Business owners have many things that can keep them up at night: taxes, laws and regulations, payroll, hiring, firing... the list goes on. In there, some thought should be allotted to marketing – more specifically building a brand that becomes the business’ identity, stands the test of time and helps drive profits.
A common misconception is that marketing and branding are one in the same. This is not true, says consultant Hank Nunn, owner of H W Nunn & Associates. Marketing is everything you do to bring business to your door. And the tools by which you market could include websites, radio and TV ads, junk mail, Yellow Pages and billboards. Those tools build brand, which essentially is a company’s identity and symbolizes everything it stands for in the marketplace.
Branding, when done correctly, is establishing top-of-mind awareness within the market place, Nunn says.
There are two ways to approach a branding campaign, Nunn says. One is the all-in or high-dollar approach, and the other is a more targeted and less-expensive approach that employs the use of “guerilla marketing” tactics.
The high-dollar approach features big advertising with a big budget, or the kind that Coke, McDonald’s or BMW use to great effect to buy a place in customers’ brains. It might make sense to go that route if you operate in a big-city market that demands 7-day-a-week, 52-month-a-year attention from a service provider. However, Nunn doesn’t believe this approach work well for most small business owners.
“Most of us in that scenario don’t have the big bucks, and it’s a questionable return,” he says.
Instead, Nunn advocates a more grassroots approach that starts with talking to customers about how they perceive you and your brand. Often, customers can best familiarize business owners with how their companies are perceived in the market.
“Most companies already have a brand, they just don’t know it,” Nunn says. “They have a reputation in the market. The customer base already has an opinion or perception of them, but they don’t know what that is.”
Fortunately, talking to customers is cheap, so this step won’t break the bank. But in addition to asking customers how they perceive you, Nunn advises to ask what makes a difference in their mind when they’re making a decision on the snow and ice management services you offer.
“You want to find out what they think of you and what do they truly want or need from their service provider,” he says.
Next, create a “unique selling proposition,” or USP. This is defined as the thing about a company and/or service product that creates differentiation in the mind of the customer. Marketing experts and business consultants all plead with business owners not to state that their one thing is “quality service.” Everyone offers quality services… or at least they say they do, Nunn adds. Instead, consider a unique aspect of your service or what you do different.
Key points
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Consultant Joe Calloway uses two tired-and-true examples to get this point across. First, there’s a tire-service company where the employees literally run to a car when it pulls into the lot. The other is a plumbing company that guarantees they will be on time or else they pay the customer $5 for every minute they’re late.
Once you develop a USP that defines who you are and what you’re all about, boil it down to a “snippet.” Many of these snippets can be found on TV, says Nunn, citing the example of FedEx’s ad slogan “absolutely positively overnight” that ran from 1978-1983.
“You want to find a way to deliver that message to your target market over and over again utilizing a wide variety of media,” Nunn says, “followed by fulfilling that promise to the customer and then telling them that you did.”
Everyone lately seems to be hot on building their brand through social media, utilizing sites like Facebook and Twitter to deliver their message. Nunn, however, believes social media is a very narrow target medium.
“A whole lot of people aren’t going there,” he says. “In some markets, it’s really strong. In San Jose/Santa Clara, Calif., for example, many people check the Yelp consumer-review website before they do business with anyone. But there are a lot of people who don’t do that. I consider managing your ‘online reputation’ important as a defense tactic because you don’t want negative things out there about your company.”
Instead of blindly running to the Internet, Nunn suggests letting your customers tell you which medium will work the best for spreading your USP. A snow contractor in a mid-sized city in the snowbelt first has to look at their customer portfolio: are they commercial, residential or municipal? If commercial, are they primarily shopping centers and business campuses or apartment complexes and home owner associations? Maybe you participate in civic organizations or the local chamber of commerce. Or maybe you use direct mail. You most likely would have to solicit work from a government agency with an entirely different approach.
“Let your market tell you what they’re looking for, and you do that by doing the legwork and talking with them,” says Nunn. “Ask them, ‘How do you see my message and how do I get it out?’”
So how much should you spend on marketing and brand-building? The general rule of thumb is 6 percent of gross sales, Nunn says. However, most small businesses can spend less than that if they utilize more creative, cost-effective tactics.
Bulk email is a proven and inexpensive way of blanketing a market. Direct mail, according to Nunn, is also a good way to get your name and message out to the masses, although more and more people are using color postcards on both sides instead of letters. A website is also an essential tool for a branding campaign, but Nunn notes that it must be seen and not lost in the infinite sea of the Web. That means a company website has to be search engine optimized (SEO) so that when people Google “commercial+snow removal+Cleveland,” your company is the first that shows up – or at least shows up on the first page of search results. There are many SEO companies that can assist you with this.
But how do you know if any of these branding efforts are working? How do you measure your campaign’s effectiveness? Daren Fristoe of The Fristoe Group says business owners should know the return on investment (ROI) on their branding efforts, which essentially is how much business you receive in return for the money you spent. For example, with postcard mailers, include a unique Web address or URL that is only promoted on the card. That way, you can track exactly how many customers responded to that card because the only way they could have obtained the URL is by receiving the card.
“The downside is you have to do that for some time to prove the concept,” he says. “Everyone has their hand out and they all want something. You can write a lot of checks and get zero out of it other than writing a lot of checks.”
Affiliating yourself with larger companies can be a shrewd business move, as well, as far as solidifying your brand in your market.
“Find entities in ancillary businesses that do similar things and connect yourself to them so that you look like you’re expanding and look bigger than you really are,” Fristoe says. “Partnerships make you look bigger if you partner with people with big brands. Leveraging those big brands can really help out.”
Marketing budget
While the industry average spent by snow contractors is around 3 percent of overall sales, a third indicated they spend less than 5 percent. In addition, nearly 40 percent of snow and ice management professionals say they spend nothing at all on marketing and branding efforts.
Budget breakdown for marketing
39% Nothing (zero)
33% Less than 5%
24% 6% to 10%
4% More than 10%
Employees as branding tools Branding is not only something you do on the customer side, but on the employee side, as well. That’s why it is essential that each and every employee knows exactly what the company they work for stands for, says human resources consulting expert Daren Fristoe. “An employee is either the best or worst salesperson you have,” Fristoe says. “If you’re at a kegger or a cocktail party and someone asks what you do, where you do it and why you do it, you better have a pretty good answer that rolls off the tongue that doesn’t sound too scripted. That’s where the brand resonates.” Fristoe advises organizations to brand everything that is seen by the general public with a logo and company statement. That means the logo and company statement go on literally everything, which helps employees master the “elevator speech” they give to others on what their company is all about. “You can use your employee base to push the brand,” he says. “Every avenue, every opportunity, every stakeholder you can think of, think about how they receive the brand, use it and remember it.” |
Jason Stahl is a Cleveland-based freelance writer and frequent Snow Magazine contributor.
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