What Startups Can Learn from ‘Tax Relief’ PPC Campaigns

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Old-school industries don’t get the credit they deserve.

Every blog focuses on the hot new startup.

People write case study after case study on the trendy new subscription box.

But no one ever talks about offline companies.

Even though, many times, there’s WAY more money at stake.

Take ‘tax relief,’ for example.

The latest IRS numbers show that people fail to pay $458 billion a year in taxes. That accounts for almost 69% of our annual deficit.

Obviously, people don’t get away with avoiding taxes for too long. Eventually, they’ll be caught.

And then they’ll need to pay back the IRS.

The problem, of course, is that they probably won’t have the money on hand.

So what will these desperate people do?

They’ll start looking for help from tax relief companies.

These companies specialize in helping people reduce or avoid certain debts.

What’s the problem?

This is a heavily commoditized market. Many of these providers are offering the same services, more or less.

If a ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’ refers to uncontested markets, tax relief is a very, very, molten lava, red-hot, competitive market.

It’s among the most competitive in the world. You have massive companies all chasing the same few people who owe lots and lots of money.

You know what else that means?

There is no room for error.

These companies literally cannot afford to make a mistake.

They’re among the highest-priced PPC terms, for instance, reaching up to around $40-50 bucks a click.

And that’s just for a single visit!

They still have to try and convert those visitors. So the actual cost per lead is well into the hundreds of dollars, easy.

That’s why we should be studying these old school industries. They might not have the flashiest designs or most cutting-edge tech.

But they are slogging it out, day in and day out, with competitors who’re all spending a TON of money.

In this article, I’m going to show you strategies from the best in the tax relief business. At the very end, you’ll be able to take these tips and instantly increase your own PPC campaigns.

First, however, we need to start by getting a lay of the land.

How to research an industry you know nothing about

PPC is one of my favorite marketing tactics.

I love it because it produces results almost immediately. You can turn campaigns on and make adjustments on the fly.

Do it right and customers start flowing in within a few days.

I also love it because it’s consistent. You can predict what kind of results you’re going to get.

And you can predict them, because a simple competitive analysis will give you almost all the data you need.

For example, before this post, I knew nothing about tax relief. Thankfully!

My trick to uncovering the best marketing tips isn’t to watch what people say. It’s to watch what they do.

If you want to know more about ‘tax relief,’ let’s start by Googling the competition.

So far so good. The first four ad results show they know what they’re doing.

My search query was “tax relief Seattle.”

But all of them do a good job bringing up benefits of their service.

Why does that matter? Because just over a year ago, Google opened up the ‘expanded’ headline.

This way, you could hit the keyword in the first headline. And then add a secondary benefit to get people to click.

Here’s an awesome example:

“Take 60 seconds to cut taxes” helps the searcher hop over the first objection hurdle: It’s going to be too long or boring.

When this new expanded headline debuted, WordStream ran a study and found that adding an additional benefit like this can increase your click-through rate by 400%!

Just a few simple queries like this will help you quickly find a whole slew of companies.

Stick to big, popular queries at this point.

The reason? Keywords like “tax relief” will also be among the most expensive in the space.

Which means the companies you see advertising on them will have the big bucks.

They’ll be the most aggressive.

And you can use them as a benchmark.

For example, Precision Tax Relief had an excellent ad earlier. They used ad extensions like star ratings and reviews.

So you know they’re legit.

Now, I’m going to grab their URL and drop them into two tools.

First, let’s see what their site brings up in SpyFu:

Check that out.

Two seconds and you can see:

1. The number of keywords they’re bidding on
2. An estimate of clicks they’re receiving
3. Their total monthly budget

And then, you can even drill down into the individual keywords in their account.

Each one will show a cost per click, the total ad budget on each, and where they’re showing up for them.

SEMrush will show you similar data:

In this case, you’re able to sort the keywords they’re bidding on by search position.

See something interesting already?

Precision Tax Relief is paying for the #1 position of a competitor, Optima Tax Relief.

