Self Promotion vs. Branding Your Business Identity
As a business, whether you are self employed as a one-man operation, or have more of a structure consisting of employees, your marketing efforts will consist of branding you as an individual as well as branding the business you stand behind.
Creating a brand that is one of being company centric rather than consumer centric can be considered self promotion and can lead to a poor reputation. Your reputation is the track record of your brand.
The purpose of branding is to create a favorable image of either you or the company in the minds of your target market. In other words, what sort of impression do you want to create ? This public persona could be a number of characteristics such as the following:
- An authority or expert in your field;
- A resource or the “go-to guy” for anything and everything people would want to know about your industry or niche;
- A person or company that is environmentally sensitive or socially responsible;
- A company or individual that supports certain causes;
- Quality and craftsmanship go into every product.
As you craft your branded profile, you want to identify with the demographics and psycho-graphics of your target market. Put out marketing pieces that are in alignment with those characteristics as you develop a brand.
Look at the larger corporations and how they brand themselves. Most associate their products with an aura — a mood or a feeling, often using symbolism or association to link their company and products with something that people identify with.
Advertisements of automobiles often show a middle aged man driving a convertible down a twisting highway. They are not saying how great the manufacturer is or how many colors the cars come in. Rather, they put the customer in the state of mind of owning a car, having fun driving one, havinga the sense of freedom and independence. They are not selling the horsepower of the car or other features, they are creating a feeling in the prospects mind that they want to associate with the car and the company.
So as you go about your marketing strategies, are you skipping the branding and going for the close all too often? Are you meeting people and turning your conversation into a sales presentation? If so, that is the brand that you are communicating. This is a complete turn off for most prospects.
Certainly, upon meeting someone, you engage in pleasantries, and give them your 30-second infomercial telling them who you are and what you do, but to then start to pitch them is a no-no. The impression you are creating in their mind in that of:
1) Not caring about them
2) Being self centered and all too important
3) Assuming they could use your product or service before even engaging in any meaningful conversation
Branding is part of the sales process. Ideally, a prospective customer will have heard of or seen some of your marketing tactics and formed an impression. It could be anything from being the “neighborhood expert” or hearing you as a guest speaker on a radio show or being the one people refer on message boards as the “go-to” guy.
In this next generation of Web 2.0, people are not responsive to blatant self promotion. Its like a walking billboard. Nobody wants to talk to you because their sense is that you are only interested in you, your product and getting them to buy something. People want to talk about them. The “what’s in it for me” is so important. Banner ads are not as effective as text links because there is no branding (other than repetitive exposure of a logo).
People don’t think they can “sell” or be in sales, but they actually are selling all the time. People constantly sell there ideas and need to be persuasive, convincing, etc. Just because they don’t have a product to sell does not mean they are not engaging in the process of selling.
Before you can offer how your product or services can help someone, would not it be appropriate to find out how it could help them? To do that, you must engage them somehow, either through conversation or just sharing in general what are the benefits and allow them to decide if they have the need or want to learn more.
Inexperienced sales people often fail to go through the progressive steps in the sales process. one of the first being rapport building. If someone has not formed an impression of you or your brand, one that is favorable, trying to close them too soon will most often fail.
Part of the inexperience has to do with being impatient. They feel that if they don’t pitch their product or service right away, the customer will disappear and the opportunity will be lost.
That is how a simple business card or brochure or website address can serve to maintain contact with someone you first meet, create a neutral first impression (not being pushy) so that you can follow up and build a relationship over time, all the while building up your brand.
If you create a brand around you as a “pushy salesperson” nobody will want to engage with you for fear of being sold to. They will also not refer you to their friends. You will not build a positive reputation.
There is a balance between letting your prospective customers know that you are in business having certain products and services that may help them and getting in their face from the start trying to get them to buy — right here, right now.