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Have you ever said the two little words, “good enough” or “I’m good?” The word “good” has become a common cop-out for moving beyond the status quo. But saying to ourselves, “Business is good enough” can be the lock on the door leading to greatness.

In a way, good is really not good at all. It’s a false sense of achievement that is wrapped up in complacency. When I realized that being okay with “good” was not going to help me achieve my dreams, I changed my mindset and my business’s plan of attack.

Last year, I decided nothing would get in the way of our expansion and hitting the next level.

I increased my marketing budget by 5% from 2022 to 2023, and as a result, our revenue increased by 8%, adding over $7 million that year. And that decision is still paying off — revenue is up about 20% so far this year.

Here are some key moves I’ve made that helped us reach our highest annual revenue ever last year — $104.6 million.

Related: How to Turn Marketing into a Sales and Revenue Engine

Direct mail leads generate 600% more revenue per lead than digital sources

I’ve mailed postcards to advertise my business, PostcardMania, every single week since I started in 1998, and I’ve only ever increased my mailing quantity — with one exception. The only time I cut back was in 2008, and it was a total disaster. Our revenues plunged about 15% the following year.

Direct mail takes up a large portion of my marketing budget. It isn’t the cheapest way to generate leads, but it’s absolutely irreplaceable in my marketing mix. Postcards generate the highest quality leads among all other lead sources, from organic search to pay-per-click to social media.

Here’s the proof: In 2023, we generated $229.41 in revenue for every postcard lead while we only generated $37.09 in revenue per lead from pay-per-click. That’s a massive difference of 519% — and six times more revenue! And that’s only taking new orders into consideration, not repeat orders from customers who know and love us.

And that’s just the revenue we can track directly back to postcards. There are so many more leads that come in from an “organic search” or another source that has been getting our postcards in the mail for years. It’s my belief that there’s a lot more revenue from postcards that’s incorrectly attributed to other sources, but we can save that for another time.

If you want to take your revenue to the next level, I encourage you to bump up your marketing spend — a 5% spend increase resulted in a 7% revenue increase for me — and consider adding direct mail to your arsenal to 6x your revenue per lead.

Adding and continually improving live chat increased sales conversations by 16%

Fewer and fewer people are willing to reach for the telephone these days when they need something. In fact, studies show that most consumers (63%) prefer to use live chat to interact with a business.

We added live chat to our website in 2016, and it improved our sales conversations (people willing to talk directly to a sales rep) by 16%. However, I don’t advise that you throw up a chatbot and call it a day.

The success of our live chat system is rooted in the fact that we have real human beings on the other side of the screen. If you’re using bots — even fancy, AI-trained bots — you’re going to run the risk of upsetting prospects and customers who want answers and not a rote regurgitation of the FAQs they can find on your website.

Last live chat tip: Don’t set it and forget it. Play around with colors, messages and placements, and see which combinations elicit the best response from your website visitors. We replaced a generic message on our thank you pages with a live chat prompt, and it had a great impact on reducing the lag time between when a prospect is on your website and when they’re on the phone with a sales rep.

Related: 4 Marketing Budget Hacks That Will Boost Your Business in 2024

Include video in your Meta ads to increase social media leads by 105%

If you’re a social media user, you’ve probably noticed more and more videos making their way to your main feed. In fact, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed during a recent earnings call that 50% of all people’s time on Meta platforms is now spent consuming video.

Catching on to this, we decided to put our 139 video case studies — real business owners talking about their successful campaigns — to work for us on Facebook and Instagram. We uploaded lists of our current clients and prospects and generated lookalike audiences similar to our own lists to target with our video ads.

As a result, our social media leads doubled. In 2022, our average number of social media leads per week was 174, and then in 2023, the average lead count increased to 356 a week! That’s a 105% increase.

The research is conclusive — video returns are outpacing static images. One recent report found that videos drove almost 30% more clicks than simple static image assets. Another study found that video ads drive 48% higher sales rates than static ads.

