Earl Foote And Daniel Beck Talk Brand Building On Tech Beat

Earl Foote And Daniel Beck Talk Brand Building On Tech Beat

Establishing your business’ voice is a critical part of how you lead it. Do you have a strategy for building your brand? Discover key tips for promoting your business in this episode of Tech Beat with special guest Daniel Beck.

The way you promote your business is virtually as important as what your business does. No matter how innovative your product is, or disruptive your service is, if no one knows about your business, or connects with its culture, you won’t succeed.

That’s why brand building is so important — it’s about more than marketing. Anyone can plaster their logo on bus benches and billboards. Getting your potential customers to connect with your culture and your business as a whole is far more difficult (and far more rewarding).

To discover more about brand building, check out the latest episode of Tech Beat, in which Nexus CEO Earl Foote was joined by Daniel Beck, CEO, 401GO:

Get To Know Daniel Beck

Daniel Beck is a serial entrepreneur, having started a number of organizations in different markets over the course of his career. He is passionate about developing creative and innovative new offerings that provide greater and greater value to the client.

His startup strategy is based on finding a new application of emergent technology and getting the word out about it through strategic marketing. His latest endeavor (401GO) focuses on helping people prepare for retirement and showing small businesses how to support their employees in financial independence and security.

In this episode of Tech Beat, however, Earl and Daniel focused on the ins and outs of brand building. Over the course of the discussion, Daniel shared numerous lessons that can help business owners better develop and manage their brands.

5 Key Branding Lessons To Learn From Daniel Beck

1. A Strong Brand Is Valuable: Whether it’s a business you plan to run until you retire, or a startup you’re looking to sell eventually, you can’t overlook the value of a strong brand. Case in point: one of Daniel’s first startups sold primarily as a result of the relationship it had developed with customers. Everything else — inventory, goods, etc., only accounted for 1/10th of the sale price. “When I look back on it, about 90% of the price that I sold the business for was related purely to what accountants call ‘goodwill’,” says Daniel.“That’s a real testament to the power of the brand.”
2. If You’re Being Copied, You’re Doing Something Right: Very few things are as good an indication of success as being imitated. Daniel found that not long after he began to optimize his branding practices, the copycats came out of the woodwork. “About halfway through my tenure of owning that brand, I saw some competitors come on the scene and start to mimic what I was doing,” says Daniel.“That’s where the value of a brand hit home.”
3. Your Brand Is More Than Just Your Product Or Service: One of the difficult parts of conceptualizing a brand is understanding how multifaceted it is. You’re not just promoting what you sell, and you’re not just selling a product or a service. Everything your business does plays a role in the development of the brand — what you charge, how you communicate, etc. “It extends well beyond the product itself,” says Daniel.“It’s the customer service, it’s the messaging that goes along with it, it’s everything that represents that company and that brand.”
4. No Matter Your Size, Stay In The Loop: It can be easy for entrepreneurs and business owners to start disconnecting after they achieve a certain amount of success. Once you overcome that first hurdle and the business starts taking off, you may be tempted to rest on your laurels, delegate, and step back. This is a big obstacle in furthering the development of your brand. In order to continue building, you need to stay in the loop, keep connecting with your current and potential consumers, and keep optimizing your processes. “It’s important to have a feedback loop,” says Daniel.“As we grew in size, we became more and more detached from the end customer, so I made an effort to still go to trade shows, and industry shows to talk to customers and find out the problems they have.”Your Customer Isn’t Your Only Priority: Don’t assume that your customers are the sole focus of your efforts in brand building. Think for a second, and you can likely identify a few more people in your business ecosystem that could benefit from attention and feedback. Case in point: your supply chain. The way you work with those supporting your inventory or services is a part of your brand as well. Have you talked to them lately, heard their feedback, and taken it into consideration? “The customer isn’t just the end person that owns the product, but actually everybody that participates in the supply chain as well,” says Daniel.“What are the problems that they are running into, and how do I fix that?”

Don’t Cut Corners When Building Your Brand

In the end, building a brand may not be necessary for your business’ survival, but it will be instrumental in its success. If you want to be a company that the consumer thinks of when they recognize they need a product or service, it’ll all come down to how well you’ve built your brand.