Why Building Your Brand Online Is NOT Enough
Building your brand online is a great start to building a successful online business, however many marketers are still missing a key element to making their brand profitable. In this article we’ll discuss what that key element is and why building your brand online is not enough.
First, let me start by saying that using Social Media as the platform to building your brand online is definitely the way to go. However, it’s important to understand that people don’t go on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram to buy their next product or service. Think about it….
Once you decide you’re ready to buy those shoes you have been wanting, or that television you have had your eye on, or a new mobile phone, or that awesome marketing course that you know will take your business to the next level…..
Do you go on Social Media to buy it?
I’ll go out on a limb here and say probably 99.9% of you do NOT go on Social Media to buy that product.
Instead, you go directly to the source such as Amazon, Best Buy, Apple, Nordstroms, or the actual person’s site who is selling the product you want.
Now let me ask you this….why would you go directly to the first source you thought of to buy that product you wanted?
Why didn’t you just say, “Nah, I think instead of Amazon, the company I know so well and trust, I will just go find a different unknown company to buy from.”
Most people and maybe you too, don’t say the above statement because it’s easier to gravitate towards the company you are more familiar with (know, like, and trust). That’s a great example of a company who has successfully built a familiar brand.
This is not to say that you need to become the next Amazon, Apple, Coke, Nike, etc. to build a successful brand online. However, you should focus on the following steps to building your brand online to ensure maximum profitability.
- Stake your flag in the ground online by choosing an outlet to get your brand recognized such as Facebook Fan Page, Instagram Page, Twitter Page, Blog, YouTube Channel, etc…
- Provide value on a daily basis to your audience to build that know, like, trust factor.
- Focus on becoming the “go-to” person within your niche so when someone is ready to buy they think of you and seek you out to make the purchase from you or your website.
- Promote your brand to increase brand awareness through paid advertising to reach more people on a daily basis which will result in more followers.
- Enjoy the ride to celebrity status.
The #1 Mistake Most Marketers Make
Now…. here’s where most businesses / marketers fall short.
Ready? It’s that one key element that’s missing in most businesses.
They don’t ask for the sale!
You’ve probably heard this over and over again…
“Build your brand! You MUST focus on building your brand if you want to be successful! Provide free value over and over and the money will come in! The more value you put into the marketplace the bigger your paycheck will be!”
Unfortunately this is only partly true.
So let’s clear something up before we move on…..the money won’t just magically appear in your bank account simply by you just giving free value to your audience over and over again.
You MUST ask for the sale.
You could spend all your time marketing your brand and providing free value to the marketplace, but you won’t have a profitable business if you don’t ask for the sale.
Building Your Brand: The Entrepreneur Rollercoaster
One of my favorite books on this subject is called the The Entrepreneur Rollercoaster.
In his book “The Entrepreneur Rollercoaster” Darren Hardy talks about how your business starts with sales, runs on sales and ends on sales. Bottom line, if you aren’t making sales you don’t have a business and the only way you are going to get sales is by asking for the sale.
One of the best tips I can give you when it comes to incorporating brand building and making sales is to have an irresistible offer that delivers value to your audience.
Then you have an offer in place on the back end with a follow up series that does the selling for you.
There are many ways you can make a sale after capturing someone’s name, phone number, and/or email address.
Here are a few we use in our own business:
- Call them directly
- Have a sales person or phone sales team to call your leads
- Have a high converting follow up email series in place that goes out daily to your subscribers once they opt in to receive your irresistible offer.
- Invite them to a webinar and sell on the webinar.
- Invite them to an event and sell at the event.
Remember….people will buy from people they know, like and trust. Therefore building your brand online is important but you also must have an offer with follow up in place to convert leads into buyers.
Building Your Brand: How To Balance Providing Value And Asking For the Sale
You may be wondering what the balance is between building your brand online and selling.
Think of it this way……
Every time you create content and/or provide value to the marketplace you are building up goodwill with your audience. Look at this “goodwill” as a sort of positive relationship “collateral” if you will.
This “collateral” is a great measuring stick on how well you’ve built a relationship with your audience and developed the Know, Like, Trust factor with them.
Unfortunately, the downside is that this “goodwill collateral” doesn’t pay the bills.
Now lets look at the flip side…
Every time you ask for the sale you are detracting “goodwill” from the relationship “collateral” that you’ve accumulated with your audience.
But here’s the catch…. If you only build “goodwill collateral” you won’t generate any (or enough) sales to sustain your business. Alternatively, if you only ask for the sale, you’ll run so low on “goodwill collateral” that you’ll soon realize you don’t have much of an audience to market to.
There’s a constant “give and take” goodwill seesaw effect going on every time you either provide value (increase the goodwill) or ask for the sale (decrease the goodwill).
Building Your Brand: How To Balance The “Goodwill”
So you need to ask yourself this; are you going to drain the goodwill account by only asking for the sale all the time?
Or…
Have you given enough value over a period of time that asking for the sale will still leave your audience feeling that there is plenty of “goodwill” left in the tank?
This is where the balance comes into play. If you only provide free value then you won’t have a business for very long. However, if all you do is ask for the sale then the “goodwill” tank is empty and your audience feels as though all you want is their money.
I love using the National Public Radio (NPR) example.
If you have ever listened to NPR you know that they are constantly delivering value all year long. NPR’s audience has a full “goodwill” tank that always seems to be overflowing because of the free content they deliver throughout the year.
Yet, once a year NPR has a huge fundraising telethon where all they do is ask for donations, aka money. The majority of the NPR audience who listen on a regular basis have no problem with NPR asking for money because of the value they’ve received in the past and that they know that they’ll continue to receive in the future. In fact, most of the audience is happy to remain tuned in throughout the telethon and many of them donate money to keep NPR around.
That my friend is the same concept you should be practicing when it comes to building your own successful business online.
Building Your Brand: Final Thoughts
Think of the people or the companies you buy from right now and ask yourself why do you buy from them?
Most likely because in the process of them building their brand you’ve come to know them, found that you like them and they’ve earned your trust.
In our example, we buy from certain marketing trainers online because we know the quality of their work, we like them and we trust them because of the time and effort they have put in to deliver quality products and value over time since the day we discovered them.
Therefore when they bring out a new product, event, etc….we don’t think twice about buying it from them.
Hopefully by now you understand that brand building alone and providing free value isn’t enough to build a successful business. You also need to ask for the sale at the right time.
