If you struggle to meet payroll and find it increasingly difficult to earn an acceptable profit on your hard work, brand promotions are a waste. Put another way, if any marketing professional approaches you about building your brand, run as fast as you can the other way because all you will do is spend hard-earned profits on their promise to generate sales that will leave you zero in return on the spend.
Overview
The American Marketing Association defines a brand as “A name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers. A brand may identify one item, a family of items, or all items of that seller.” The legal term for brand is trademark.
Brand marketing is driven by promotions that grow the asset of brand equity. A brand is an intangible asset of a business that helps people identify a company, its products, and its services. People often confuse brands with logos and tag lines used in highly visual ways to promote products and services.
The marketing theory of brand promotions is that every dollar spent building the brand should be considered an investment in building company value through a highly recognizable brand. Put another way over the top, brand marketers want their employers to invest in building the brand, similar to how operations want capital invested in plant and equipment to help generate more revenue that shows up on the Balance Sheet as fixed assets.
Strong brand awareness impacts sales, yet brand marketing is about the theory and tactics to build a strong brand that gets reflected on the Balance Sheet more than on the P&L Statement. Put another way, unless you are a multi-billion dollar company with a CEO and Board of Directors who like to see their logo wherever they go, promoting the brand for your business is a waste of money.
Never forget that Net Sales minus expenses are what generate profits that make you money today. Intangible Assets are only worth what someone is willing to pay you for when they buy your business. It takes years and big money to build a brand that has high intangible asset value. This is why brand promotions are better left to the big corporations. You will make more money following the 7-P Framework, which is all about owning a profitable business with cash reserves in the bank, than you will following the brand experts.
