Marketing

Your brand isn’t just a logo, a wordmark or a colour scheme. To the outside world, it defines who you are and what you do – projecting your values, making you memorable, and differentiating you from competitors. That’s why branding is an essential part of building a sale-ready business. Large, publicly traded companies may spend 10% or more of their total revenue on marketing and branding. For smaller businesses, a more modest outlay is enough to develop an effective brand strategy. To make sure you get the biggest return on your marketing efforts, start with some basic questions.

Marketing works on the principle of GIGO: garbage in, garbage out. If you don’t have a firm strategy, it’s unlikely you’ll reap any great benefit. And when you come to sell your business, the interest you receive from buyers – and the eventual valuation – may reflect that wasted opportunity. That’s why it’s absolutely vital to create clear marketing goals, setting out exactly what you hope to achieve. Everything follows on from these: your messaging, your core audience, the media channels you should use, and the right metrics to judge success. Here are some tips to get this critical first step right.