Should You Focus On Branding Or Direct Response Marketing?

There is no standard rule for all when it comes to splitting your online marketing budget. It all boils down to the basics, the size of your company, and the nature of your company.

Everything about your company is what will play a major, major deciding factor. Thus it’s a completely subjective matter.

However, based on my personal experiences of starting and growing 6 different companies, here’s what I want to share with you seeking a full-proof solution to this ultimate question.

The answer to this question lies in balancing your budget between Branding and Direct response.

If you are a start-up and wish to grow and sustain your business, follow this one simple rule! In the initial stage, your focus should be on sales and only sales!

Think of ideas and strategies that will help you boost your sales. Do not let your time, money, energy and focus shift to branding or story-telling in the beginning!

Comparing your budget to the one’s set by huge players like Flipkart and Amazon will be the stupidest thing you can ever do. Understand this one major point, all these big companies have investors’ money, a safety net to fall back on.

Yes, branding and story-telling will make people aware about your brand, but it takes the act of sales further away.

What matters the most is to channelize your resources on generating direct response. And maybe along with that start building up on your story.

Focus on testing your product, your service, your market! You need a solid start that ensures a good amount of cash flow into your business.

SO HERE’S THE FORMULA:

1. IDEAL SPLIT FOR STARTUPS

If you are a start-up entrepreneur, use 90% of your budget for direct response and the other 10% on branding. Once you get on track and pick up the pace, you can change the numbers accordingly!

Using 90% of your budget on direct response will enable conversions and cash flow into your business. And thus later you can use that to increase your budget on branding.

2. IDEAL SPLIT FOR MID-SIZED COMPANIES

For a mid-sized company, split your budget into 70% for direct response and 30% for branding. At this stage, you will have made enough sales to add onto your story-telling bit.

3. IDEAL SPLIT FOR MILLION DOLLAR COMPANIES

And if you are a huge company like Amazon with billions of dollars of investor cash, go for 40% direct response and 60% branding.

People often ignore this little fact while competing with everyone around in the ultimate chase to success. And in no time, they experience a downfall.

Learning from my mistakes and experiences, I don’t want any of the other entrepreneurs and start-ups to take the wrong step that could hamper business growth.

So that’s the ultimate learning from this, the choice to make when it comes to branding v/s direct response when you are starting your business.

So go forward, and make those sales! MAKE IT HAPPEN, MAKE IT COUNT!