Owners, businessmen, technocrats (SMBs) think. Why did you buy a particular refrigerator, car, trouser, shaving cream? How have you decided about a holiday company?

Quite simply, The BRAND of the selected product and service company that attracted you the most. All air conditioners are meant to keep the room cool. From a variety of features like compressor, size, color, price, installation, guarantee and payment terms you short listed the one you liked the most. Often, you need not go for a large company but also a neighborhood AC assembler who provided you with the feature and facility you wanted. That’s how you buy as a customer?

Everything around you as a customer and as businessman is changing and is changing fast. As SMB all these years you decided to make and sell what you wanted and comfortable with, charged more or less you thought is right and customer had limited choice to select one for  his need. You never thought of marketing, perhaps there was more demand than supply. Customer knowledge was limited. Accessibility and availability were in question. Business today demands a broad vision – Branding as a principle of marketing to be successful and also to survive. Today SME has competition in all areas with other local players, regional, national and even international companies.

SME must come out of age old family roots, apply modern day marketing techniques and strategies to fight and win the marketing war. Like it or not, unlimited competition is declared open with new economy and globalization. Do not think about success in the past – profit and fame, but get ready to accept the future. What’s in a name? – there is everything in the name – BRAND, that you create in the minds of your customers, be they belong to B2B or B2C world. Unless, you are known by something you have unique of your own, you will not be identified or distinguished in the business world. SME never gave importance to something intangible called marketing, and often marketing was understood as advertising and sales only.

Having a strong brand can really differentiate your business in your market making you stand from your competitors.  The myth is when most of the people think of brands they automatically think only of a logo and companies like Airtel, Reliance, Sony etc. SMEs generally feel that branding is for the big companies and that they can only afford to focus on product and price. However, branding is not about how much you spend on advertising and media. Its about what you do differently to stand out from the crowd and reach out to your target audience. SMEs can also build good brands by developing a well-planned brand strategy to successfully differentiate their products and services from their competitors. This helps them to increase the market size, sustain the market share, competing on attributes which is not just a price. The fact is that SMEs are too busy surviving. They do not think in terms of differentiation and hardly pay attention to marketing and branding. And, SMEs who more often aspire to be regional players do not even need a lot of money to brand their products and services. They just need to put the difference into everything they do. SMEs can start venturing into new markets through branding.

Customer emotions are based on the messages you send out at all levels. Even if a SMB think he does not got a brand – he has. Customers, suppliers, employees already have an opinion formed out of what kind of company you are. This is based on simple things such as stationery, website, how the phone is answered, how quickly you make the payments. SMB must think what your company’s core competences are, what you are good at, what are you bad at. Ask customers how they see you.

SME manufacturing unit can select one of the branding attributes like, quality, technology, precision, weight, size, material used (eco friendly, imported), cost as a price or cost as a value, lowest price per piece, best pricing for bulk or simply stating small quantity orders will be entertained, payment terms (no credit, 90 days credit, cash discount), guarantee / warranty (on site, carry, six months, 3 years, international etc), delivery at site, factory delivery,

over night delivery, 30 days delivery schedule or JIT – just in time delivery, in tune with vendor SCM – supply chain management. SME can pick up one or create a similar one to distinguish the business from the rest – small, local or large players. In fact, modern day attributes are manufactured under license from an international company, ISI mark, ISO certification and alike.

A service industry usually brand itself by taking benefits of experience in years, expertise of promoters / owners / management, clients list, customer service awards received, personalized service, cost benefit for distant servicing, free or complimentary counseling, 24 x 7 support, availability of 1-800 line, next day service, endorsement letters from clients/customers, niche area specialization, technology used to support prompt and accurate client servicing, staff friendly environment, customer friendly staff, CRM – customer relationship management techniques employed are few USP that help SME to pick up one to brand itself and make visible difference to customers.

Whole sellers business can be branded on a variety & range of stocks, cash or credit - extended payment terms, acceptance of small quantity trial orders, freedom to vendors to return unsold goods, replacement of rejected / defected items, implementation of periodic schemes, incentives, personal - face to face goodwill and many such reasons why a whole seller is more successful than rest of others in the same business, products and geographical area.

SME can use proven STP marketing strategies viz. segmentation, positioning and targeting for B2B environment. Easily accessible technology tools like email, SMS, monthly newsletter, direct mail, and telecalling to target focus group. This is push marketing. Also, website, yellow pages, directory listings helps for pull marketing. In both the cases, brand statement makes a great difference to fight competition.

Assess your competitors and see what they are doing. Find out the weakness in the strength of your competitor, weakness in the brand equity and come out with your very strong USP.

Depending on the area of operation, geographic and demographic, using brand as the effective tool, marketing strategy like guerrilla marketing and neighbourhood marketing can be implemented. For SMEs, branding can be a holistic strategy. If they do it right soon, they will find themselves in a better position to compete with enhanced market positioning, sustainable bottom line performance, strong customer base and goodwill from the business world.

Definitely Branding is the best thing any SME could do to actually get into the Big League.

(The author can be contacted at ashwin.merchant@yahoo.com)

* Ashwin Merchant is the founder of 'Marketing Klinic' for SMEs.
* The views expressed by the author in this feature are entirely his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of SME Times.