Studies prove it, I’ve tested it myself, but you may be wondering if you have the budget to execute it. There are opportunities for you to incorporate more video advertisements in your marketing strategy at a low cost. We just began offering video ads on both social media and Connected TV channels like Netflix at small business prices.

By working with the right marketing agency, it is possible to execute a video advertising plan that won’t overwhelm your marketing spend. Plus, the amount of revenue that these video ads are going to be bringing in for you will be well worth the upfront investment.

Related: 3 Marketing Blind Spots That Are Holding You Back (and How to Fix Them)

So, are you going to take the blue pill of staying good this year or take the red pill and journey down the more challenging path to greatness? I challenge you to take a closer look at the hard reality of where you can improve for better results and a better business.

As anticipated, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has appealed the Eastern District of Texas’ ruling overturning the expanded Joint Employer Rule. Particularly in light of President Biden’s May 3 veto of a bipartisan resolution that would have killed the expanded rule (and curbed the NLRB’s ability to make future drastic rule changes), this isn’t good news. But the franchise-crushing expanded version of the rule is still not in place, and the International Franchise Association continues to oppose it.

“The courts made clear that the Joint Employer Rule exceeds the scope of the NLRB’s authority and should not stand,” says Michael Layman, IFA’s senior vice president of government affairs. “IFA will not stop fighting to protect franchised businesses from the harm the NLRB’s overreach will bring, so franchising can continue to be one of the greatest avenues for business ownership and job creation.”

Related: Considering franchise ownership? Get started now to find your personalized list of franchises that match your lifestyle, interests and budget.

‘Landmark win’

In addition to the legislative pressure leading to the now-vetoed bipartisan resolution, a coalition led by the IFA, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, filed a lawsuit in 2023 challenging the legality of the expanded rule in the Eastern District of Texas. A federal judge ruled in the IFA’s favor in March and struck down the expanded rule in what IFA President and CEO Matthew Haller called a “landmark win for franchising.”

Related: The NLRB’s New Joint Employer Rule is So Extreme That Even California Rejected a State-Level Version of the Franchise-Killing Policy

NLRB appeal

The NLRB has now appealed the Eastern District of Texas decision. This means that, although the expanded rule is still not in effect, it will get another look, this time by a the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That court could reverse the Eastern District’s decision and reinstate the expanded rule or confirm the decision.

Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is also challenging the rule in court, arguing that it is too narrow. The same coalition from the Texas case, led by the IFA, intervened in the D.C. lawsuit, and the court is currently considering a motion to dismiss.

Related: How the NLRB’s New Joint-Employer Rule Will Affect Franchisees and Franchisors and Redefine Franchise Relations

Protect your business

According to Alex MacDonald, an attorney at labor relations firm Littler Mendelson, franchisors can do some simple things today to start protecting and preparing their businesses for a revived expanded Joint Employer Rule. MacDonald spoke during the IFA’s April 23 webinar, “Joint Employer: Are Franchise Companies In the Clear?“

First, MacDonald recommended thoroughly reviewing all contracts (with vendors, franchisees, etc.) for indirect or reserved control specifications, such as:

• Direct training requirements
• Right to exclude workers
• Background check requirements
• Minimum qualifications
• Specific staffing and coverage level requirements

Business owners can counter these risks by clearly assigning responsibility for as many essential terms and conditions as possible to the employer.

Next, scrutinize your business arrangements: Emphasize brand standards over individual worker standards when you do need service requirements in contracts or in-house reporting and inspections. Minimize your involvement in recruiting, timekeeping, record keeping, pay policies and other operations.

If a franchisor must inspect a site, MacDonald again recommended focusing on brand standards, not individual worker standards. “You want to be watching for things like cleanliness,” he said. “Is the brand label displayed in the right place? Are they clearly communicating that they are a franchisee? Are the products stocked? Rather than on how many employees are working at the desk and how those employees are acting. Those kinds of things can start to look like supervision as opposed to protecting your brand standards.”

