Unlocking the power and value of a brand

If you need a motivating fact to boot you into branding action, here it is: Branding makes selling easier because people want to buy from those they know and like, and those they trust will deliver on commitments. A good brand puts forth that promise.

With a well-managed brand, your company hardly needs to introduce itself. Within your target market, people will already know your business, its personality, and the promise it makes to customers — all based on the positive set of impressions you’ve made and they’ve stored in their minds.

Without a well-managed brand, you’ll spend a good part of every sales opportunity trying to introduce your business, while some well-known brand down the street can spend that time actually making the sale.

Brands fuel success in three ways:

• Brands lead to name awareness, which sets your business apart from all the contenders your audience has never heard of.
• Brands prompt consumer selection because people prefer to work with those they’ve heard of and heard good things about.
• Brands unlock profitability because people pay premium prices for products (or, in the case of personal brands, for people) that they trust will deliver higher value than lesser-known alternatives.

As a result of the advantages they deliver, brands increase the odds of business success, which makes them especially valuable in a world where half of all businesses fail in the first five years, nine out of ten products don’t make it to their second anniversary, and too many people are vying for the same jobs, sales, and opportunities.

Tipping the balance online

Without a brand, you have to build the case for your business before every sale. Doing that is tough work in person and even tougher online, because you can’t be there to make introductions, inspire confidence, counter resistance, or break down barriers.

Brands are essential to online and offline success for very different reasons:

• For those who sell online, brands are necessary for credibility. People buy everything online — from contact lenses to cars — all without the benefit of personal persuasion, hands-on evaluation, or test drives. Why? Because customers arrive at websites with confidence in the brands they buy. When they see a brand they know and like, they check the price and terms, click to buy, and move on to checkout. If your business takes place primarily online, your brand is your key to sales.
• For those who sell offline, brands are necessary for findability. Anymore, nearly every brand needs to be findable, prominent, and credible online. The rare exceptions are those that serve a target market that never goes online and that’s never influenced by those that do. For every other brand, Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail (Hachette Books), says, “Your brand is what Google says it is.” If customers can’t find your business in an online search, they conclude that you either don’t exist or aren’t a top player in your arena.

Branding facilitates sales and spurs success, whether your cash register is online or on Main Street.

Being consistent to power your brand

To build a strong brand, project a consistent look, tone, and level of quality through each point of customer contact, whether in person or through marketing and whether online or offline.

Then stick with the brand you build. People in your target audience are exposed to thousands of images every day. To manage the marketing clutter, they filter out all but the messages and images that are relevant and familiar. The quickest route to making your brand image one they recognize and trust is to present it consistently — without fail.

Don’t try to change your brand image unless you’re certain that it’s no longer appropriate for the market. (And if that’s the case, you’d better be prepared to change your business, because your brand is the public representation of your business.) Imagine how tired the people at Campbell’s Soup must be of their label, but imagine what would happen to their sales if they abandoned it simply because a fickle marketing manager said, “Let’s try something new.” Remember “New Coke”?

Consistency builds brands, and brands build business.

Taking six brand-management steps

Building a well-managed brand follows certain steps:

1. Define why you’re in business.

   What does your business do? Or, if you’re building a personal brand, what do you do? How do you do it better than anyone else? Put into writing the reason that your business exists and the positive change you aim to achieve.

2. Consider what you want people to think when they hear your name.

   What do you want current and prospective employees to think about your business? What do you want prospects, customers, suppliers, associates, competitors, and friends to think?

   You can’t be different things to each of these groups and still have a well-managed brand. For example, you can’t have an internal company mindset that says “economy at any price” and expect consumers to believe that no one cares more about product quality and customer service than you do.

   Figure out what you want people to think when they hear your name. Then ask yourself whether that brand image is believable to each of the various groups with whom you communicate. If it isn’t, decide how you need to alter your business to make achieving your brand image possible.

3. Think about the words you want people to use when defining your business.

   Ask your employees, associates, and customers this question: When people hear our name, what images do you think come into their minds? If everyone says the same thing, and if those words are the words you want associated with your name, you have a well-managed brand. If gaps occur, you have your brand-management work cut out for you.

   List words that you want people to link to your business and be certain that you live up to that desired image. Then lead people to the right conclusions by presenting those characteristics — that brand image — consistently and repeatedly in your marketing communications. Choose messages and graphic symbols that support the image you want to project. For example, Rolex maintains its luxury brand image by featuring a crown as its logo and by giving its signature watch collection the name Oyster.

4. Pinpoint the advantages you want people to associate with your business.

   Figuring out these distinctions leads to your definition of the position you want to own in consumer minds.

5. Define your brand.

   Look at your business through a customer’s or prospect’s eyes as you define your brand. What do people say and think about your company and the unique benefits they count on it to deliver? Why do they choose your business and prefer to buy from you again and again? How would they define your brand and the promise it makes?

