What Comes First:The Brand or the Product?

Any business owner who has done his or her homework knows the importance of marketing their product or service. In fact, most people subscribe to the logic that good branding will take you, your product and your business to levels of success the unbranded entrepreneur and product will never reach. But how much truth is in that sort of logic and how important is branding when you are just starting out?

The answer, as with just about anything, is that it depends. However, skimping on branding could mean the difference between a product launch and a product failure.

Many small business owners today will tell individuals on the brink of entrepreneurship that one of the greatest factors to starting a business that they overlooked was marketing. No matter the size of your business and your goals for your business, if you want other people to know about you, you have to market yourself.

Now marketing does not mean you have to go completely off the deep end with logos and cute characters representing your product. As a small business owner, when you think of marketing, think of consistency. This brings us to point number one. In everything you do, from sending out e-mails to sending out fliers to sending out your product to the customer, be consistent. This could mean something as simple as the level of service you offer from the start of the sale to the finish, or something more complex as matching business cards, stationary and packaging. Whatever your budget allows, the point is to be consistent. It reassures your customer that you are in it for the long haul and are not some shady fly by night kind of business. In addition, it builds up respect which means the prospects of customer returns and word-of-mouth advertising is that much greater.

Big mistakes among beginner entrepreneurs who have not quite grasped the concept of consistency is answering customer inquiries in one tone and then later on changing your tone or style to another in a second inquirty. It confuses the customer and doesn't place much faith in your or your business as being professional.

Another point when allocating marketing funds for your business, is consideration of a web site. Nowadays, it doesn't do much good to enlist in the Yellow Pages if you want people to find you. Instead, your customers are online, so shouldn't you be online too? Have a web site is crucial. You can carry the consistency of service or logos to the web site to again reiterate that you are a professional business.

You don't even need a lot of experience to start your own site and you certainly do not have to spend large quantities of money creating one with the amount of software options available to beginners.

Consumers have a lot of choices these days when it comes to what they buy and who they decide to buy it from. So, whatever you can do to make your company stand out, you should seriously consider doing.

A final note on the issue of marketing is to subscribe to magazines and be aware of the advertising that is currently out there. Advertising, like clothing or electronics, follow trends. One minute a catch phrase or type of graphic will be popular and will snag the customer, the next minute it won't. So, constantly educate yourself and your senses. Looking at what others are doing to brand and market a product may help inspire you to create a marketing scheme that works for you and your product.

If you look at Target, their advertising is a good example of using trendy advertising to pull in the consumer. The company capitalized on the sort of Warhol-esque repeating image which appealed to customers' senses and now a lot of other retailers are trying to copy that sort of innovation (but none as successful as the original).

The overall point is that it doesn't matter how unique the product, if you don't create a consistent form of communicating your product's image to the customer, it won't sell. It doesn't matter how cheap the price or how useful the product.