Additionally, reduce your reliance on nonessential vendors — especially if they need to be on-site — and train your supervisors on how to interact with vendors. But most of all, MacDonald said, “Pick reliable partners. If you end up contracting with a vendor who is operating on the borderline, then these rules make it more likely that you could be responsible for that vendor’s misconduct or mistakes.”

The IRS is reminding over one million Americans who have yet to file their 2020 tax returns that they have less than two weeks left to claim a total of $1 billion in unclaimed refunds. The deadline is May 17.

According to an IRS news release this week, Americans have “a little more time than usual” to file their refund claim for 2020 tax returns because of the pandemic. The deadline usually falls around tax day on April 15 three years after returns are due.

“We want taxpayers to claim these refunds,” said IRS commissioner Danny Werfel in an earlier announcement.

Related: Filing Your Taxes Is About to Get Cheaper in 13 States. Here’s Who’s Eligible.

The midpoint refund amount that an individual filer can receive for 2020 is $932, per the IRS.

The IRS has free resources available to help with the tax filing process. The agency introduced a free tax prep software this year called Direct File and piloted it in 12 states. As of April 21, the Direct File pilot is closed.

Americans who filed their taxes this year from January through early April received more than $200 billion in refunds, with the average refund being $3,011 — up from the $2,878 average last year. New York and Pennsylvania have the highest refund midpoints.

Here are the top five states with the most people who haven’t filed their 2020 tax returns, along with the midpoint and total refunds they could claim, according to the IRS.

Related: Here’s How Much Mark Cuban Is ‘Proud’ to Pay in Taxes This Year

1. Texas

Estimated number of people who are due a 2020 income tax refund: 93,400

Median potential refund: $960

Total potential refund: $107,130,200

2. California

Estimated number of people who are due a 2020 income tax refund: 88,200

Median potential refund: $835

Total potential refund: $94,226,300

3. Florida

Estimated number of people who are due a 2020 income tax refund: 53,200

Median potential refund: $891

Total potential refund: $58,210,500

Related: Walgreens Boots Alliance Gets Bill for $2.7 Billion From the IRS After Tax Audit

4. New York

Estimated number of people who are due a 2020 income tax refund: 51,400

Median potential refund: $1,029

Total potential refund: $60,837,400

5. Pennsylvania

Estimated number of people who are due a 2020 income tax refund: 38,600

Median potential refund: $1,031

Total potential refund: $43,412,900

Panera’s Charged Lemonade has been under fire from consumers and regulators after lawsuits alleged the highly caffeinated beverage has been the source of long-term health problems and even death.

Now, the chain has decided to phase out the drink as a part of overarching menu changes.

RELATED: ‘100% Should Be Illegal’: Woman Exposes Jaw-Dropping Amount of Caffeine in Panera Lemonade

“We listened to more than 30,000 guests about what they wanted from Panera, and are focusing next on the broad array of beverages we know our guests desire — ranging from exciting, on-trend flavors, to low sugar and low-caffeine options,” a spokesperson for Panera told CNBC.

According to Bloomberg, Panera will begin discontinuing the drink within the next two weeks and replace it with a “broad array of beverages” featuring a blueberry lavender lemonade, a pomegranate hibiscus tea, a citrus punch, and a tropical green smoothie.

The beverage was at the center of three major lawsuits, two of which were filed on behalf of the families of 21-year-old Sarah Katz and 46-year-old Dennis Brown. Both died after allegedly consuming the Charged Lemonade, citing pre-existing medical conditions.

Another lawsuit filed in January claimed that 28-year-old Lauren Skerritt developed long-term heart problems as a result of consuming two and a half of Panera’s Charged Lemoandes.

“You put an innocuous product like lemonade in an innocuous bakery-cafe like Panera, what reasonable consumer is going to be thinking that they’re drinking, essentially, three Red Bulls?” said Skerrit’s lawyer Elizabeth Crawford at the time. “Everything in her life has been altered because of this situation.”

Per Panera’s nutrition information, one large 30 oz. serving of the Charged Lemonade contains 390 mg of caffeine in addition to guarana extract, a natural stimulant.