Judging by this traffic estimate, they’re also stealing a TON of their clicks, too.

Look further down the list and you see more of the same.

Why should we spend time looking up competitors?

Because these tools will uncover the strategies the best companies in the industry are using.

So far, we can see that Precision Tax is using a branded search strategy.

Instead of just dominating their own name, they’re actively bidding against the competition’s.

But that’s not the most important thing buried in here.

For starters, they’re giving us the 800LB gorilla in the tax relief space: Optima.

Which means we can now go research them to see what’s making them so successful.

Let’s start with reverse-engineering their keyword strategy.

Analyze the best in the business to see what works

There’s a trick I use to shortcut keyword research for SEO.

Instead of wasting tons of time on inaccurate tools like the Google Keyword Planner, I do the same thing every time I get a new site:

Fire up an AdWords campaign.

The reason? It saves me a ton of time.

The hardest part about optimizing a brand new website is that you don’t know the ‘money’ keywords.

You have no idea which keywords will deliver the best bang for your buck. Or hours.

AdWords can help you solve that.

You can add a bunch of keywords from five minutes of research. Set up a decent daily budget.

Then, the AdWords Search Terms report will tell you exactly which keywords are worth focusing on.

That’s what we want to replicate in this case, too.

Right now, we still have no idea which keywords perform best.

Sure, we saw that some companies are going after the competition hard.

But you often can’t rely only on competitive brand queries.

Instead, let’s look up the top keywords for Optima Tax Relief. They were one of the biggest in the space.

So they probably have a pretty good keyword strategy already in place.

Here’s what that looks like in SEMrush:

Notice what they’re doing?

They’re employing a location-based keyword strategy.

A lot of the estimate monthly volume is really low, too. ~200-300 monthly queries is nothing.

“Tax relief,” by comparison, gets over ~8,000 monthly searches alone. It’s also expensive, with CPC’s that can range up to ~$40 a click:

Instead of going after just those big keywords, Optima is going after a ton of long-tail keywords.

That’s good and bad news.

It’s good news because long-tail keywords should offer better conversions and cost less per lead.

But it’s bad news because there’s often not enough of them to go around.

In other words, you have to piece them all together to get the end results you’re looking for.

You can’t grow a business off one or two conversions each month. Instead, you need to stack those like bricks.

You need thousands to really take off.

Clicking on those individual keywords they’re running will also show you the different ad creatives they’re using.

And you’ll get to see the other similar search terms their ads are appearing on.

For example, here’s what it looks like when you click on “tax attorney nyc”:

Now, you’re seeing all of those little long-tail variations that go together.

And you’re looking at the exact ad copy they’re using to drive clicks.

See how this works?

With about ten minutes of research, you can start piecing together a winning campaign.

Even in an industry where you have no prior experience.

Of course, this is just a start.

There’s actually a whole lot more involved in a successful ad campaign.

We’re only scratching the surface right now.

Keywords and ads get people to click. But they’re not why people convert.

Most of the time, that happens when people start interacting with your site.

Your site’s landing pages not only determine conversions, though. They also can end up determining how much you’re going to pay for each click.

Here’s how.

Mimic the customer’s process to understand their experience

Back in the day, when I first started out, AdWords didn’t have a Quality Score.

That meant anyone could advertise on any keywords and there was no penalty.

As long as you had the money to spend, it was fine.

That created a problem for users, though. The results were often irrelevant.

Google’s Quality Score changed all that.

It factors in a bunch of different variables, like ad relevance or expected click-through rate, to determine which ads are best.

Generally speaking, the better the score and your Ad Rank, the less you often end up paying.

In this video, I give 5 tips for increasing your Quality Score:

So while AdWords is an auction, you can sometimes pay less than the people showing up below you. If your scores are better.

Years ago, Larry Kim analyzed millions in ad spend and found a 16% cost difference based on Quality Score. A point higher and you paid less. A point lower and you paid more.

