Are you a local business owner and have wanted to turn your company into a strong brand? Brand building can seem like rocket science, something only mega-corporations like Geico or Walmart can manage. But branding is surprisingly simple. It does take dedication and consistency, but even small businesses with small budgets can create an enduring brand. Zimmer Marketing has successfully helped many four states area businesses brand themselves over the years using a systematic approach. In this blog, we'll explain our system for branding and share a recent success story from Anderson's Car and Tractor with you.
Zimmer Marketing Uses the BrandsFormation System
Marketing expert Chuck Mefford created BrandsFormation to help small companies do what the big ones do for successful branding. BrandsFormation focuses on local markets and smaller budgets to help local businesses carve out their market share in a world increasingly dominated by large enterprises. So, let's dig in and see how it works.
Strategy
A BrandsFormation truly starts when you take stock of your business, get down to the specific details and make a plan. Chuck's books offer you a blueprint for how to audit your business, understand what you do best, and understand your numbers. We'll spare the details for this blog, but suffice it to say, this is probably where you'll spend the most time during your BrandsFormation. This essential phase helps you find your 'difference-maker,' what differentiates your business from its competition.
Strategy-Based Message
The next stop on your branding journey is to craft a message based on your difference-maker. When creating your message, you want to avoid marketing tropes. Just about every grocery store has the lowest prices... or so their ads claim. Whether or not you have the lowest prices in town, the point is that your potential customers have heard it before, and that doesn't make you stand out from your competitors. So, your strategy-based message must be based on a genuinely unique feature of your business. Often this message is distilled into a recognizable slogan or set to music to create a jingle. In a minute, we'll show you a real-world example of how Anderson's Car and Tractor found their message based on their difference-maker.
Consistency
Once you've got your strategy-based message crafted, the next essential step in the process of establishing your business's brand identity is consistency. That means you prominently emphasize your message in all your business communications. Do you run banner ads online, your strategy-based message should be there. Same for radio spots or newspaper ads. Creating a recognizable logo, jingle, choosing brand colors, and more can all be a part of your consistency.
Dominant Frequency
The final puzzle piece for your branding success will be dominant frequency. Put simply, to ensure you do not waste your marketing budget for meager results, you should invest in one marketing medium at a time until you have achieved dominance in that place. Based on research, BrandsFormation posits that to achieve dominant frequency on the radio requires you to run ads 21 times a week for 52 weeks. But whatever marketing platform you begin with, it is crucial to dominate that space before adding additional pathways for your message.
Anderson's Car and Tractor Branding Case Study
Anderson's Car and Tractor is no stranger to advertising; they've been a local business for over sixty years. They had used all kinds of advertising media, but until recently had never tackled the task of truly creating a brand for their company. That changed when they came to Zimmer Marketing.
Going through the BrandsFormation process, they built an easily recognizable brand. Thanks to their strategy-based message perfectly encapsulated in their slogan, they are a well-known four state's area business. Almost all radio listeners in our region will know how to complete their jingle. When "Anderson's Car and Tractor..." sounds on the radio, you can immediately anticipate the next line: "the cure for Kubota envy!" That's branding.
Listen now: Anderson's Car and Tractor - Kubota Envy - Press Conference Ad
How We Created the 'Kubota Envy' Branding Campaign
For years Anderson's Car and Tractor has been selling Kubota tractors. During one of our brainstorming sessions with them, it came up that they had recently had several Kubota tractors stolen from their dealership. Theft is a horrible experience for any business owner, but it led to an epiphany. What was Anderson's Car and Tractor's 'difference maker?' They sell a product so desirable that people were stealing it! Thus, the campaign was born. An epidemic of 'Kubota envy' is going around, and the only cure is Anderson's Car and Tractor. They had a jingle created, and we built a successful radio branding campaign around it!