Effective Marketing Secret #2

This is the 2nd installment in a series of posts that share with you 7 critical elements to effective marketing.  I’m not so naive as to think that this is the ‘end all be all’ solution because there are so many different ways you can approach effective marketing, but these 7 secrets should absolutely be part of any discussion about effective marketing.

Yesterday, I shared with you Effective Marketing Secret #1 which is understanding that your #1 job MUST be marketing your business.  If you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, I strongly encourage you to do so.

Effective Marketing Secret #2 is understanding that branding is NOT marketing.

What do I mean by ‘branding’?

Branding is essentially the practice of trying to come up with killer logo, a member slogan, and then buying up as much ad space or media time as possible in order to get your ‘face’ in front of as many people as possible.

This is what almost all large corporations do (think almost all of the TV commercials you see, “Can you hear me now?”) and because of it, far too many small businesses fall victim to the urge to simply brand their business.

You have absolutely NO HOPE at all of making it work for you simply because your target market has more choices than they care to admit. Also, their lives are incredibly complex and to think they’ll simply remember your company name/logo/slogan at the exact moment they need you and will pick up the phone and call or log onto your website if pretty foolish.

Unfortunately, most small businesses aren’t aware of the dangers of branding and end up wasting a great deal of their available capital on completely ineffective branding style marketing.

Tune in next when I’ll share with you Effective Marketing Secret #3 which answers the question, “So if branding doesn’t work, what should I be doing?”