Jacob Baadsgaard repeated this experiment a few years later and found a 13% correlation.

In other words, your Quality Score can often directly influence your costs.

Now, here’s the kicker:

A huge component of your Quality Score comes down to message match.

Here’s what that means:

1. How well does your keyword selection represent someone’s search intent?
2. How well does your ad text match the keyword you’re bidding on?
3. And how well does your landing page match both the ad text and keyword?

Those three elements should be in perfect harmony.

The more they’re aligned, the better the message match, the higher the Quality Score, and the lower cost you pay.

Still with me so far?

Let’s go back to our original example from Precision Tax Relief.

Here’s what their ad looked like again:

Notice how the headline is: “Best Tax Relief Seattle”?

The ad copy below also uses “attorneys,” among other keywords.

Compare that ad to the landing page people see when they click:

Not bad, right?

Technically speaking, the headline on this page (“Best Seattle Tax Attorney”) is a little off. Ideally, you’d make them the exact same as the ad and keyword.

But think through what that means, now.

Earlier, we saw how Optima tax relief was using a bunch of different long-tail keywords, sorted by location.

That means you’d have to create unique landing pages for almost every one!

You’d probably want to keep the same overall design to make your life a little easier.

However, you’d want to at least customize the text to better reflect what sent people here in the first place.

That means you might have one example for attorneys, specifically:

And then you’d have another targeting physicians and dentists:

There are a few ways you can pull this off.

You could have designers and developers help create custom pages for you.

But not everyone has that luxury.

Instead, I also like using dynamic text replacement wherever possible.

I’m all about ROI. The best solution is often the one that scales the best.

Landing page tools like Unbounce have features that will automatically replace text on a page, depending on where they came from.

That means you can create just one single landing page template.

Then, you can simply switch up the words.

Here’s a location-based example, just like those keywords from earlier.

This landing page says “Caribbean” right now.

You can highlight the location-based text, then click the “Dynamic Text” button on the right-hand side of Unbounce.

Now, we can customize the text based on the location or “destination”:

Now, repeat this process for all of the different keywords you’re bidding on.

You’ll get a simple, customized URL to copy and place in your ad campaigns.

That way, when someone clicks on the ad for “California” beach getaways, they’re going to land on a page with “California” all over it.

And you never had to create more than a single landing page.

Let’s go back to tax relief.

Because I came across a landing page that uses another advanced feature. You have to see it.

Here’s how Optima tax relief uses qualifying questions to convert more users.

Qualify and lead new customers to your doorstep

Clicking on an Optima Tax ad will bring you to the following landing page:

Here’s what it looks like if you want to play along at home.

Notice what you don’t see here?

You don’t see a Name field. You also don’t see Email or Phone.

They’re not asking you any personal information just yet.

Instead, they’re starting with “How much tax debt do you have”?

Weird, right?!

Except, it’s not so weird when you dig below the surface.

Right off the bat, they’re qualifying new visitors.

They’re trying to see how much you owe, between 0 – $50,000+.

If you owe less than $10,000 for example, and there’s probably not enough they can help you with.

They won’t stand to gain a whole lot.

Owe over $50,000 and their hands might also be tied. They’re not miracle workers, after all.

So they’re segmenting potential visitors to customize the kind of response you’ll get.

They can automate most of the disqualifying, gently letting people know they can’t help that much.

While they can also fast-track people who do fit right in their wheelhouse.

Only then do they ask for your personal information:

Virtu did two similar tactics to skyrocket conversions.

They asked qualifying questions to figure out how to treat individual leads:

And then they add Calendly to the Thank You page for good leads to remove any remaining friction.

Their rate of leads scheduling phone calls jumped from 20% to over 60% in just the first month.

There’s another reason this inverted process works, though.

Think about it from a customer’s perspective.

They probably don’t feel great. They’re embarrassed or hesitant about reaching out.

So landing on a page that immediately asks for a bunch of personal information is a little off-putting.