   Boil your findings down to one concept — one brand definition — that you honestly believe you can own in the minds of those who deal with your business. The following are examples of how three widely known brands are generally perceived by the public:

   • Volvo: The safest car
   • CNN: The middle-of-the-road, all-news channel
   • Google: The top Internet search engine

6. Build your brand through every impression that you make.

   Flip to Book 5, Chapter 3 for advice on auditing your brand’s impression points. Rate whether each impression enhances or detracts from the brand you’re building, depending on how well it projects your brand with clarity and consistency.

Seeing how positioning happens

When people learn about your business, they subconsciously slot you into a business hierarchy composed of the following:

• Me-too businesses: If the mind slot — or position — that you want for your business is already taken, you have to persuade consumers to switch allegiances on your behalf, and that’s a tough job. The best advice for a “me-too” business is to find a way to become a “similar-but-different” business by targeting an unserved market niche or providing a differentiating benefit.
• Similar-but-different businesses: These businesses market a meaningful difference in a crowded field. Depending on the nature of your business, your positioning distinction may be based on pricing, inventory, target market, service structure, or company personality. For example, instead of simply opening your town’s umpteenth pizza shop, open the only one in a trendy new neighborhood, the only one that offers New York–style pizza by the slice, or the only one that uses recipes from Southern Italy in a trattoria setting. Your distinction had better be compelling, though, because you have to convince people the difference is worth hearing about, sampling, and changing for.

• Brand-new offerings: If you can be the first to fill a market’s needs, you have the easiest positioning task of all. Just don’t expect that marketing to seize that brand-new position will be a cakewalk. First-in-market businesses need to educate consumers about what the new offering is and why they should care. Then they have to promote skillfully and forcefully before competitors enter the fray.

  First-in-a-market businesses and first-of-a-kind products have to market fast and fastidiously because, in the end, being first isn’t as important as being first to seize a positive position in the consumer’s mind.

Determining your positioning strategy

The simplest way to figure out what position you hold is to determine what your business offers that your customers would have a hard or impossible time finding elsewhere. Some questions that will lead to your positioning statement include the following:

• How is our offering unique or at least difficult to copy?
• Is our unique offering something that consumers really want?
• Is our offering compatible with economic and market trends?
• How is our offering different — and better — than available options?
• Is our claim believable?

Don’t aim for a position that requires the market to make a leap of faith on your behalf. If a restaurant is known for the best burgers in town, it can’t suddenly decide to try to jump into the position of “the finest steakhouse in the state.” Leapfrogging doesn’t work well when the game is positioning.

Develop your position around the distinct attributes that have made your business successful to date. Here are a few positioning examples:

• Skyliner is a community offering families the finest view in town.
• Treetops is an inn hosting the most pampered ski vacationers in the East.
• Starting a Business All-in-One For Dummies is a friendly guide packed with advice and tools to help small business leaders achieve success by planning, launching, and managing their businesses.

See how it works? A positioning statement is easy to construct — just apply the formula you see in Figure 4-1.

As you write your statement, avoid these traps:

• Don’t try to duplicate a position in an already crowded category. Opening the third shoe repair shop in a small town requires more than a location and announcement. You need to convince customers who are already committed to the other shops that your store is better — because of its location, service, or other distinguishing attributes.
• Don’t base your distinction on a pricing or quality difference that a competitor can take from you. For instance, you’re only egging on your competitors if you position yourself as “the lowest priced” or “the most creative.” With effort, a competitor can beat you on either front.
• Don’t hang your hat on a factor you can’t control. Too many resorts have ended up red-faced after positioning themselves as “the region’s only five-star resort,” only to lose a star or have a competitor gain one. Instead, communicate distinctions that matter to your customers and then back them up with definitions and promises. For example, instead of making a vague promise about “best service,” Alaska Air says it’s the first major U.S. airline with a 20-minute baggage service guarantee.
• Don’t settle for a generic positioning statement. Be sure you can answer no to this question: Could another business say the same thing?

Staying consistent with your brand message and creative strategy

Your creative strategy is the plan that directs the development of all your marketing communications. It defines

• Your target market
• The believable and meaningful benefit you offer to your market
• The way you present your personality in your communications

Controlling your brand presentation

Well-branded organizations have rules — called style guidelines — that determine how their logos may be presented, what typestyles and colors may be used in marketing materials, how certain words are used, and when and how taglines, copyrights, and trademark indicators apply.

Create style guidelines to protect the consistency of your brand image, too. Then, before a print shop, specialty-advertising producer, staff designer, outside marketing firm, or any other supplier creates marketing materials on your behalf, share your style guidelines to steer the outcome of their efforts.