What Is Branding, Really?

You get the type of clients your image portrays.

Ask handymen about the tools they use and you will get strong opinions. They can tell you every major manufacturer, what the logos look like, what color the tools are, and which one they would never touch. Most of them are devoted to one name, and in my experience it usually has very little to do with the tools themselves. It has to do with what the tools say about the man holding them.

That is branding: the feeling the man has when he picks it up, and the story he believes it tells about him. The logo on the drill is only part of it. If you understand that one thing, you understand more about branding than most business owners ever will.

Branding is a judgment

Here is the distinction I want you to hold on to through this whole track. A logo is something you make. A brand is something the customer makes, in their own head, using everything you give them. A brand is like a promise, and building the brand and building your reputation is really the same thing. Your sign, your truck, the way the phone gets answered, your invoice, how long you took to call back, the shirt your crew wore. Every one of those is evidence, and the customer is the jury.

Your company image, then, is everything that connects to your business and allows a person to make a judgment or an assumption about it. Notice how wide that is. Every person and every part of the business has a hand in it.

Think about your own neighborhood. How many brand names do you pass on an average day? Pick three. Can you say what each one means to you, above and beyond what they sell? Where did that meaning come from? Nobody told you. You assembled it from a hundred small pieces of evidence, most of which the company never thought of as marketing.

What branding decides for you

Branding and image will determine what you can charge and who your clients are going to be. I want to say that plainly because I have sat across from many business owners who believed that being the best at the work was enough. They were right and they were wrong at the same time. Deciding to be the best in your trade is part of your image. Whether people will pay for that is decided by the rest of it.

Would you pay a couple of thousand dollars for a suit that costs a few hundred to make if it did not have the right name in the collar? Would you pay close to a hundred dollars for sneakers if you did not believe you were getting what you paid for? The product did not change. The image did, and the image set the price.

Now flip it toward your business. The plumber who shows up in a rusted van with a hand-painted number and the plumber who shows up in a clean wrapped truck with a uniform can do identical work. One of them will be asked “how much?” before he gets out of the vehicle, and the other will be asked “when can you start?” Same skill. Different evidence. Different judgment.

The uncomfortable part

The most successful business people I have studied have a few things in common. They are living their vision, they did not stop until the business matched it, and they were willing to put their egos aside to get there. That last one is where most of us stumble.

Just because you created something yourself does not mean it belongs in your image. What you created is simply what you had the knowledge and ability to do at the time. Your cousin’s logo, the colors you picked because you like them, the name you thought was clever at the kitchen table. Some of it might be right. Some of it is holding you back, and you are the last person who can see it, because you are attached to it.

So ask yourself an honest question. Are the customers you are attracting right now the ones you wanted when you started? What are you able to charge, and is that what you planned to charge? If either answer bothers you, the gap is often in the image.

One more thing before you go running to change everything. If you are happy with where your business is and where it is heading, you do not need to spend time on any of this. But if you want the business to become more valuable, something that can grow past you, then building the image on purpose is something to do sooner rather than later.

The touchpoint list

Take a blank page and write down every point where a stranger comes into contact with your business, from the moment they hear your name to the moment they pay you: sign, truck, website, voicemail greeting, how you dress, the estimate form, the invoice, the follow-up. Next to each one, write in three words what judgment that piece of evidence invites. Do not fix anything yet. Look for the places where the evidence contradicts itself.

What it costs

An hour or two of honest looking, and it costs nothing but some discomfort. If you want a neutral set of eyes, ask a customer you trust to walk the same list with you. An agency would call this a brand audit and charge for it, but you can do the first pass yourself.