Counterintuitively, asking easy questions first can increase conversions later. It lowers the barrier to entry.

KlientBoost calls this the ‘Breadcrumb Technique.’

It’s based off research from Scott Fraser and Jonathan Freedman that showed how starting with a small ‘ask’ can make it easier to get a “yes” to the big ‘ask’ after.

By as much as 76% vs. 20%!

KlientBoost tested both approaches on a mortgage landing page:

And here were the incredible results:

• The Cost Per Acquisition fell from $800+ to $35
• Total conversions went from 6 to 135 a month
• The conversion rate jumped from 1% to nearly 20%

Pretty remarkable, right?

But we’re not even done yet.

There’s still a big difference between people that apply for tax relief help, from those that go through with the service.

We still need to see how people get over that last sales hump, then.

Here’s how you can use automation to largely set-and-forget this process.

Lastly, automate and fine-tune your intake process

After submitting your personal information, Optima Tax follows up with an automate email.

That’s pretty typical, though.

You’d expect that.

What’s not so expected is the text message you’ll receive at the very same time.

It will read something like this:

• “$NAME Thanks for your interest in OptimaTaxRelief.com, we’ll be calling you soon.”

I know, because I ran through this process and received one myself. ;)

Soon after, you will receive that call, too.

So far they’ve followed up in all three primary channels:

1. Phone
2. Email
3. Text

If you don’t pick up that phone call, you’ll receive another text message with something like:

• “We were unable to reach you. Click 800-481-3615 to call a tax relief”

Fail to respond, and they’ll continue calling you throughout the next few days.

What’s happening here?

Optima Tax knows that this space is tough.

You, the customer, could have lost interest. Or you could be on the phone with the competition, comparing rates.

So they’re persistently aggressive to get ahold of you.

If and when you do get on the phone, they’ll ask you the same basic questions:

• Why are you calling us today?
• How much do you owe?
• What do you do for a living?
• Have you filed a tax return?
• Have you filed an extension?
• How did you hear about them?

And on and on.

They will also use an interview to figure out if you own any other assets, have insurance, what your household income looks like, and if you have any dependents.

The entire thing is scripted. They’re sizing you up, determining if they can win your case and how much you can afford to pay them.

They want to close you right there on the initial phone call, with costs ranging from $995 – $2995 depending on how much you owe.

Decline their first invitation to sign up, and they’ll continue sending you messages:

All of this can be choreographed ahead of time.

Based on the answers people give you, they can receive different messages.

Based on the way they act or don’t act, they can receive more, different messages.

Best of all, you can create these sequences in a matter of days with options like Hubspot, Drip, Infusionsoft, or Autopilot.

There are text message apps like TextMagic that can help you customize messaging based on responses or behavior, too.

The best tax relief companies have a masterful conversion funnel.

It’s no different than signing up for a new SaaS app.

You go through the trial period. Receive a bunch of emails. Then, you’ll get upgrade notices before your information is cancelled.

The same can and should apply to all businesses. You need a well-oiled funnel like this to convert the most people.

Remember: These leads and clicks are expensive!

These companies can’t afford to spend $40,000+ on ads each month and not see a significant return.

So each step of this funnel is fine-tuned, scripted, and automated. That way, they can easily isolate and tweak the parts that aren’t working.

Conclusion

“Boring” industries don’t always get the credit they deserve.

They don’t get any major press. And they don’t land on the front page of TechCrunch.

Dig a little deeper, though, and you’ll see that the best are well-oiled machines.

While they might not get a lot of attention, what they do get is a whole lot of money.

They’ve been around the block. They’re not distracted by trends or other shiny hacks.

They’re just really good at routinely turning strangers into customers.

I almost learn more from watching these old school examples than new apps.

Because they just quietly go about building a huge business.

What’s the best example of a ‘boring,’ yet highly profitable company you’ve seen?

About the Author: Neil Patel is the cofounder of Neil Patel Digital.

