Branding is a painful experience for livestock. But is it important for your business?

Allow me to be perfectly clear about this. The answer is yes and no. In the sense that the way you represent yourself as a company, what you stand for and how you want to be perceived by the marketplace, yes - you should develop and manage your "brand". But a strong brand alone won't help you sell more. For most companies who don't advertise on television and employ scores of sales people, spending lavishly on "branding" probably won't provide a measurable return on this investment. As long as your corporate image is professional, consistent and presents you as credible - you have it covered. Branding used to be the holy grail for product companies back when there were three major networks. A company could saturate these three channels with their brand and sit back and watch the money pour in. These days, there are many media channels and pure branding isn't as effective. Further complicating things is the fact that customers have become very brand savvy. A slick presentation just isn't enough for today's skeptical buyers.

Instead, many companies are investing in creating a better, deeper understanding of their customer. By creating a dialog with customers (which is easier today than ever before) we can better understand how they buy, what they want and how they want it. We can get insight into what fuels their buying behavior, what they hate about the buying process and what their deepest fears and desires look like. Not only does this level of understanding build sales, it can create today's holy grail - customer loyalty.

Now before you start firing off mean and nasty e-mails to me allow me to be clear - your brand and positioning is still important - and if you have an unlimited budget feel free to spend lavishly on your brand (and call me - I can help). However, if you are like most businesses, you need to determine which marketing and sales initiatives will fit within your budget and still reach your goals. It's all a question of where to put the emphasis and, in my experience; most companies need to invest their limited dollars in hard-hitting, customer centric marketing messaging, tactics, and sales processes and promotion. And that will bring home the bacon.