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Branded Bull Podcast
Brand Story vs. Business Systems: Which Should You Focus On First? Ep 89.
00:09:11
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This is the Branded Bull Podcast, a show dedicated to helping take your business to the next level with winning marketing and branding tips and strategies built for today's competitive world. Ready for your business to make its mark and stand out from the competition? Let's get into it.
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Welcome back to the Branded Full Podcast. I am your host Adam Fullerton and this is the show built for small lawn care, landscap and green industry business owners who want to stand out, get found and win more work. Every week we break down things like branding websites, SEO, advertising and other marketing and advertising topics in a simple way so that you guys can walk away with some actionable advice so that again, you can win more work. On today's episode, we're going to be challenging something that's become very popular in marketing conversations as of late. And that is the idea of building your quote unquote free brand story. You've probably heard it before. Define your mission, craft your original story, develop your brand voice, build an emotional narrative. And the list goes on and on. And yes, listen, those things aren't bad. But here's the truth. For most lawn care and landscaping businesses, especially you guys listening to the podcast, doing zero to a million dollars in revenue, that is not your biggest problem. And it's definitely not where you should be focusing time. Brand storytelling is, in my opinion, in our opinion, if you're doing 3 million to 5 million 10 million, sure, let's start talking brand storytelling. But if you're doing zero to a million, that's definitely not something to be focusing on here. Let me explain. Right, explain. If you're under a million dollars in revenue, your biggest growth levers are usually much simpler. Are you visible when customers are searching? Is your Google business profile optimized? Do you have enough reviews? Does your website clearly explain what you actually do? Are you answering the phone professionally? Do you follow up on estimates? Do you have repeatable systems and processes in place? And the list goes on and on. Those are foundational growth drivers. A polished brand story won't fix a broken follow up system. A compelling story about how you built the company is not going to replace the fact that you have no local SEO visibility. A mission statement about why brands storytelling, or I should say a mission statement, won't compensate for the inconsistent customer service you might be offering. And if you have no marketing in place, none of these things will fix that. Nobody knows who you are. Nobody knows how to get a hold of you. You're non existent. Having cool core values in a mission statement. Yes, you want one. But my goodness if nobody can find you, it doesn't really matter. So let's talk about why brand storytelling becomes more important later in the process. Because once a company is doing 3, 4, $5 million in revenue, the game absolutely changes, right? Those companies are hiring at scale, they're competing in multiple markets, they're attracting higher level talent, they're trying to differentiate themselves from other more established companies. And at that stage, storytelling helps unify culture, it helps with recruiting, it helps position the company in a crowded, competitive space. And the thing is though, when you're building a business from zero to a million, your job isn't storytelling. It's stability, it's systems, it's visibility, it's credibility. The basics. The basics. Blocking and tackling, right? You don't need a cinematic brand manifesto. You need clear service pages, professional imagery, consistent branding with your logo and your colors and your patterns, Strong reviews, you know, solid operations, reliable lead flow, repeat customers. Again, there's so many more things to be focusing on instead of getting bogged down in the brand storytelling weeds. And this is just where a lot of small business owners get lost in the process. They spend hours and hours debating brand voice or rewriting their About Us page while ignoring the fact that they have only 17 Google reviews or whatever that number is, in no process for, for asking for more. Or they obsess about logo symbolism, right? Which is good to think about and have a professional website, but you know, trying to worry about intricate and crazy logo designs when your website isn't even there, or it just doesn't even explain who you are and what you do, or it doesn't work on a phone. The basics, right? You're solving for the wrong problem at that point. Now, I want to be clear. Branding still matters at every level of your business. So looking professional matters, being consistent matters, presenting yourself well, absolutely matters. But branding at the early stages should focus on clarity and professionalism, not trying to create some deep story about your business at the zero to a million range. Your brand should simply your, your brand should answer simple questions like who are you? What do you do? Where do you work? You know, in terms of service areas, why should I trust you? And that's basically it, realistically. And that's what drives leads, that's what drives credibility and visibility. And once you cross into larger revenue brackets in more competitive markets, then yes, of course, brand narrative becomes a strategic layer of the business. But until then, your energy is better spent building the foundation again that blocking and tackling. Because a strong system and strong marketing are what allow you to even reach the stage where brand storytelling becomes relevant. And again, here's a way to, you know, a simple way to hopefully think about it, which is if your phone isn't ringing consistently, you don't have a brand story problem. If your estimates aren't closing, you don't have a brain story problem. If your team isn't following up with customers or you don't have a repeatable process for processing new leads, you don't have a brand story problem. You have a visibility, operations and customer service customer experience problem. And those are much, much easier to fix. And that's where you should be focusing your time, energy and effort. Get visible, get organized, get consistent, build trust, then refine the narrative. And that's just our perspective, right? And we talk about this a lot through the podcast and through our conversations every single day with you guys that are listening. It's all about setting the foundation and building upon it from that point. But you got to get your marketing in order, you got to get your operations in order, you got to get those systems and processes in order. And that is most important right now until again, you're a little bit bigger and then you can shift to that brand storytelling. So I hope that helps. I hope that makes people listening, hope, hopefully you guys listening, you know, if you're fearing that you don't have a brand story in place and think you need to do that and stay up all night to figure that out, you can do whatever you want. Strong suggestion or recommendation is, hey, leave that stuff for when you're bigger. 5 million, 10 million bigger company problems, right? There's big company problems, there's small company problems, and we think basic blocking and tackling, those are small company problems that you can fix and should focus on before you get too deep into things like brand storytelling. So that's what I've got on this episode, guys. I hope that's informative, I hope that's helpful. I hope that hopefully relieves some of the stress if you're trying to worry about your brand story and get you back to the basics and focusing on things that actually drive business given your current size. So as always, new episodes every single Tuesday. I appreciate you guys tuning in. If you like listening to these, this podcast, you find it informative, valuable. I always invite you to leave that five star review wherever you're listening and subscribe to the podcast. But that's what I've got for you for this week. And as always, thanks for tuning in, guys. Short and sweet, to the point. And I will catch you on the next episode. Take care.
- [08:38]
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Thanks for listening to this episode of the Branded Bull Podcast. The podcast dedicated to giving you expert advice and actionable ideas so that your business can make its mark and stand out from the competition like what you heard in today's show. Visit brandedbull.com to see how we can help you achieve your marketing and branding goal. Also, please consider leaving a five star review. And again, thanks for listening.