Related: Panera Sued: Alleged Charged Lemonade-Related Heart Issues

According to the FDA, the maximum amount of caffeine that the average adult can safely consume per day is 400 mg, though the average adult consumes about 135 mg of caffeine daily.

Panera did not immediately respond to Entrepreneur’s request for comment.

One of the most powerful (and beautiful) things about A/B testing is that it will work for businesses of any size or industry. A/B testing is basically a way to compare two versions of something to see which one performs better. It has evolved over the ages, especially in terms of the contexts in which it is applied — and today, being able to apply it in live, digital environments, makes A/B testing quite powerful and useful.

As a marketer in an ecommerce startup, you could use A/B testing in a lot of important ways. For your core marketing operations, you could test copy, actual advertisements or email marketing; of course, you could also test subject lines or even sending times to see which strategies help you achieve the highest open and conversion rates.

In the context of your website, you could use A/B testing to optimize your product pages, including product descriptions, images and layout designs. You could also use it to determine the best checkout flow and process. Finally, you can leverage it to determine which calls-to-actions (“CTAs”) — to buy, learn more or get a discount — yield the best results.

Though a powerful tool, A/B testing can often be incorrectly applied. Let’s look at four major things that an ecommerce marketer should watch out for.

Related: 4 Ways to Make the Most of A/B Testing Right Away

1. Do not ignore segmentation

If you focus solely on the impact that your experiment will have on the average of a business metric, you can end up with misleading results. This assumes that all your users behave similarly and overlooks the fact that you likely have various segments of users who behave differently. If your A/B test shows that a particular new feature launch will increase spending per user, it might obscure the fact this might only be true for a few heavy users of your product and not the majority.

You need to be aware of your distinctive customer segments. For instance, different kinds of users would have different average spends. You also need to be acutely aware if you have a global product; customers might have different levels of digital access (fast and reliable internet connections on the one hand and slow and unstable connections on the other) or access the internet differently (more people accessing via mobile devices compared to desktop computers). This will influence how accessible a change made to your website is for different users, and thus impact its success.

Segment-level personalization helps you deliver a personalized experience to specific segments. For example, you could show a specific promotion or offer to those who want to buy spices and a different one to those interested in frozen meats. Instead of finding the one version that works best for everyone, this approach will enable you to identify the version that will best serve each of your target audiences.

2. Run your tests for a long enough period

You will need to run the A/B test for long enough to get data that is statistically significant. But if you reach statistical significance in say, three to four days, it doesn’t mean you can afford to turn off your test. You would want the test to run for a long enough period to account for any seasonality or early outperformance. Ideally, you should run an A/B test for at least two weeks — this will help factor in any variances in behavior based on day of the week.

If your test group for a homepage CTA achieves better than the control group in the first two days, it is important to give this test more time as such outperformance might not be reflective of how it will perform over a longer period. This is because the audience that has accessed your homepage in those two days might not be representative of all of your customers and all of their usual behaviors.

Related: Experimentation and A/B Testing: A Must-Use E-commerce Growth Strategy

3. Be careful about testing too many elements

Sometimes startups test too many variables at the same time. If you do this, you won’t be able to isolate what element was the cause of your results in an A/B test. The practice of testing multiple elements at once is called multivariate testing; this will also require much more data to be statistically significant. For a startup, this can be quite challenging.

A/B tests are simpler, more practical and more efficient. If you wish to appropriately use A/B testing to test several aspects at the same time, that will require the creation of multiple variations for each aspect. This will make the whole process slower and require your ecommerce website to attract considerably more traffic to achieve statistically significant results. Be careful about what you are testing for, and make sure you run your tests correctly.

4. Do not ignore external factors

There might be factors outside of your control that impact your business measurably and thus your A/B test. Some of these factors could be seasonal variations or even competitor strategies that impact the behavior of your customers. For instance, if you are running a test during a busy holiday shopping season, it is likely that you will see conversion rates that are high, but such rates will not be sustainable across the year. Consequently, you will need to make sure that you are testing during normal business cycles and use control groups effectively to isolate the impact of the test changes from such external factors.