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The Art and Science of Storytelling — And How to Use Both to Reach Your Audience

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Marketers are a lot like those realtors on HGTV’s “House Hunters.” The same way they’re trying to find a bungalow with beach access that also has a downtown industrial-loft feel (and stays within a $50,000 budget …), we’re constantly striving to create content that accomplishes many things.

We need to create content that’s thoughtful and well-crafted — content that speaks to our audiences, deeply engages them, thoroughly answers their questions, and helps them do their jobs better. And we also have to ensure our content is effective, that it ranks in search for the right terms and phrases, and that it drives results both within and beyond the marketing department. We need the quaint-modern-beachfront-cottage-mansion in the best school district. Achieving all of this can be quite difficult, which is why we’re holding a webinar on February 8th on how to get it done.

The list of things your content can accomplish could seriously go on and on. And on. I think Celine Dion sang a song about it.

via GIPHY

Creating content that meets your audiences’ needs as well as meets your monthly KPIs can be a #struggle — especially if you aren’t applying the right insights to your content creation process. Or if marketing is asking for a fenced-in backyard and sales wants a high-rise.

The best way to create that kind of content is to uncover the answers to a couple of key questions and use those insights to guide your content process.

Question 1: What do your audiences want?
Answer: An authentic story and original, valuable content they can connect with.

Question 2: What do search engines want?
Answer: Unique, long-form content that addresses searcher intent and substantiates claims with relevant data.

Enter: Qualitative and Quantitative Insights

Creating thought leadership content that shares expert insights through a compelling story and also delivers measurable results is all about looking at both sides of the coin: qualitative and quantitative insights.

In other words, it’s about bringing together art and science for the perfect content formula.

This means applying basic storytelling ideas to your content by putting your readers in the protagonist’s seat, speaking to their needs, and giving each piece an arc that they want to follow through to the end.

It also means applying hard numbers, facts, and data to each piece of content and to your strategy overall to make it more powerful.

The Results: Evergreen Content That Serves Various Departments

At Influence & Co., we’ve applied these qualitative and quantitative insights to our own content marketing, and we’ve seen great results. We create relevant content that helps us engage audiences, build our network, and generate and nurture leads. Outside these key marketing goals, we also put our content to use in our recruitment efforts and employee training, sales enablement, client service, and thought leader brand-building efforts. Basically, we’ve built the content marketing version of an open-concept kitchen that’s as functional as it is beautiful.

Want to dig deeper and learn how to use these insights, data, and storytelling to create content that fuels your business? Then join us for our webinar with Kissmetrics on Feb. 8 at 12 a.m. CST/10 a.m. PT.

Register today!

Author description: Brittni Kinney is a VP at Influence & Co. and loves discussing how content marketing can help any marketing strategy achieve its full potential. She likes her coffee black and her whiskey straight; she also enjoys traveling.

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Why is GDPR important to marketers?

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I'm going to talk for ten or fifteen minutes, just pitch it and ask questions whenever you want. I'm going to talk about a few things together. GDPR is something which is looming. Does anyone not know what GDPR stands for? Would anyone else like to a couple over here? It sounds for general data protection regulation the implications are pretty vast. Most of our clients will, I'll very quickly tell you a bit about what we do. I'll tell you a bit about how we use HubSpot, why GDP has become quite important to us in a number of ways. We're a technology company primarily. We've built software to help charities and not for profits do raffles and lotteries online. So, I know that that just giving is to be part of the blackboard group very soon. We are setting out to do for charity, Raffles and lotteries what, what just giving is done for the sponsorship form. An awful lot of it happens by paper. You get it through your, through your door. We're helping charities bring that online. We also worked with football clubs and anyone who's raising money for good causes through raffles and lotteries. That means we deal with an awful lot of people's data and we do it as a primary function. We do it securely, we do it in a compliant way and we have really, really big horrible pieces of legislation to sift through. I have two gambling licenses plus my name is on the register at the gambling commission as a fit and proper person. I don't know how I squeaked through that. I they go through everything and rightly so because we are tested to the same level as a casino or an online bookmakers but the end of the day we just help charge these sell raffle tickets online.

