Is Branding Enough?
Have you ever reached a point in your career where you wonder if everything you know is worth sharing?
I’m not having an existential crisis.
TBH, I didn’t anticipate how completing a certification program would cause me to re-evaluate what branding, strategy, and marketing mean for the 99.9% of US small businesses trying to survive and thrive.
There’s an over-inflated air of elitism in the marketplace among many purveyors of training courses, books, and programs. It’s not helping the small business community or owners looking for advisors and guides to help them achieve their goals.
As one of our clients said, “When it comes to my business, I need how you guide me to be simple.”
The last time I checked on Amazon, over 20,000 books about branding, 70,000 about marketing, and 60,000 about strategy were available.
So many books. So little time. All are siloed into categories. 👇
Many show how global corporations and well-known companies use strategic, branding, and marketing principles and practices to create direction, value, meaning, and revenue. Few help the small business owner.
I love branding. Brands contribute to and retain value, and we can dig into the research that reveals how people are attracted to brands that provide functional benefits and represent the meanings that help people build and express self-identity. That’s lofty thinking.
For the small business owner, her concerns are more practical. I recently spoke with a business owner who wants her company to attract highly qualified candidates (to do the work) and people who want to hire the company (to do work for them).
She wants what represents her company to be meaningful so people find it appealing to work there and compelling to buy from her. She intuitively understands what branding is all about. It makes me wonder:
Is branding enough to help you align your company, customers, and culture around the core category and the problem you solve?
Is branding enough to help you figure out your brand at its core: to create meaningful value for the company and your customers? (Who you are, what you do, and why it matters)
Is branding enough to help you care for your people by shifting mindsets and strengthening culture so they love your customers?
Is branding enough to help you care for your customers by being the solution to their problems and making it easy to do business with you?
Over the last four decades, I’ve worked with people who own or manage specialized and niche companies and are intimately involved in these four dimensions of their businesses.
I’ve also worked with C-suite executives who direct sophisticated teams. Sometimes, these teams succeed at interdependence. Often, they are siloed into groups that don’t interact sufficiently. From my four decades of experience, specialized businesses are more likely to drive innovation and growth because they focus on their niche and the tribe of people they serve.
Throughout my career, I’ve collaborated with business leaders, executives, marketing professionals, communications officers, development directors, politicians (don’t hold that against me), professionals, advisors, and subject matter experts. We all share one common goal: to help people improve their lives and businesses and create a better future.
When it comes to niche marketing, many people make the mistake of telling consumers what they do instead of talking about the problem the customer wants to solve.
I think it’s more challenging (and fun) to work with niche businesses. Niche businesses are more human and, while professional, have a personality that makes them likable on a relational level.
Instead of branding — thinking about how to compete differently — big corporations succumb to blanding, which renders them indifferent and non-disruptive.
You don’t have to agree with me—these are my perspectives (a point of view) of guiding principles and practices. Principles are designed to influence the way you think. Practices are opportunities for you to put the principles into action. Great leaders do both and put principles into practice.
When you own or manage a small business, the category, brand, culture, and relational challenges are part of doing business. Understanding these principles is practical because you can apply what we discuss to design the interactions between your company, customers, products, and services.
Each of these dimensions is an essential element of your business strategy, finding your voice, creating demand for your products or services (we’ll call them your offering from this point forward), and engaging your audience.
Putting these principles into action is profitable (we’ll explore how you do that) because the outcome gives you the confidence to design a business model that solves people’s problems, helps people achieve their goals, and creates profitable solutions for people and the planet.1
Branding, marketing, and strategy aren’t enough. Successful businesses grow from vision sustained by character, culture, and voice.
If there’s one thing you should focus on, it’s to find clarity. When you gain clarity, you have greater confidence in connecting with your customers because you approach them with empathy and authority, which creates credibility and trust.
Clarity is a compass to keep you on the path that sustains your business. Every step and decision in your business journey must align with a desired — and glorious — future.
Don't settle for surviving. What will it take for you, your employees, customers, and your business to thrive?
“The purpose of business is not to create profit. The purpose of business is to create profitable solutions to the problems of people and planet. Not to profit by creating problems for people and planet.”
From Putting Purpose into Practice: The Economics of Mutuality, Colin Mayer CBE, Co-Editor, Emeritus Professor, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford