Before you hire an award-winning design firm to do your branding, stop and ask them one simple question.

It shouldn't be hard. Especially since the right answer is just to the left of this column, in big, blue type.

Here's the question:

When I invest my hard-earned money in a branding system with your firm, what tangible business result should I expect in return?

Some of the best identity designers in the world will not be able to give you a straight answer.

They will stare at you long and hard. Like maybe you have two heads.

And then they'll come up with some of those answers in the Not list over in the other column.

That stuff about looking professional or like a bigger company.

It's only natural. They're used to clients with giant budgets. Who never have to think about these things.

So it's not that they don't know the answer. (Except they don't.)

So they'll just mumble phrases and hope you decide the answers are obvious – and your question was stupid.

So they can get back to questions they can actually answer, with phrases like "It feels blue" and "Let's focus on circles."

You will get an identity that looks great. And you will win the design firm a bunch more awards.

But you can't make a payroll with professionalism. Or fund a 401(k) with credibility.

So if you're looking for a brand that's going to support an actual profit model – maybe your branding firm should understand your business.

Or any business, period.

I'm sure lots of firms qualify on that score.

But here are four that absolutely do:

Smart Communications and The Gasp Company, in Los Angeles. (I'll let them decide if they're two firms or one.)

Harry and Angela are real-life friends of mine with credits that will make you swoon.

Unit Interactive in Dallas.

I read Andy Rutledge's blog. His politics are to the right of mine, but but in every other respect I appreciate his old-school, new-media approach.

And mine, here in St. Louis.

Of course I hope you'll pick me. I have some availability, and I'm offering you this awesome report for FREE: 16 strategies to get more profitable.

Because that's why we're in business. And why you build a brand.

What does branding do?

Expand your profit margins.

Plain and simple.

Not "Make you look more professional and credible."

Not "Make you look like a bigger company."

Not "Make your materials look nicer, and make sure they all go together."

Not even, "Attract the right target audiences."

Not by themselves. Not even in combination.

Even though you've heard me say all those things, and more, for three decades. Even on this very site.

Those aren't business objectives.

They are not reasons to invest your hard-earned, after-costs-but-before-overhead gross revenue in fees for me or any other practitioner of the mysterious arts of branding.

But invest in your brand you must.

Before we're finished:

You probably will look like a bigger company.
Your materials will be more pulled together.
Everything will look better.
You'll even feel more like a CEO than just a business owner. Or, like more of a big-shot CEO than a small-time CEO. People do love the way it feels when their branding is right.
And you may just attract a whole new set of highly profitable target audiences (or discover that your current audience is the most profitable one you could be aiming for.)

But those aren't the main objectives. Those are the byproducts.

Because like it or not, you do have a brand.

You make an impression in the marketplace and in your community, online and offline.

You can't control that impression completely.

But you can go a long way towards shaping it.

With your branding (your marketing and sales materials, your online brand – all that stuff we think of as the brand, when the brand is really so much more) –
With your products and services (What they do. How they're made. What people use them for. What you think people should use them for.) –
With your sales process –
With customer service –
With your presence (or absence) in the media, online and offline –
With your interests and activities (It doesn't matter what they are, as long as they give you personality) –
Even operations, plant design – and every interaction anyone has with anyone else outside the organization.

Your brand is all of it.

But none of it is about the look, or the impression, by itself. No brand, by itself, is worth a hill of beans.

It's about value.

The value you offer.

The value you deserve in return.

In the battle to command the pricing you need
for secure profit margins – and your continued ability
to raise both, as needed and at will,

a strong brand is the only leverage you have.

So let's get going. And get your profits growing now.

mbaum
Mary Baum
Owner/ Chief Branding Consultant