct response copywriters and they’re direct response copywriters who don’t have much experience outside of direct response, they will tell you that branding doesn’t work.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:01:33    They’ll they’re going to be like, oh, you’re a small business. Why are you wasting your money on branding? You just need to do a direct response. But the truth is that direct response itself doesn’t always work and branding can sometimes be more effective and there are ways to make branding work for a small business. So let’s think about why branding works for a big business like Apple or Coca-Cola. Why is that? Well, it’s really because a company like Coca-Cola can have money to spend on ads and you can see that ad several times. So they have enough money to ensure that the average person is going to see a Coca-Cola ad. Let’s say four times a month. Can you imagine that four times a month, they can ensure that almost every person is going to see a Coca-Cola ad. Of course, I don’t know their actual numbers, but I’m just giving an example.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:02:25    So if that’s the case, there is no wonder that branding works. It’s no wonder that when, um, the customer sees the product in the shop, he’s going to already have positive feelings about it because he saw the ads, the ads resonated with him. And he’s already going to start from the point of view of having positive feelings about Coca-Cola and wanting to buy it. So the key here is to be able to deliver the message to the same customer multiple times. That’s what makes branding work. So now, how can you do the same thing with a small business? That’s the question? And your answer is that if you want branding to work for a small business, then you have to find a sufficiently small pond where your resources are enough such that the messages that you put out there, your logo and so on are seen multiple times by the same person, preferably eight plus times by the same person.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:03:30    These are usually gated communities that you’re going to have to go to make branding work. A lot of people. For example, they go to a business forum like the Fastlane forum, which by the way, is a great business forum. I’m also highly active. There they go to a forum like that, and then they build a brand there among the community of however many people, they are, they build a brand for whatever it is, whatever they do, maybe it’s email marketing, maybe it’s Google ads doesn’t really matter, but they just get the same message to the same person, multiple times to the point where the branding effect can actually come into play. And then anybody from that community, when they think about who’s the Google ads guy, everybody’s going to know who the Google ads guy is because they’ve seen his message over and over and over again.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:04:19    They’ve seen people compliment him and leave testimonials and feedback over and over and over again. So the answer is that as a small business, if you try to do the kind of mass advertising that Coca Cola does, you’re going to say, be able to reach, to have the money, to reach 10,000 people. But that’s it. So your ad is only going to be seen by 10,000 people there. It’s only going to be seen once, you know, and that’s the problem. The problem is that you’re not able to get the ad to the same person multiple times, because you just don’t have the resources. Your resources are wiped out and your ads are distributed to as many different people as possible. And that’s the problem, right? That’s why it doesn’t work for you. So, um, when you change the game and you start focusing on a much smaller number of people where you can make sure that your ads are not necessarily ads, but your messages and your logo and whatever you seen, then suddenly you can be successful and you can build a brand.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:05:19    This works great by the way, for local businesses, if you have a local landscaping company, for example, if you put your logo on your trucks and you put your phone number in the, in there, and you say, call us, we do landscaping, blah, blah, blah. And you just go with those fans around the city. And let’s say that you start just working in one neighborhood so that you’re super efficient. Then suddenly you’re building breadth. You know, suddenly neighbors who are not working with you, they see your van pulling up these, your company. They see that their own neighbors are using you and they will very likely reach out and contact you as well. Because think about it. It’s not once this is a huge mistake that people make. They think that it’s, oh, it’s about what I’m going to save this one’s to them to convince them to buy.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:06:06    And that’s not how it works. We’re talking about a different kind of persuasion here. Then direct response persuasion, right? We’re talking about persuasion through repetition and most businesses out there are actually not direct response businesses. They’re businesses who persuade through repetition, repeating the same message over and over again. And that’s exactly what the guy who drives once a week to your house does to do your lawn. And he has his logo and number and whatever on the van does the neighbors. They see him. Once they see him twice, they see him three times, four times, five times, seven times. And the time comes when they’re like, oh, they’re curious. They’re like, oh, this guy has been coming here for such a long time. And look, we have problems with the lawn who shall we call, oh, we’re going to call him, you know, he does our neighbor’s lawn and the neighbors seems very happy.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:06:58    He’s been coming here all the time for the past one year. He’s the best person to do it, right? We’re not even going to bother to check for anybody else. And that’s persuasion through repetition. And as you can see, there’s no direct response. There’s nothing. There’s no special offer. There’s nothing, you know, he’s just the same services, probably a thousand other companies in that city do. But it’s just that these guys, they saw the brand of one of them over and over again. They’ve seen that brand in close proximity to them. They’ve got the feeling that the brand understands their neighborhood because they’ve seen them working with their neighbors time and time again. Right? So that’s what actually ends up persuading them. And a lot of people, especially those with extensive training, direct response, don’t get this. They still think that it’s about the one message.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:07:47    And what does the one message have to say? That’s going to convince people, and I’m not trying to downplay that because direct response can work. People have made millions upon millions with direct response, but effective branding can also work and most businesses. And I think this is a fact, most businesses out there are built using branding more than direct response. I mean most business owners, and this is speculation, but I would venture to say that most business owners don’t even have a clue what direct response means literally most. And if you think about how they’ve built their business, they’ve built their business. Starting locally, building a reputation among those people who saw them time and time again, perform the job and then moving outwards and basically extending their presence, their areas. So you should start by attacking us more pond. There’s more community. You can actually get branding to work in your favor. 

