How small businesses power through the big, bad world of branding

Glenn McCarthy was one of the most successful oil men and wildcatters of his generation. To establish his brand, he starting investing in multiple ventures and insisted on extending his brand to any business step that he took. In the 50’s and 60’s McCarthy was unavoidable, his mug occupied the cover page of Time magazine, he made numerous television appearances and made sure that all his business interests carried the McCarthy brand. These excesses resulted in a good deal of wealth for the Texan oil baron and he embarked on a project that saw him building the most luxurious hotel the world had ever seen, The Shamrock. Its inauguration saw A-list celebrities flying into Dallas from all corners of the planet and the event was broadcasted live on radio to over a million listeners who were tuned in past midnight.

Far more recently, closer home in India, a famous liquor baron spent a majority of his working years emulating the McCarthy model. Most of his businesses went under, and as of now, he is close to bankruptcy. The point of this parable is to highlight the fact that the branding style of McCarthy is an outdated one. The reasons for this are multifactorial, people have found ways to ignore stimulus being directed at them from all corners and the internet has acted as a great leveler for smaller brands to take on behemoth companies. Granted, your resources as a small business are limited and the time you can invest in thorough branding is scarce. So how do you play in the big leagues? Here are some tips that you might find useful.

Know your customer’s decisions and how they arrived there

Some companies make an impact, make potential buyers aware of their product but lose out on a purchase as buyers tended to drop them from their as they approached the decision to buy. Why does this happen? It’s simply a lack of insight into the mind of the potential buyer through all the stages of the purchasing process.

To be on the front foot, small businesses need to gather as much detail about every aspect of people’s buying process — from researching to reading reviews to how they participated in online communities. While you may not have the resources that a big company does at your disposal, you must find a way to understand your consumers through the entire process. Start small, but intensive and move on from there.

Determine your touch-points and figure out how to use these to your advantage

Naturally, no two prospects will have the exact same decision journey, but all of them will have accessed some common resources. You need to determine where it is most strategic for you to cultivate your online presence. Chances are, your target demographics is big on Facebook, so you will definitely want to design a campaign there.

But your brand may have more appeal to people who are attracted to smaller or more specialized social networks. Or you may have a special offer or discount program going, and so should consider display advertising (which works well for offers and discounts) on the sites most of your targets visit.

This is the stage where you unleash your creativity and create situations where you pursue specific business outcomes. Whether it’s lead generation, brand-building or outright conversion, this is where you make it happen.

Allocate your resources accordingly.

Now that you have an idea where your customers are on the internet, you have to create strategic campaigns to run in all these touch points. Ensure you use your human, financial and organizational resources to execute these campaigns.

The internet is a level playing field, and there’s nothing a big company can do that a small one can’t on a smaller scale. Hard work and dedication will see you through the hurdles.

Need help creating your company’s marketing plan? Contact us at www.knctlab.com