 

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Inbound marketing strategy (2018): Tips for a successful implementation

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Hubspot User Group Meeting September 2017 - London HUG

Note: You can download the slides from this presentation here.

Great. And can everyone hear me OK? Good Morning Ladies and gentlemen. It is absolutely my pleasure to be here this morning. Feeling very fortunate to get to fly into London on a lovely sunny day and come to this very cool venue. I have to say Kudos to Clwyd for picking such an amazing venue for this morning's event. As you can see on the speaker circuit over at HubSpot, there's a bit of competition to get to come to London to do this Hubspot User Group - HUG. So I'm fortunate that I helped Clwyd and he's done me a solid back by letting me speak to all you guys today. I'm gonna run through some tips that any business can employ to operate a successful inbound strategy today. So we're going to just walk through some Inbound fundamentals. I'm happy for this to be a very discursive session.

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Crafting a Content Strategy That's Smart

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There are two ways to produce content — sporadically or strategically. While there's a lot of freedom in sporadically creating content based on whatever comes to mind in the moment, treating content this way is like planting a garden based on whatever seed packets your hands happen to grab. You're getting the job done by planting a garden, but you have no result predictions or goals.

There's a better, smarter way, and we want to help you find it. Planning and strategizing is what sets engaging content apart from aimless content. A plan helps you produce marketing material that makes sense in its timing, its placement, and to its audience. Ready to start getting smart? Let's go.

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Why Entrepreneurs Cannot Ignore Their Company’s Brand

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“Branding”

“Our brand is strong”

“Brand equity”

“Our brand is admired around the world”

These words and phrases make most entrepreneurs and employees roll their eyes. They view brand as an overused term that means very little to the world outside the company.

But your brand may be the most valuable asset your company has. It’s also the most fragile.

Here’s why a brand is so important, what can happen when a brand is damaged, and how to create a great brand.

What is a Brand?

“Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.” – Jeff Bezos

A company brand is an intangible asset because it is not a physical object. This is opposed to a tangible asset, such as your company office and company equipment.

And while it is not a physical asset that you can look at or hold onto or assign value to, it is perhaps the most valuable and fragile piece your company owns. One mistake or PR blunder and your brand, and thus your company, will be damaged.

Why is a Brand Important?

A brand is what people think of when they think about your company. If you’re in the airline business, you want your brand to be known for reliability and quality. You don’t want to have a customer service disaster like United Airlines had, which meant significant damage to their brand.

Brands are built overtime, but can be damaged very quickly and result in a significant loss of sales. Public companies routinely place maintaining their brand reputation as a risk factor in annual reports. This means that your company, no matter how small, cannot ignore your brand.

Brands are not built overnight. Instead, they are built up over years and can be destroyed in days.

What Happens When a Brand is Damaged?

To further understand the impacts that a brand has on a company, let’s look at what happens when a brand is damaged, using a few examples we all know.

Chipotle

If you asked a person in spring 2015 what they thought of Chipotle, they’d probably tell you they served delicious burritos. The food was quality and the prices were reasonable. And shortly after telling you that, they’d go to Chipotle and order one of those delicious burritos.

Ask that same person in 2016 and they’d tell you that it would be risky eating at Chipotle and there are probably some better Mexican food options nearby.

The difference?

The e coli and norovirus outbreak at Chipotle restaurants. This outbreak resulted in significant damage to the brand (could anyone say their food is quality?) and declining sales. Just look at what happened to the company’s value after this outbreak:

Chipotle stock price value leading up to the outbreak and the aftermath

This is what can happen if your brand is damaged. Your company value can be cut in half. And if you’re a startup, you could be put out of business if you lose customers and investors trust.

Today, Chipotle is still recovering from the damage their brand took from the food safety issues. As I stated, building a quality brand takes years, but can be damaged in days. That’s what happened to Chipotle, and they’re still working to restore their brand to what it once was. It will only take time and a long string of no food-borne issues.

