I met a marketing expert several years ago and he taught me a lesson that I have always remembered. He told me that to develop a brand you need to constantly communicate to your target audience repeatedly sending them marketing material or putting your brand into their field of view.
Branding only works as a marketing tool when you have achieved a high level of brand recognition with your target audience. He told me that this is where the problem lies for small businesses, if you consider well-known brands like Coca-Cola, McDonalds or Nike they spend millions of pounds per year marketing their brand to almost *everybody*. No small business, unless they are very rich, can normally afford to generate a brand amongst such a large audience, as the marketing costs makes this prohibitively expensive. Small businesses can still generate a brand but only amongst a small group of people, ie if you have a very small or closed group of prospects and you can communicate with them regularly or you want to generate a strong brand with your existing customers.
I've found the concept of "brand" can often mislead the small business owner. They live and breathe their business and therefore they tend to feel their brand is actually bigger and stronger than it really is.
A more effective tool for small business is to develop a USP (unique selling proposition) for your specific product or service. This is not a brand or a slogan and is often confused as such but it is a message that defines you from the competition. The USP message should run through all of your sales and market material but is often seen in the form of a slogan phrase.
I personally think it is sometimes misleading to use large companies as examples when considering brand and USP because their marketing budgets are so far removed from small businesses, however here are two examples that I hope will illustrate my point.
"Think different." - Apple
“When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight." - Fed Ex
Both of these 'slogans' were hugely successful for both businesses. However from the small business point of view you will see that Apple's slogan is more about being a brand and being a supporter of that brand. It only works if backed up with a large and expensive brand awareness campaign.
If you had never heard of Apple and wanted to buy a computer, would a prospective supplier saying "Think different" help you to buy?
On the other hand take FedEx's slogan this would work perfectly for a small business as it clearly states what the company does and why it's different. It doesn't require any additional marketing to be very effective tool. This is the perfect USP.
Again, say you need to find a delivery company for an important legal document, you find a list of suppliers and one is saying, “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight". Does this make you want to pick this supplier? Absolutely!
The importance of a USP to a small business should not be underestimated, but in my personal experience it's easy to talk about but in reality hard to find a USP that works perfectly for your company.
Brand should not be ignored if you have a very small target audience, however for most small businesses their target audience is wider, making building a brand too expensive and focusing on a strong USP a much better investment of time and money.
If you have a good or bad USP of you own, please leave it in the comments below.