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Precisely - "marketers" these days don't grasp the concept of brand building. I'm not sure that's true. Some people are just working on a different scale. Bra
by Silhouette 9y ago
Precisely - "marketers" these days don't grasp the concept of brand building.
I'm not sure that's true. Some people are just working on a different scale.
Brand-building is fine if you're Coke or BMW or McDonald's. You have millions to spend, you can saturate channels, and then people might actually think of you in preference to your competition when they're in the market for a drink or a car or a burger.
On the other hand, if you're a bootstrapped startup and worrying about affording this week's ramen, ttul's "tiny budget and short time horizon" is probably all you've got. To a first approximation, the only thing that matters for online ads in this environment is how many people you can get to take some immediate useful action, even if it's just volunteering an email address that you can use to follow up, or sharing your site with someone else they know who might be interested.
Of course, in the longer term, brand awareness is valuable as well. But branding isn't worth squat if your business won't be around long enough for someone to remember it later.
- wolco 9y agoIn a startup brand awareness p is extremely important perhap more so than coke. They spend millions of dollars because they are trying to reach billions. The most useful thing I noticed some startups do is get involved in their niche community and spent money building brand awareness for a targeted group.
- libertine 9y agoI agree that the work of marketers differs from scale, but it doesn't justify bad decisions. I don't agree that brand-building is fine just for major brands, where they fight for small % of a saturated, well defined, market share. Like you said, it's all about scale, and actions of a bootstrapped startup should adjust to it - not to be spending thousands on Youtube campaigns (picking up this post example). If you want some immediate useful action you should focus on media and placements where you have a higher percentage of people that a near to take immediate useful actions - maybe a video platform to consume video content is not the best choice to start with. Brand building can be as simple as the way you address your customers, how your company looks, how the buying/service experience is, etc - things that change the perception of something random and generic, yet foundational to any brand. McDonald's was the place to get tasty food without having to wait sitting down for it.
- icebraining 9y agoyou should focus on media and placements where you have a higher percentage of people that a near to take immediate useful actions - maybe a video platform to consume video content is not the best choice to start with. Where would that be for a candy subscription service? I mean, people looking to buy candy probably just want one packet right now, not ten spread somewhere over the next few months.
- ttul 9y agoThis week’s ramen won’t come unless the ads you ran six months ago generated some form of brand recognition...
- Silhouette 9y agoThat's going to be tough if our hypothetical business has only been running for three months, though, isn't it? Everyone has to start somewhere, and all I'm saying is that in those early days, the need for immediate results will naturally dominate longer-term brand-building -- unless you're already heavily funded and don't have the same priorities, of course.
- danmaz74 9y agoBranding isn't just about spending a lot on ads. I found lots of actionable suggestions even for a small startups in a book called "Killer brands" by Frank Lane.