While A/B testing is a powerful tool, proper execution is key. By avoiding these common pitfalls, you can unlock the full spectrum of its benefits for ecommerce success.

Related: Why Your Approach to A/B Testing Is Costing You Sales

A friend realized a lifelong dream of purchasing a tiny, seaside hotel and completely renovating it. Shortly before the grand opening, she created a website. The descriptions of the rooms and property were polished, like something you’d see in a glossy travel magazine. I asked who she’d hired to create the text. Her answer surprised me: the descriptions were courtesy of ChatGPT.

Granted, the text wasn’t flawless. It was missing the property’s back story — what I saw as a great opportunity to share how my friend had visited the hotel years ago and fell in love with the simple charm. It used the word “meticulous” too many times. My friend’s dream hotel website made me realize two things: first, that AI’s capabilities are impressive. The OECD recently reported that ChatGPT can write jokes, computer code and essays, formulate medical diagnoses, create games and explain complex scientific concepts. Still, ChatGPT is not perfect. And second, combined with an editor’s eye or a human touch, it could be a powerful tool. The whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

The AI era has arrived and its potential to transform the work landscape can’t be overstated. That said, most knowledgable workers will be able to capitalize on AI to complement their work, rather than replace it entirely. The missing link? Education and training — it’s not just an office perk. Recent research has shown that 4 out of 5 employees want to learn more about how to use AI in their profession. It falls on leaders to provide those vital training opportunities.

Here’s a closer look at how leaders can bridge the gap between AI and employees and equip them with the skills they need in this age of rapid change.

Related: How to Successfully Implement AI into Your Business — Overcoming Challenges and Building a Future-Ready Team

Why (and what to) learn

As CEO of Jotform, I want our employees to have full lives, and to be able to make time for their friends, families, and hobbies. It’s good for their well-being, and as an added perk, it benefits our organization in terms of creativity and productivity. Happier, refreshed employees bring invaluable vigor to their work. I also understand that as a leader it might seem impractical to add learning to employees’ already full plates — but continued training is vital for your employees’ advancement and your company’s health.

Today, the average half-life of skills is less than five years — two-and-a-half years in some tech fields. Research has shown that companies with strong learning cultures see higher retention rates, more internal mobility and a healthier management pipeline versus those with weaker learning cultures. What’s more, employees are hungry for new skills, especially Gen Z, the fastest-growing generation of the workforce. The youngest generation of employees (born after 1996) is expected to overtake boomers this year. According to a recent survey, 53% of Gen Z values learning for career progress, versus 37% of millennials, Gen X and boomers collectively.

The question becomes: What are the most important skills to offer employees?

The ability to use new technologies, like AI and automation tools, is the obvious answer. And no doubt, that’s part of the equation. But as AI plays a larger role in our work lives, human skills will become more valuable in tandem.

As Harvard Business Review notes, and as my friend’s hotel website example demonstrates, AI lacks the human ability to understand context. AI tools like ChatGPT might understand the assignment and execute it almost perfectly, but they lack the “why” of it all and the domain expertise, acquired through years of experience, to assess materials in their larger context.

Other critical skills that AI lacks include people management capabilities, like effective communication, conflict resolution and problem-solving. As Ted English, former CEO of TJX Companies and current executive chairman of Bob’s Discount Furniture, told Harvard Business Review, leadership requires “a lot of instinct, experience and knowledge. Some of it you can’t get from a machine. Technology reinforces and allows you to make a more confident decision.”

We can rely on AI to do certain tasks, from content creation to document review. They can reinforce our work. However, it requires a human eye to review that work product and ensure it has the proper context and quality. In that sense, humans reinforce the work of AI as well.

Related: AI vs. Humanity — Why Humans Will Always Win in Content Creation

Cultivating a learning environment

It’s well settled that companies and employees that utilize AI will have a competitive advantage. The challenge for leaders is empowering employees to do so. How can leaders ensure employees are adequately trained to use the latest AI and automation tools?

