I currently run my own business full time that does well. I then started a consulting business and blog around my past experience running the first biz but it wasn't a priority and didn't take off. My partner and I are developing an app on a new domain and at the same we decided to move my consulting biz and blog to a subdomain of the app's website because both app and consulting target the same audience. The strategy was to be able to market both app and consulting at the same time because it would be a crazy feat to market 3 separate businesses (I am mostly a one person marketing team but I do have outsourcing experience). The consulting is taking off and recently I've been questioning rebranding as my own website. This will cause lost backlinks and social media counters will all go back to zero (I have several posts with over 500 pins on Pinterest). I don't have consistent social media handles which is mostly what has prompted this question. If I am confusing myself, my customers are surely confused too. Should I pursue consistent, separate branding for the consulting business at the cost of months worth of marketing and also make it harder for me to focus marketing all 3 ventures because I'd be spread too thin. (Also, app and consulting go hand in hand because the big picture would be to offer paid upgrades to the app for ecourses/ebooks that come from the consulting side).
It sounds like you have a lot going on. I think you might find some better momentum if you chose one to focus on. In the mean time I'm sure you face the dilemna of supporting yourself while your app gains momentum.
I was recently in a similar situation with developing and selling a CRM software tool while also running a service company. For us, it was very helpful to keep distinctly separate brands for each company. It helped to provide a laser focus with our marketing messaging and didn't blur the lines between the two entities. Even though our service business provides consulting services that include the software product we're selling we don't want other service providers to be scared away from promoting the software brand thinking that we have an unfair advantage in access to client sales. Overall the more focused your brand messaging is the better you will be overall, even in terms of SEO and traffic. I think it is definitely worth it to lose a little momentum to refine the focus of your branding and marketing.
Answered 10 years ago
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