Home > Be careful how you market yourself or you could set yourself up for failure

Be careful how you market yourself or you could set yourself up for failure

Written by Jose Gonzalez on June 10, 2010 - View Comments
Categories: Marketing Blunders, Posts & Articles, Selling Tips

Words are powerful things… what you say matters – often times more than you think.

When it comes to marketing words matter a great deal, because what you say is essentially what you’re promising. Say the wrong thing and you could be promising something that you just can’t deliver.

Just the other day whilst taking a stroll I saw a van parked on the other side of the road. It was early in the evening and there was nobody about.

The van caught my eye simply because of the interrupt that it created for me. On the door of the van the words Branding Specialist were proudly displayed.

I kept staring at the words and the snazzy logo on the door, wondering where the website address was.

That’s right, there was no website address anywhere on the van.

But the thing that really threw me was the fact that van looked more like a labourer’s van. It had an open top from which protruded a set of ladders and a bunch of buckets.

It took me a few moments to conclude that this business was owned by a signwriter. I’m assuming from the gear in the van that what this person actually does is paint shop signs.

So let me ask you… what does ‘Branding Specialist’ mean to you?

This is a clear case where the words used in the advertising are simply ‘wrong’. So let’s analyse why this is:

Not every business is shop-based, yet every business can have a brand.

This fact alone – the relationship between a business and a brand - should have made this person reconsider the chosen business name.

A signwriter can’t create a brand for my online business, nor for an office-based corporate.

All a signwriter can do – in terms of branding – is create a banner for your business. That’s just one aspect of branding, and it’s not applicable to every business.

So the promise implied by the words in this case falls short.

And here is where the problem begins…

When I find a branding specialist online, I expect business cards, logos, stationery and graphics. When the branding specialist turns out to be a signwriter, I’ve wasted my time.

When I see a branding specialist without a website, driving a van with ladders and buckets, trust is lost, as is credibility (I mean, the guy couldn’t even name his business right!)

And perhaps the worst sin of all: when a signwriter advertisers himself as a branding specialist, nobody can find him… because everybody is looking in the signwriters section for a signwriter whilst everybody else wishing to create a corporate ID with logos, graphics and possibly even a full website is busy looking for… you got it… a branding specialist.

This is a monumental error.

And here is the cruel irony of mis-advertising in this way

The person in question may actually be the best sign writer in the county, but the fact that he’s advertising himself as a branding specialist creates an expectation in the potential client, and they’re expecting anything but a signwriter.

When somebody creates an expectation in our minds and then fails to deliver or fulfil that expectation, we feel disappointed. That’s just the way we work.

When you do this business, your potential client will lose trust and confidence in you – and this hurt your business.

Without trust and confidence it’s almost impossible to make a sale.

So whilst this person may be the best signwriter out there, his poor choice of words when it comes to his company name and advertising is setting his business up for a very hard ride, when things could be so much easier…

If he is a good signwriter, all he ever had to do was advertise himself as a signwriter. That way we see what we expect, we get what we expect, and were happy.