A Branding and Advertising Mistake That Kills Small Business

Not every businessperson is great at advertising and marketing their company in a positive way that draws in their target crowd and subsequently grows their business. However, every great businessperson is superb at branding and advertising and knows that you could hire the best of the best to do it for you, but at the end of the day, you are the one who raised this baby.

If we run down a brief checklist of the different mistakes (just a few of them) that businesses - mostly small businesses - make when branding and advertising their company, we can see how those businesses unknowingly give buyers the perception of an uncool, incompetent and tiresome business.

The first mistake made is the "boutique" marketing angle. Companies, tellingly still small after many years, fail to see the parallel between marketing your business as small and not having the ability to drive enough revenue to implement what should be the goal of every company: growth.

Corporate America is full of individuals who don't like risk taking. When choosing vendors, these businesspeople glean a sense of insurance against incompetence on the vendor's side, when they can point to the vendor's marketing and branding campaign. Whether or not the campaign reflects reality, a non-boutique marketing and branding campaign signals solidity and trust to the skittish buyer.

For instance, if one of these vendors were to take payment and not come through with promised services, when called to answer to management, John or Jane Corporate America can justify their choices by saying vendor X had experience working with enterprise-level companies and seemed to have the support and infrastructure in place to deliver.

On the other hand, if John or Jane were to take a risk on a "boutique" company that failed to deliver, the explanation process of the logic they used to choose this company in the first place would be a heck of a lot more painful for them than it would be if they chose Corporate Option X.

Not everyone is entrepreneurial in this world and most don't understand that the word "boutique" is synonymous with hard work, sweat and dedication to the company's base of clientele. Corporate America is the money driver in this world and those in it don't understand the entrepreneurial business drive. Corporate America does not like to venture into the unknown.

Luckily, this problem is easily solved with some basic replacement adjectives such as "precise," or some sort of description that infers you are a leader within the industry. Brand yourself where the money is and, both in marketing terms and in numbers, that "boutique" description will no longer fit the amount you see on your business's bank statement.