I recently attended a live podcast panel discussion in Toronto, hosted by Drift. The main focus on the discussion was on marketing, specifically branding. The topics really resonated with me in my current journey and stage with Web4Realty.
In most cases, startups don’t think about branding in the early days. The early days are all about the grind- selling, gaining traction, building out your team, looking for efficiencies in your processes, and more selling. Assuming you execute on those above items, and your startup makes it out alive after two years (more than 50% of companies will fail in the first two years), your brand will organically begin to take shape in your market, without any real effort or focus on it.
In general, the concept of branding gets thrown around pretty loosely. When you really unpack what branding truly is, it becomes much more valuable and important than most people realize. Nowadays, whatever business you create can easily be copied very quickly. In eight years since we launched Web4Realty, I’ve seen at least a dozen of companies in our space, come and go. With so much open information and resources available, the barrier to entry, especially in technology/internet companies, is extremely low. It gets to the point where the biggest difference-maker for a buyer becomes the brand.
Branding is like the top layer of a cake – the last component needed for a business to consider themselves a real market leader in their space, is brand. The companies who get to that point, where they can really start honing in on their brand, are the ones who can put the stamp on the ground, and officially say, “I’m here, and I’m here to stay”.
Branding also has a multiplier effect that positively impacts several aspects of a business, that you might not even realize.
Influence customer buying decisions
As mentioned above, there’s very little difference when shopping around for competing services. When you strip away the messaging, marketing and brand of competing products, they are usually very similar. In most cases, the company with the stronger brand-presence will win the business. There’s obviously other factors that affect decision making, but branding is a very strong influencer.
Pricing advantages
When a company wins the branding game, they can usually charge more. At this point, those companies are in a different league, and no longer competing on price. Those companies can get away with charging a premium, because they know buyers are willing to pay more due to the brand recognition and trust. Higher prices equates to higher margins, meaning even stronger brand.
Employee attraction and retention
It’s much easier for companies with brand-recognition to attract the best talent. Hiring the best people will further stimulate the growth of your company, which will eventually start compounding your rate of growth, making it harder for the competition to catch up. A company with the best talent, will likely be able to grow faster, which will help enhance the brand, and further solidifying itself as a household name in the market.
Hold up, not too fast…
Knowing when the right time is to really start focusing on brand, is critical. It’s important to nail down the basics in your business, secure the foundation, and ensure your customer journey is near perfect, before you really start putting too much emphasis, time and resources into branding. If you invest heavily on brand too soon, it’s very easy for your brand to backfire and start working against you. The last thing you want is a negative connotation around your brand. This is a detrimental mistake that a lot of companies make that eventually lead to their downfall.
You’ll know when you’re ready to step up your brand game. When that time comes, you better be ready to take the throne.
Music by sifer2424