One side of the equation is motivating employees. Research shows that employees who set career goals are four times more engaged than those who don’t set goals. Leaders and managers can set aside time to discuss employees’ career goals and how developing certain skills will further those goals.

Of course, the most valuable asset for learning — and the hardest to find — is time. One strategy for making time to learn is building learning into employees’ workflow, rather than requiring them to dedicate time outside their typical workday. Research shows that most employees prefer learning that way — in a 2021 BCG survey of 209,000 workers, 65% said they preferred learning on the job. As I’ve found in almost two decades of running my company, time carved out for training, during lunch or between regularly scheduled tasks is well worth it. It not only changes the pace of the day, but it also challenges employees in new ways, giving a quick boost to daily engagement.

Related: Making Time for Learning When No One Has Time

Another way that leaders can help employees fit training and education into their busy schedules is by promoting an automation-first mindset. Encourage employees to regularly reflect on which tasks are most meaningful to them — which projects and assignments put them in a “flow” state; which ones they wish they could dedicate more time to — and to find AI and automation tools to execute the rest. This practice saves time, speeding up or outsourcing tedious busy work and, most importantly, mental energy.

The advent of AI isn’t something to take lightly. But it’s not necessarily a shift that employees should fear, either. The businesses that gain a competitive edge from AI will be those that rethink the normal ways of doing things in the age of AI and arm their employees with the resources to capitalize on it. With more time for meaningful work — the stuff that only humans can do — your employees will be happier and your company stronger for it.

It’s the end of a century-long era for the iconic music retailer Sam Ash, which announced on Monday that it’s shutting its doors for good.

“It is with a heavy heart that we announce that effective May 2, 2024, all Sam Ash Music Store locations will begin store closing sales,” the company penned on its website. “This unfortunate news also presents a fantastic opportunity for great deals across our premium selection of musical instruments & pro sound equipment. We will also be offering specials on samash.com during this time. Thank you for allowing us to serve musicians like you for 100 years.”

The company currently has 42 locations across the country in New York, Florida, New Jersey, Connecticut, Tennessee, Texas, North Carolina, California, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Nevada.

Related: Bon Jovi, Darius Rucker Warn About AI Tech in Music Industry

Sam Ash was originally founded in 1924 by Sam and Rose Ashkynase, Austrian immigrants with a love of music. According to the company’s website, Sam and Rose pawned her engagement ring for $400 and took the cash to open the first-ever Sam Ash store in Brooklyn in 1924.

Derek Ash, the great-grandson of Sam and Rose, Derek Ash, told the New York Times that it’s been tough to compete with online shopping and that it was a “necessity” to shut down the brick-and-mortar stores.

“A lot of this has been the move to online shopping,” he told the outlet. “There are so many choices, and to maintain a store with that much selection is very difficult.”

Social media users posted about the retailer’s demise.

all sam ash stores are closing i’m going to cry

— ava ? (@suhyuunn) May 2, 2024

Sam Ash is closing and I feel like a friend is dying.

— A.Mood (@Just_IN_A_Mood) May 6, 2024

I’m so bummed about Sam Ash closing man. So many memories and instruments bought there

— ? (@powers1av3) May 2, 2024

RIP the great @samashmusic If you’re a musician, you have been in a Sam Ash store and truthfully, the experience of having another musician (cause that’s who worked in these stores) show you gear IN PERSON can not be replaced.

— Leesa “Lorq Von Bae” Dean (@chilltowntv) May 4, 2024

Sam Ash closing all of its locations. That’s an end of an era moment for sure. ?

— Thinker St. James (@thinkerstjames) May 6, 2024

Related: Top Musicians Scored $200 Million in Pandemic Taxpayer Cash

All Sam Ash locations will shutter by July, while some will close as early as the end of May.

The retailer earned the title “The World’s Favorite Music Store” for its motto “Come In and Play,” which encourages musicians to use and test out the equipment inside any of the company’s stores.

Jack Dorsey, co-founder and former CEO of X/Twitter until he resigned in 2021, has left the board of X rival Bluesky, a decentralized social media network he helped create, fund, and promote.