Equifax

Similar to Chipotle, Equifax had another safety issues. Except this time it wasn’t about food safety, it was about information safety.

Because of poor security measures, Equifax was hacked and left the extremely private information of hundreds of millions of US customers vulnerable to cybercriminals.

After the hack was announced, there were more bad headlines about how poor the security measures were at Equifax:

Equifax has taken steps to restore public trust and rebuild their brand, but they’ll have a long way to go before anyone can trust them again.

Today, would you use Equifax for any of their services? Probably not, as you couldn’t trust that they’d do a good job or keep your data safe.

Yahoo!

Remember Yahoo? Some of you may still use it. Personally I haven’t used Yahoo in a number a years because their competitors offer a better product.

Yahoo used to have a strong brand. The classic shade of purple, the yodel, the beautiful design, and the array of features that came with the Yahoo brand.

But that was early to mid 2000s. Over the last few years, Yahoo has suffered a decline. The board hired Google executive Marissa Mayer, and while she gave a valiant effort to rebuild the empire, she ultimately came in too late for it to be saved.

Yahoo was acquired by Verizon and while it is still around today, it’s nowhere near its peak.

So what happened?

Hacking, malware attacks, privacy concerns, increasing criticism, and a product that didn’t keep up with competitors or the times has led to Yahoo’s downfall.

And while Yahoo is still one of the most visited websites, their brand has been damaged and will likely never recover.

Uber

Travis Kalanick created an innovative new service that changed the world. Uber made it possible for anyone in an urban area with a smartphone to be picked up with the touch a button. It took over, growing to billions of dollars in annual revenue in only a few years.

Then came a PR nightmare.

He was caught on camera telling a driver to take responsibility and boasts that a tough culture is needed to win.

Then the influential New York Times did a feature piece that didn’t shed the best light on him. And another piece was published that reported that Kalanick had knowledge of Uber’s sexual harassment problem but didn’t do anything about it.

Apple CEO reportedly threatened to kick Uber off the App Store because it violated Apple’s privacy standards.

Kalanick wasn’t always well behaved, but he was a tremendously talented entrepreneur. But by the time he grew Uber and the brand, the Board decided it was time for Kalanick to go and Kalanick submitted his resignation.

Today, Uber has a new CEO. He’s got a big job to do in rebuilding trust in the brand, but has a strong company behind it.

KISSmetrics Lawsuit

I’ve experience one of my companies brand’s being damaged. The company I cofounded, KISSmetrics, took a hit to our brand when we were sued. It resulted in significant damage to our brand at the time, and it still lingers today.

The lesson here is that your brand is the most valuable asset. It needs to be built up and protected. A good brand can take your company a long way.

Now, let’s look at companies with strong brands and what we can learn from them.

Creating a Brand

Brand building is an important step in starting a business. People that are looking at your new business need to know what your company stands for.

Know What You Stand For

This is the most important step. Great companies have brands that stand for something. Here are some examples:

• Zappos stands for customer service
• Virgin Airlines stood for an airline experience that was fun, not stressful
• Whole Foods stands for healthy, organically grown food
• Patagonia stands for environmentally friendly outdoor clothing
• Firefox stands for being the privacy browser.

You have to know what your brand will stand for. “Selling quality food” isn’t a stance. Any company can say they sell quality food.

“Selling the highest-quality organic and natural food” is a stance because you know what you’re getting when you go that store. You can’t buy Skittles and Coke when you visit this store. You can buy organic food there. People now know what you stand for, and will visit your store when they’re seeking those items.

A lot of companies will say they build world-class products. Many of those companies also have dozens of products. The simple reality is that you can’t be world-class at 12 different things. You need to know what you’re willing to be bad at.

In this video, Scott Belsky discusses why companies have to be willing to be bad at certain things in order to exceed in others. I’d recommend setting some time aside to watch this.

