STEP TWO: TRULY DEFINE YOUR BRAND

Armed with a profile that describes your ideal customer, it’s time to define your brand. Defining your brand means clarifying exactly what it stands for.

This is what you want the customer to think when they encounter your brand. It could be a unique service, a better speed or price, higher quality, a product made just for their lifestyle, innovation, reliability, or anything else you want to be synonymous with your brand.

Remember that your brand can’t be all things to all people and in fact it shouldn’t be. It should deliver a clear message that resonates with your target market.

To define your brand, you need to come up with a unique value proposition. Your UVP is the promise you make to your customers. It’s a statement that’s as short as possible but includes exactly what makes you unique and tells people why they should buy from you.
You can’t expect someone to interact with your brand if you haven’t defined it clearly for them.

If you’ve conducted research well and heard from a large sample the reasons why they buy from you, this may not be hard to do.

There may be one particular benefit that you hear over and over from satisfied customers.

If not, it takes some brainstorming. Start by brainstorming with your team, considering the natural strengths of your products or services. You’re looking for one particular, natural strength that’s highly valuable to your customers and sets you apart from other similar companies.

Here are some questions to help you in your brainstorming:

• What do you do?

• What do you really do (in other words, what is the benefit to your customers)?

• What makes you different?

• What do you do better than the competition?

• Are there parts of the market you speak to but that your competitors don’t? Or are there parts of the market you’d like to speak to that they don’t?

• What do your customers or clients think about you?

• What are the goals of your business?

The second question above may be a bit confusing, so let me illustrate with an example. Let’s say you’re a car company that produces luxury sports cars. What you do is build high quality cars that are stylish and appeal to moderately wealthy customers. But what you really do might be something like offer freedom or make customers feel younger. Maybe you unlock the wild side within every suit-and-tie executive.

A restaurant may brand itself as a fun place that brings the family together. A gadget maker’s gadgets might put their users in touch with the entire world. Brands communicate benefits to customers, not so much what the product actually does.

Your brand is only as good as its perception. And you shape that.

Again, it may help to look at the competition in order to discover what your best qualities for your customers are.

Once you’ve identified the natural strengths that make your company unique and offer the benefits your customers are looking for, write it out in a simple statement. This is the basis of every decision you’ll make about your brand from here on.

Did You Miss It?

Part 1: Designing Your Brand

STEP ONE: MARKET RESEARCH

In order to speak well to your audience, you need to know them and understand them well. Branding happens inside their heads, so you need to know (to the best of your ability) what’s going on in there.

The best way to get to know your target market is to create a profile that describes them. This profile describes an individual who is your ideal customer. This isn’t guesswork. You arrive at your information for this profile by conducting market research.

The information you’re looking for includes:

• Demographic information about your customers such as age, gender, income level, family situation, location, etc.

• Psychographic data such as their worries, fears, self-image, attitudes, problems, etc.

• Shopping habits. What other brands do they buy from? Do they save or shop impulsively? Are they big spenders or cautious?

• What products and services they’d like to see in the world, or how the companies they currently buy from don’t meet their needs.

A good place to start with market research is with your existing customers, assuming you have some. If you do, try to find identifying features that most of them share. You may notice that most of them are female or that most are at a high socioeconomic level. If you already have customers, use them to create your profile. For any information you don’t know, ask them. Conduct surveys and give customers an incentive if necessary.

If you don’t currently have customers, or if you want more data than they offer, you can conduct market research on potential customers. Whether or not you have customers, this is a good idea since you want to increase your customer base.

There are two ways to conduct market research: directly and indirectly. First, let’s discuss indirect methods since they’re generally easier to carry out and put less strain on resources.

Indirect market research means basically being a fly on the wall. Find out where your potential buyers are and listen to them. This is incredibly easy and cost-effective today because of the Internet, which encourages people to talk and share their opinions.

Here are a few ways to gather this information:

Creating a profile of your ideal customer is the best way to start planning on how to best target them.

Online Forums. Join online forums where your customers and potential customers spend time asking questions and having discussions.

Blogs. Blogs are good for gathering data because they’re updated more often than regular websites. Try to find blogs about your industry or by potential customers and read what they have to say.

Social Media. Connect with your target market on social media and monitor their conversations. This is a great tool because you can also communicate directly with potential customers through these channels.

Keywords Tools. Use a keyword tool to see how many people are searching for products such as yours. Choose keywords that are relevant to your products. In other words, if you were going to search for this product, what would you type into the search bar? The volume of searches gives you an idea of how popular products such as yours are.

The Competition. A great sources of data is your competitors. Find competitors who offer something similar to what you offer. If possible, look at sales data to see how your target market shops. Stay abreast with your competitors’ websites, blogs, newsletters, and so on.

Business Trends. Read industry journals and websites to find out the latest trends related to your business.

Direct market research methods include:

Interviews. Conduct interviews with people during which you ask them directly for the specific information you need to create your profile.

Questionnaires. Questionnaires can be done online or offline. Create short questionnaires that ask very specific questions to help you gather the information you need.

Focus Groups. The most labor-intensive, but often most lucrative, market research method is the traditional focus group. This is where you gather a group of people to discuss their opinions, perspectives, and beliefs on a certain product or an aspect of a product.

Both direct and indirect market research have their merits. With direct research you get straight answers to your specific questions. But sometimes when asked directly, people say what they think you want to hear instead of what they actually feel. With indirect research, you’re listening in and the data may be more truthful.

It’s good to do a bit of both. The more samples you gather data from, the clearer and more accurate a picture you’ll have of your target market.

A brand is a perceived image that provokes an emotional response. It’s hard to define because it’s intangible. The brand is the image attached to a name, design, symbol, or some other feature of a company’s product.