Bluesky started as a small research project within then-Twitter in 2019 and became its own platform in 2022. The company’s goal is to create a common operating standard for social media platforms so that apps can work between them. It works a lot like Twitter, which it was designed to replace.

Dorsey has been on Bluesky’s board since the platform split from Twitter, now X, two years ago, but took to X on Saturday to simply write “no” when asked if he was still on the board.

no

— jack (@jack) May 4, 2024

He also posted and pinned: “Don’t depend on corporations to grant you rights. defend them yourself using freedom technology. (you’re on one)” on the same day, deeming X “freedom technology.”

^{Jack Dorsey. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images}

On Sunday, Bluesky posted an official statement on their site thanking Dorsey “for his help funding and initiating” Bluesky. The company stated it was looking for a new board member “who shares our commitment to building a social network that puts people in control of their experience.”

We sincerely thank Jack for his help funding and initiating the bluesky project. Today, Bluesky is thriving as an open source social network running on atproto, the decentralized protocol we have built.

— Bluesky (@bsky.app) May 5, 2024 at 4:11 PM

Dorsey also reportedly unfollowed over 2,000 people this weekend and weighed in on government surveillance.

Related: Jack Dorsey Blasts Mark Zuckerberg Over Threads Follow Request: ‘Too Soon’

He now follows just three people on X: Elon Musk, Edward Snowden, and Stella Assange.

The seemingly public approval of X is a change of tune for Dorsey, who openly called out Elon Musk’s leadership of X last year.

Dorsey also founded the fintech conglomerate Block, which the Department of Justice is currently investigating after a former employee alleged compliance issues.

Dorsey mainly dismissed the news report at Block’s earnings call last week.

Related: ‘Should Have Walked Away’: Jack Dorsey Says ‘It All Went South’ After Elon Musk Took Over Twitter

We live in a world where brands are becoming household names. You can Google stuff to learn, Photoshop pictures to make them better (or worse) and don’t even start about the infamous Netflix and chill. If you want to become the next Sharpie or Kleenex, you need to build your brand equity early.

Before telling you “why,” let’s handle the “what.” Brand equity is a somewhat intangible measurement of your brand’s recognition, trust and goodwill. However, despite its ephemeral nature, it has a direct impact on your sales, as consistent branding can increase your revenue by 23%.

You can use many metrics to measure your brand equity, including brand awareness, associations and loyalty, customer lifetime value (CLV), marketing ROI and even the general sentiment of the audience.

With the semantics out of the way, let’s examine the six reasons to grow your brand equity early.

1. Establishes recognition and differentiation

If you’ve not been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard of Coca-Cola, a soft-drink mastodon that is ingrained not just in our everyday lives but has even become the unofficial symbol of Christmas. It’s easily recognizable, googleable and has a generally good reputation.

Compare that to something like DRY, which boasts an 18% recognition in its homeland, the U.S., and has no presence elsewhere. It is not easily googleable because of its name and the existence of Canada Dry, a brand of root beer from 120 years ago (still alive and kicking). It might be a good product, but it’s fighting an uphill battle against its own brand.

No matter how good your product is, 59% of people will default to something they’re familiar with over trying unknown brands, so making an exceptional product is not enough — you also need to make it stand out from all the competitors.

Related: Creating a Brand: How To Build a Brand From Scratch

2. Builds trust

However, pure recognition is not enough — although everyone knows them, you don’t see people lining up to buy ISIS’s latest summer collection.

While word of mouth is important for gaining an initial sale, your commitment to upholding the trust given to you will earn you continuous patronage. 67% of customers admit that a good reputation will get them to try your product. But they will not continue using it if you don’t gain their trust.

Related: ‘Brand Equity’ Is an Intangible That’s Worth Real Money

3. Increases brand value

While brand value is usually calculated from concrete metrics, such as the value of its assets, some more ephemeral metrics, like brand equity, significantly impact its cost.

Establishing positive brand equity is a lengthy process. As Warren Buffett famously said, “No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.”

