How To Build A Great Brand

Every great American brand has invested heavily in brand marketing. Coca-Cola. Nike. Ford. Budweiser. Many of their ads don’t sell their products. They sell the lifestyle. The feeling. The identity. 

With the rise of direct-to-consumer brands, we’ve seen a boom in cutting-edge performance marketing, especially on social media. Return on ad spend is virtually 100% trackable with social media ads. There are dollars to be made. There are profitable businesses to be built. 

But you can’t build a great brand by only running direct-response ads. 

A great brand is the x-factor. Entrepreneurs who have big dreams but stingy wallets when it comes to brand advertising likely won’t change the world. They’ll sell a lot. They’ll make a lot of money. But they won’t build a great American brand that has a seat at the table. If you want your brand to have a voice in the mind of the public, you need to invest in brand marketing. 

My marketing advice to entrepreneurs who want to build a great brand is to invest a fixed percentage of all revenue back into brand marketing. It won’t pay off in a month. It won’t pay off in a year. But in five years, they’ll be thanking themselves that they did. They’ll have something their competitors simply can’t buy.