All right.
Today, we're talking about step three of the six things you need to stop doing when marketing
your local service business.
And if you'd like to download our free PDF, I'll put a link in the description area below
where you can get all six steps.
And step number three is, do you need branding in your service business or don't you?
Stay tuned.
Hi, I'm Mike Mancini helping you market, simplify, and impact your business.
And we are on step number three of the six things you need to stop doing when marketing
your local service business.
And we're talking about branding.
I deal with a lot of business owners.
And when I first meet with them, they like to talk about branding a lot.
And a lot of these are smaller companies.
And when I say smaller companies, I mean they are a one man show, or they've got two or
three trucks, but they are not a large or a big Fortune 500 company.
They don't have 10, 15, 20 trucks, they don't have hundreds of employees.
They might have two or three employees, they might be doing the jobs themselves, whatever
it might be.
And my comments here are probably going to upset a lot of business marketing experts,
because when it comes to marketing a small local service business, you do not.
You do not need to worry about branding when you're getting started out.
And here's why.
When you're a small service business and you're worried about marketing, you should be worried
about marketing to get new clients.
You need money.
You don't need branding.
Branding is not going to get you clients in the door today.
Branding is not going to bring you clients in the door tomorrow.
Branding is a long-term play.
When you think about branding, I want you to think about Apple.
I want you to think about Nike.
These are companies that are massive.
They're multi-billion dollar companies, they are worldwide, and they have billions, and
I mean billions, of dollars to spend to get you to understand what that Nike swoosh is,
or what Apple's logo looks like.
They don't have to worry about where their next client is coming from.
They are making billions of dollars.
But for you, if you don't have this, and if you don't have it soon, chances are you shut
your doors.
Now, working with all of these different companies, I had an experience where I sat down with
a brand new business owner.
She had started a small local business.
And when we started talking, she had mentioned to me that her branding was in order.
So I asked her to please explain to me what she had in order for her branding.
And she told me that, well, she had her letterhead ready, she had envelopes, she had her logo
and her business cards done.
She had all of that ready and it only cost her $6,000.
And I about choked on my coffee.
This is a brand new business owner who is stepping out on her own and wants to take
that entrepreneurial leap.
And someone convinced her that she needed to spend $6,000 on branding.
And I was very honest with her, I didn't want to make her feel like crap.
I just was honest with her and said, "Okay, but with all of that branding, is any of that
going to get you your first client?"
And she said, "No," because how is that going to get you anything?
In fact, do people even send letterhead anymore and envelopes?
Maybe you send out an invoice.
Business cards I get, but not $6,000 worth.
And the same thing for a logo.
You can get a logo on Fiverr for five bucks.
My point is, is that branding is not going to get you clients tomorrow.
The one thing you need to worry about is getting clients in the door as fast as you can to
help you scale your business.
When you have money in the bank, then you can hire somebody in worry about branding.
Then you can worry about somebody coming in and making you your Nike swoosh.
I know people who have started their business and they literally just put black writing
on a white background, Mancini & Associates or whatever it might be, their business name.
And they actually came up with a logo later.
You don't need a logo to do your business.
And here's an example of that.
If you were looking for a plumber, do you remember the name of your local plumber?
If you have, it's probably because you know that person or you recently were doing business
with them, or because they are a massive company and they're spending a ton of money on advertising
where you're bombarded with that message.
But typically small businesses don't have that kind of money.
When I look for a plumber, I don't remember who I need to call.
All I know is I've got a busted pipe and water's gushing all over my house.
I'm going to places where I know I can find an answer quickly.
I'm going to Google.
I'm not going to go ask somebody.
I'm not going to remember the billboard of the plumbing company that I saw and then go
try and find their name and their phone number and all that crap.
I'm literally going to try to find the quickest person I can get to fix this busted pipe.
If I need somebody to do some electrical work in my house, do I remember all the electrical
companies that I've been bombarded with messages with over the last five years?
Absolutely not, because we are bombarded with marketing messages from so many different
directions; when we open our emails, when we listen to the radio in our cars, when we
see commercials on television.
Every time we're on social media it's ads, ads, ads.
We are bombarded with too many different messages for you to stand out in that noise.
So when it comes to marketing your local service business, do not worry about branding until
you can afford it.
So have you been approached in the past about branding your business?
Were you able to afford it?
Was it something you thought you needed?
Be honest.
Let me know down in the comment section below, I'd love to hear about it.
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And if you want to see step number four of the six things you should stop doing when
marketing your local service business, over to the right-hand side, once we have that
video up, you will see a link to that.
Thanks so much for watching.
We'll see you next time.