Here’s a better definition offered by Seth Godin:

“A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories, and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another. If the consumer (whether it’s a business, a buyer, a voter, or a donor) doesn’t pay a premium, make a selection, or spread the word, then no brand value exists for that consumer.”

What’s important to understand about a brand is that it has nothing to do with the actual product. It exists in the minds of customers only. As mentioned in the definition, a brand is a perceived image.

A brand is a perceived image that provokes an emotional response. It’s hard to define because it’s intangible. The brand is the image attached to a name, design, symbol, or some other feature of a company’s product.

Your logo is just one design that communicates your brand.

Brands are often confused with logos and identities. A brand identity consists of the image or design motifs. The logo is just one design that communicates the brand. Both are involved in communicating the brand’s message, but a brand is much bigger and more encompassing than that. It also includes the images or feelings that the design or logo invokes.

In his definition, Godin mentions ‘value.’ The importance of a brand is that it offers a unique perceived value that a customer doesn’t get from your competitors. In other words, the brand is the reason your customers choose you. A good brand tells customer that this is not only the best choice for them, but the only choice that offers the unique solution they’re looking for.

From the point of view of your business, your brand is the promise you make to your customers. It precedes and underlies all of your marketing and, if done well, every contact the customer has with your company.

Because of all of this, branding is one of the most important considerations for businesses. It all too often gets forgotten among the many other things that go into launching a business. But brands are powerful. They outlive the products they sell. It takes a great deal of thought and consideration to create a winning brand.

Elements of an Effective Brand

Brands come in all shapes and sizes, but there are a few common elements you’ll find in all of them.

Clarity. A good brand communicates the intended message clearly. Communication is very important. It’s also important that you communicate the intended image you want customers to perceive, rather than giving them the wrong message.

Memorability. In order for a brand to work effectively, it needs to be memorable. It needs to stay in the customer’s mind.

Uniqueness. Your brand tells people what makes your offering unique among your competitors and the most ideally suited for them. As I said above, it’s not that you’re the best but that you’re the only option that fully and adequately meets the customer’s needs. This aspect of uniqueness also means you don’t have to appeal to everyone.

Emotional Connection. All good brands make an emotional connection with their target audience. People identify themselves through the brands they like. It’s just as much a part of a person’s identity as their political or religious affiliation. If your brand gets inside your customers’ heads and elicits an emotional response, they’ll identify with it and remain loyal. This is what motivates the buyer to buy.

Credibility. A good brand is consistent. It never strays from the customer’s expectation. Like an old friend, it’s always there giving them the same message. In this way, your brand establishes your company’s credibility in the customer’s mind.

Timeless. The best brands are timeless. They endure and stay relevant for years or even decades to come.

In our training class we hammer home the idea that it’s important to be able to help a business owner know exactly how important it is to be truly competitive online.

Apart from digital advertising spends surpassing traditional advertising spends in 2019, the fact is this: audiences are online.

If a business is under-performing online, that means one harsh reality: their competition is winning their potential customers. 

But we all know that business owners still need to ‘see the big picture’ before their wallets open (read as: sign on the proposal’s dotted line).

And while we use relatable stories and analogies in class, we’re always looking for new ways to tell the ‘value’ story in a way that grads can use the story itself or as a way to trigger their own sales script to come up with a similar story — at the end of the day, it’s what you feel comfortable with.

Our marketing director, Joe Schaefer, thought of a new analogous story and we thought we’d share it here.

A Tale of Two Apple Stands

Let’s say you make a living selling apples at a roadside stand. Your neighbor, Jim, does the same thing. Your sales aren’t as high as you’d like them to be, but Jim is doing fantastic. In fact, he rode by on his brand new wagon this morning on his way to sell more of his popular apples.

Jim’s Apples Sell Better

Turns out, Jim’s apples sell better because he’s the first one on the road after people turn into town from the highway. Also, his customers say his apples are more attractive, juicier, taste better, and are just plain delicious.

People Are Talking

The Book Club in town is always saying great things about Jim’s apples and Mr. Howell, the town newspaper reporter, raves about them in the Town Crier almost weekly.

A Solution Arrives

One sunny day, Jerry, an award-winning apple grower, saunters into town. Jerry stops by your apple stand and he takes a close look at your apples. Jerry says, “I have a solution!” He continues, “What if I told you that with better soil, a different way of watering the apple trees, invasive worm removal from the surrounding ground, and some professional fertilizer, I can help you sell more apples, if not more than Jim?”

Please choose one reply below, because the future of your apple stand depends on it.

Do you say: 

1. Nothing
2. I’ll have my sister’s friend who once made an apple pie help out
3. I accept your help! When can we get started?
4. You tell Jerry you only want the soil and you’ll take your chances otherwise

If you chose any answer other than #3, we’d love to have you email us and tell us why!

The point is, this story helps people relate to exactly what you’re trying to do for them with your agency, but in a way that makes it so anyone can understand. I’d be surprised if any business owner chose other than #3! Do you agree?

If you need a breakdown of how this story relates, see below, otherwise this micro-lesson is over — go grow your business! Have a great day!

Breakdown: 

• 2 competing businesses; one doing well, the other is average or below average
• The popular stand is first off the highway (think SEO and rank)
• The Book Club is raving and talking (think; Social Media)
• The reporter from the Town Crier is raving and talking (think: reviews)
• An expert has the solution that can make the less-busy apple stand finally compete!

The answers: 

Do nothing: You’ll come across those people; but telling a narrative like above will no doubt strike a cord.

I’ll have my sister’s friend who once made an apple pie help out: Wouldn’t you want an expert working on this?

You only want the soil: Uh, only using some of the puzzle pieces won’t finish the puzzle!