When I first got sold on the idea of being an entrepreneur and a businessman I was only interested in being in business and so I began studying everything about business and marketing, marketing is important in business as Peter Drucker one of the great philosophers of business management famously said that business is marketing and innovation and everything else is a cost. So I began studying everything I could find at that time online and offline about marketing, as I began my journey obsessively studying marketing I remember getting so confused because there was conflicting messages not knowing that there were two totally different schools of thought in marketing one was the Branding and the other Direct response.
The branding people made some really good arguments, they believed that marketing should focus on connecting with your audience and creating a feeling that enticed people to come back and buy from you over and over. The direct response team had some very good counter arguments or points as well, they primarily focus on conversion, and creating processes where one could track every advertising dollar you spend, and working towards getting an immediate positive ROI.
I was attracted to the Direct Response team because with Direct response you get instant immediate feedback where as with Branding it is very difficult to track the money you spend on ads. I soon realized that if I wanted to make a difference and follow my passion then the Branding team was the team I wanted to join.
Branding is all about identity, Jeff Bezos once said branding is reputation and you build it by doing hard things well, the main reason I joined the branding team is because I felt like I had a calling to serve and whatever my product is or will be in the future will be the tangible proof that represents my purpose and it will aim at adding more value to the end user than anybody else. Joining either team comes down to self awareness if you want to play in the short term then Direct Response is where you should start. If you want play the long term game then I recommend joining the branding team. I personally prefer branding because even though it is difficult at the beginning once you get used to it, it becomes easier. The biggest most successful companies in the world don’t sell they Brand, Apple doesn’t try to convert you it never does. They put out commercials around a certain conversation around people with a shared experience, feeling or identity
One of the best way to build a brand today is through social media, in order to build a brand online you have to put out content that is contextual to each social platform consistently. The only solid plan in the long term, is you have to start thinking like a media company where for example instead of being a commercial in the wall street journal you become the wall street journal. Having a platform gives you the ultimate leverage in business hope this helps and adds value.
