Reasons why branding isn’t BS

‘I can tell you that after our rebrand, we had the top-grossing month ever recorded as a company’ – Current Client

Re-investing hard-earned dollars in your company is often one of the most perplexing decisions business leaders make. Brand-building efforts (identity development, visuals, brand-voice, web design, messaging and media) are often seen as either vanity purchases or a necessary expenditure with little trackable return. If the branding efforts actually do work – how would we ever know? Could we even guess what it was worth? What kind of real ROI is there for brand-building initiatives?

‘Your new design on your fleet of trucks looks killer, Pete!’ warms the heart, but it doesn’t do a damn thing for the bottom line. ‘That video you guys shared was gorgeous – and the story really moved me!’ Sure, it was pushed onto everyone’s Facebook pages, but are you sure it improved Q4?

Building your brand builds your bottom line -Let’s see how.

What if we actually track a brand’s creative performance and show you how it moves the needle for a company?

We’ll highlight two companies we helped. Both needed a total brand overhaul to dramatically improve their communication with their client base and inspire confidence. One client is a multi-national non-profit and the other a professional home services company expanding into multiple markets. Both of these clients are tracking monthly data comparisons to show the value they got in return.

We’re going to highlight a few more of these reported figures in the months ahead, but for now – we’ll work up a quick little ROI analysis for all that creative work. Let’s pick a round number and say that each client (A & B) ordered roughly 20K worth of brand development work. That means they bought 20K of creative horsepower.

Here are a couple of key quotes directly from the clients showing quantifiable improvements.

Client A – Results

‘April, May, and June are historically our worst months of the calendar year. May is particularly bad. I can tell you that this May, after our rebrand – we had the top-grossing month we’ve ever recorded as a company. Both of the other Q2 months were significantly higher than the previous year. How much higher was May 2019 compared to May 2018? That month we went from 32K to 94K. Across the calendar year, we noticed that we only had slow days, not slow weeks. We used to have a heck of a time recovering from a bad week. The website is generating significantly more leads, and the quality of the phone calls is much better. Couldn’t be happier – a great investment in our company. We now have a cohesive picture of our brand that translates easily to the customers we have to attract.’

Client A: An average sale for the client hovers at $425 Per visit for the professional home services client. If that new branding draws in a new client (a phone call after visit fantastic new website) at the rate of even 1 call a day more than the same month a year before – that is an additional 10K per month. Two months in – the investment broke even. That’s a pretty decent ROI. Of course, that 10K per month rolls on throughout the rest of the year and keeps performing beautifully for that bottom line.

Client B – Results

‘We’ll do a bigger report down the road because we have seen a huge benefit in every way from our partnership with your team. In terms of actual numbers, it would be better if we had a couple more months of data because we just sent our first mailer out announcing the new website. I already have a hundred new subscribers, and they are all significant relationships that are now much more easily communicated with. We will be raising money/teaching/talking to folks through the site like crazy over the next 6+ months and are very excited/relieved to have a professional tool to help us get it done!

Client B: Their 100 new donors/contacts create substantial donation value for the non-profit. Let’s estimate the average monthly donation (we will rule out larger benefactors and one-time generous gifts) at $75 a month times 12 months. That’s $900 a year times 100 new donors, and that translates to 9K in year-one from just one month’s new engagement bump. With multiple ways of increasing exposure (speaking/publications/ networking)- the subscribers and donors should grow month by month. The ROI performance picks up steam as the months roll along.

THE BIG SO-WHAT:

These are well-run organizations with great staff and they’re always improving what they offer to their market – we wouldn’t dare take credit for their brilliance. But -by their own statements, they attribute the growth to their branding investment.

Reinvesting in your brand (building voice and visual assets) absolutely increases both the prestige and performance of your company. If it didn’t, it would be a ‘non-performing expenditure’ – a forbidden phrase for any healthy business.

Let’s hammer out some foundational understandings of how your brand presents to your market