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How Small Brand Awareness Works

Recently I’ve had the pleasure of being on an experts panel at Bob Proctor’s Matrixx event held in Toronto, Ontario. As an expert I did my best to assist individuals realize what their brand is or could be. It was an invigorating experience. I met with a few groups of entrepreneurs who were absolutely motivated to get their business goals on the right path. I met with several dozen over the course of the event. My activity could best be described as mentoring. The mentees soaked up the advice of myself and eleven other experts on hand. Most were start-ups and some were young businesses.

I came to quickly realize that my job to help small businesses understand the true meaning and relevance of branding is a worthy effort. My advice was well received and their enthusiasm was inspiring. It’s important to understand that your brand is essentially your reputation. Everything you do reflects on that brand. Your logo on the other hand is the face of your brand. It is NOT your brand on its own. Your brand logo MUST reflect your brand though. Several represented an upper scale product or service. It is important to understand that if you expect a customer to pay a premium then there is an expectant of quality from your brand. You must play the role. It’s not acceptable for instance, to do a home made flyer printed on your home printer. That delivers a message completely opposite of the brand you are presenting. It’s also important that you increasingly improve your brand efforts.

Let’s say you’re a service business, it would be worth your while to develop how you do business by documenting how it is performed, packaging that process and delivering it to your customer as proprietary and in constant flux. What I tried to encourage was to not just deliver their business down the obvious path but to look for ways you can deliver it so that your brand benefits. i.e.: Determine who the decision makers are in respect to your customer. Then find out what they’re interests are and then sponsoring that interest. Especially if their kids are involved. That puts you in their sights from the back door. It also gives your brand a community message. To be seen as giving back is powerful. I’m suggesting to give back or develop a carbon footprint strategically.

Once you get on track with your own brand you can start promoting your small business like the Fortune 500’s do. Done properly, it goes a long way to help remove your business from commodity hell. It’s not about price anymore. It’s all about the experience, the conversation and how to over-deliver. Never scrimp on your brand, get sound advice and jump-start your success. I know some of the feedback the Proctor Gallagher organization got was that the Experts Segment was extremely valuable to those attending. It gave them access to information they may not have realized they needed.

Published: May 7, 2014
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Ed Roach

For more than 25 years, Ed Roach has worked with hundreds of successful small businesses by helping them develop unique brand positioning strategies that differentiate them from their competition. Ed appreciates working with companies who see the value of going beyond mere slogans and have a desire to sell from compelling positions, and consults predominantly with businesses facilitating his proprietary process, "Brand Navigator." This branding process effectively focuses a company's brand, delivering a positioning strategy that can be taken to their marketplace. He is the author of "101 Branding Tips," a book of practical advice for your brand that you can use today.