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When Is The Right Time For Small Business Owners To Start Thinking About Their Brand?
It’s never too early to start thinking. Look at the stats: eight out 10 of new businesses fail not because they don’t have great products, but because small and medium-sized business owners held off on “marketing” or “branding” as foreign to their success. “Wait until we get our product right,” they tell themselves. (Insurance firm Embroker reports the fail rate at nine out of ten.)
This high fail rate is unconscionable and unnecessary. Venture Forward, a GoDaddy enterprise, estimates there are over 20 million micro businesses in the U.S. (Something like thirty percent of them started after the 2020 pandemic.) So it’s time to get things right. For starters, stop thinking that your new logo and website is your “brand.”
Small business owners continually feel as if the deck is stacked against them. But consider the fact that today’s legendary brands had humble beginnings only yesterday: Guccio Gucci started as a bellhop. Estée Lauder created perfumes in her dank Paris apartment. Patagonia started as a foundry hammering out mountaineering spikes. Apple started in a garage. Nike started from the trunk of founder Phil Knight’s car. Daniel Ek dropped out of college before he started Spotify. Samsung started out as a convenience store.