Throwing more money at marketing does not guarantee an instant sensation. Moreover, there have been many cases where teams with limited marketing budgets, like Cards Against Humanity or Dollar Shave Club, managed to go viral almost overnight. So, the earlier you start investing in marketing, the higher your chances are of breaking through the noise.

Related: Are You Acquiring a Brand? This Is The Secret Formula for Calculating Its Real-Dollar Value

4. Commands higher prices

Conversely, if you want to profit from your established brand, high equity allows you to command a higher price point for your products or services. Customers would not bet an eye to pay more for a perceivably higher quality product.

Incredible equity allows Balenciaga to sell seemingly nonsensical products like $1,850 trash bags or $4,400 tape bracelets (along with the shock value and viral PR, but that’s beside the point).

5. Reduces marketing costs

Ok, bear with me on this one. Growing your brand from zero takes a lot of time, money and creativity, period. However, once you’ve gotten the ball rolling, you will start to see higher returns from your marketing efforts.

On average, it takes the client eight touches (this number can vary based on your industry) with the brand to make a purchase, meaning they need to hear or see your ads eight times before they actually commit. However, user-generated content helps reduce this number and is, in a way, free “touches.”

The math is simple: the fewer contacts it takes for the client to convert, the fewer resources you need to spend, even if the initial investment is hefty.

Related: Why Successful Entrepreneurs Understand the Power of Brand Equity

6. Improves crisis resistance

Crisis resistance is a two-way street.

On the one hand, when your brand faces a crisis, good equity will help you stay afloat, as you will have a stable flow of loyal customers.

On the other hand, when the crisis is more global and affects the customers’ buying power, positive equity will make you the primary candidate for purchase. After all, why would people try something new if they know your brand provides quality products for good prices?

Naturally, the way crises impact different industries varies wildly. For example, Chanel felt neither the recession nor the COVID-19 pandemic, showing a revenue surge of 23%.

Related: If You’re Not Thinking About Brand Equity, You Should Be. Here’s Why.

Conclusion

Establishing brand equity is a lengthy process. Ultimately, the earlier you start fostering trust, loyalty and recognition among your customers, the better. A well-established brand brings more revenue, has more competitive advantages, and can weather any storm, making it easier to run your business and experiment with new tactics.

A happy accident made one man’s first purchase at Cartier an unbelievably cheap one.

Rogelio Villarreal Jasso, based in Mexico, shared a story on X that quickly went viral about a purchase he made online through the luxury retailer’s website in December.

? pic.twitter.com/BHr33bZGL7

— dre pute (@LordeDandy) April 20, 2024

Jasso said he was shocked to find a pair of diamond and gold earrings listed for 237 pesos, roughly $13.98. In the video, he says he quickly purchased two pairs of earrings (and broke into a “cold sweat”) without realizing that Cartier had made a massive mistake on its website.

The earrings were supposed to be listed for 237,000 pesos, roughly $13,975.

Related: Porsche Lists $148,000 Car for Just $18,000 By Mistake

Jasso told CBS MoneyWatch that the retailer tried to cancel his order and compensate him with champagne and a leather card holder for the mistake — but he wasn’t having it.

“At first they said two things when I contacted them after they canceled my order,” he told the outlet. “One, they said the earrings were mispriced by accident. Then they said they couldn’t fulfill the order because the earrings were out of stock. Their reasoning was difficult to understand.”

Jasso then contacted the Mexican Office of the Federal Prosecutor for the Consumer, and Cartier complied. The luxury retailer delivered the earrings to the lucky shopper last week, which he documented in a post on X that’s now been viewed over 4.7 million times.

✨Once upon a December✨ pic.twitter.com/3wMvT7AjLw

— dre pute (@LordeDandy) April 26, 2024

“I was very happy when the earrings arrived, but the reality is they don’t just represent a purchase,” he said. “I was familiar with my rights as a consumer, but not everyone is. So this case helps make Mexican people aware of their basic rights, including those protected by consumer law.”

Cartier did not immediately respond to Entrepreneur’s request for comment.

Related: Couple Charged $5000 Over Airline Ticket First Name Mistake