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:08:43    Even if you’re a small business, this doesn’t have to be local or geographically bound. Of course it’s easier if it’s local and geographically bound, because you one, you have limited competition that area, it’s easier for you to show the same people, the same message to the same people, time and time again, but it doesn’t have to be right. You can do the same online. It’s just that online. You are likely going to have to find communities and build a presence and the reputation in those communities and get known for whatever it is that you’re actually selling. And once you get known for that, people are going to be coming to you to solve the problems that you can actually help solve typically. And this is what I learned about online communities is that you will always prefer communities where there’s a high ratio of buyers to sellers.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:09:37    There are many Facebook groups, especially free ones, for example, where pretty much everybody who is posting is a seller. And you can look at the group and you see post after post after post, buy this, buy this, buy that, get this, get that. And everybody’s selling, there’s very few buyers in there. That’s a bad community, right? You don’t want to be there because everybody’s there and everybody who’s actually interacting there. They’re actually spamming and they’re trying to sell their stuff, their competition. So you want to find ideally a gated community, either gated through moderation, meaning that they don’t allow selling from just about anyone. And you actually need to build a reputation there to be allowed, to start talking about what you do and what you sell. That’s one way. And the other way is communities that you have to pay in order to advertise in that either communities, obviously that are free to join, but you just have to pay.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:10:37    If you want to advertise something or communities that are paid to join could source for leads. And for clients, for many people is to simply buy a course or a product which has a Facebook community behind it, basically doing that is going to get you access to the community. The community’s full of people who are proven buyers, you know, they’ve bought before and you know that they have bought before and you have access to them and you can sell them. You can build brand in a place like that very easily because the same people who are active in that community are going to see your message. Not once, not twice, not three times, but tens, maybe hundreds of times before they actually buy. And you’re going to build a brand, you’re going to build a reputation. All you have to do literally is just be consistent about it because it helps with your messaging so that people are not confused about what you do and what sort of problems you can help with.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:11:35    And it’s going to work by itself. From there, we don’t have to do anything special. And this is actually why I said that branding is how most businesses, most people have built their business because they haven’t used any special marketing tactic to grow. They’ve just taken it step by step, pretty much and grew from local companies into citywide companies, into, you know, nationwide companies and then international companies and so on. And it took time. Of course, this, this isn’t something that’s going to be instant. It’s going to take time as I said. But the important thing is that the effects are going to play out and they’re going to be long-term effects. You’re actually going to build a reputation in the brand, in the communities that you’re active in, whether those are online or local. And you’re going to be able to use that as a way to get clients and to get clients, to come to you and to basically become an authority.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:12:32    And because it takes time to build, and it’s not a cookie cutter approach, it’s not a send this one message and bomb instant clients. It’s going to be long lasting. Once you become an authority in a community there’s very little maintenance work that you need to do. And people just reach out to you for whatever you’re an authority on. It gets basically easier over time as you build a brand. And I think that that’s the big value of branding in the long run. And that’s why big companies focus so much on building a brand. Because once you build a brand it’s much easier to make sales. We no longer need special messages and special offers. And I don’t know what right. You can just sell whatever you’re selling. It makes it much easier basically to make sales. And that’s the whole point of building a brand.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:13:26    And I think building a brand, if you do it the smart way and the way that actually works for a small business is very powerful. And it does take a long time. So I always compliment that you pair it with some direct response approach. That’s going to get you faster results as well, but in the long run, this is going to position you as an authority. And it’s going to enable you to charge premium prices and people. Aren’t going to question you, they’re going to know what your reputation is, what you stand for and what you can deliver on the big message that I want you to take home from this episode is that branding is not just for big businesses and that even you as a small business. And even in fact, if you’re just selling online, even you can brand, but to do so effectively, you just have to target a smaller pond and make sure that you have the resources that it takes to get your messages to hit the same person from that pond multiple times over and over again, at least eight to 10 times, because that’s what makes branding work.  

Tudor Dumitrescu     00:14:32    It’s the repeated number of hits where the same person hears about you. So if you’re trying to do branding for a small business, be careful not to get in upon that’s too big and where your message is going to be diluted because he just goes out to many people, but they each only hear it once or twice. You know, that’s not ideal for branding. Branding is not going to work in that environment to make brand work. They need to hear the message again and again and again, and then it’s actually going to work out. So that’s my big takeaway for you today as usual, thank you for tuning in and stay tuned for the next episode. And until next time, remember to keep growing your business and providing massive value to the world. You are the reason why we’re all growing richer. Our freedoms are expanding and we’re all living in greater prosperity. Thank you.