There will have to be tradeoffs. If you have great customer service, you may have to have higher prices to maintain your margins.

Just look at a company like Apple. Consumers know that Apple products are quality. There aren’t a lot of bugs, it’s well-built, and their products generally last for years. Any bad news about their product quality is going to significantly affect their brand. That’s why they go a long way to protect it.

So when the issue came out about the battery usage on older iPhones, Apple had to go to great lengths to win consumer trust back. They wrote a message to customers and offered a battery replacement for only $29, a $50 reduction in price. This means that Apple will make less money, but consumers ran to Apple stores to get their batteries replaced.

The takeaway here is simple – if you screwed up, admit it to customers (even if it was a misunderstanding). Then offer a discount or something else to win their trust back. For 8/10 customers, this will work great. The other 2/10 will never be pleased.

Make your brand something memorable that stands out in a crowded market.

So when you know what you stand for, you can then effectively message this to consumers.

Messaging Your Brand

You know what you stand for, now it’s time to make sure customers know.

Remember this viral video?

Believe it or not, this is actually a video promoting a brand.

The video features Trent Kimball from Texas Armoring, a company that builds armored vehicles. If you were looking for an armored vehicle (chances are you aren’t, but stay with me) then it would be difficult to not buy something from this company. It’s the owner of the company literally standing behind his protect while three gunshots are fired.

This is Kimball doing his best to message his company’s brand. While you don’t have to go to similar lengths, you should do all you can to make your brand message stand out and be memorable for people.

Let’s look at a couple other examples of how companies message their brand.

Spotify

Spotify’s message is simple. They can message the “Music for everyone” because their music catalog has something for everyone. No matter who you are, you know that Spotify will have music for you to enjoy.

Lifelock

Lifelock wants you to connect two terms – data breach and Lifelock. When you hear about a data breach, think of Lifelock. They are the protection against any breach on your data.

Where to Message Your Brand

Many B2C companies message their brand through their website and advertisements. It’s also common to use social media to message your brand to followers.

Just look at the social media followings of companies like Skittles, Wendy’s, GoPro, Denny’s, and many more. In many cases, most people wouldn’t even know much about these brands if they didn’t follow them on social media. These companies aren’t just tweeting and sharing promotions, they’re showing their brand personality.

Taco Bell is perhaps the one we all know about. When you think of Taco Bell, you think of a fun place to grab a quick bite to eat. And their social media supports this brand message.

Now, let’s get into the last step of brand building. This is perhaps the most important step because if you ignore it, you’ll lose public trust and your company will have big hurdles to overcome.

Create the Products and Services That Build Your Brand

Some entrepreneurs will tell you that a brand is overrated. Just create your product and customers will create your brand.

You are what they say you are and there’s nothing you can do about it but change your business. Once you change your message, then eventually customers will change what they say about you.

This is all true to some extent. The issue I have is that it’s a passive mentality. It means that you’re not doing all you can to message your brand.

You need to message your brand and build the products and services that support that brand message. Think of Whole Foods. We all know them as an organic grocer. Can you imagine if you went into one of their stores and saw Pepsi and Mike and Ikes for sale? The brand would be tarnished for you. Their loyal customers would be furious.

This is why your business must support your brand. Once you do that, and message your brand effectively, your brand will become a fixture for consumers. They’ll know what your company is about. Warren Buffett says it best:

“Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it’s not going to get the business.”

In this video, I’ll go deeper into explaining not just why you need to build a brand, but also how to measure your brand using a simple tool from Google.

Conclusion

Entrepreneurs and managers frequently think of branding as unnecessary and a waste of time.

But when you have a company, you’ll have a brand attached to that company. It’s what consumers will think of when they think of your brand.

Brands are fragile. One minor slip up can damage your brand, which is why good PR skills are necessary. The good news is that a good brand will last forever.

As an entrepreneur, how have you been building your brand?

About the Author: Neil Patel is the cofounder of Neil Patel Digital.

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