Posted under Marketing & General
When you think of a brand, you may think of Nike or Nabisco, Apple or Microsoft. Brands are all around us. We can identify them by their name, their logo, their image and their product. Apple is cool and hip, Microsoft is serious and intellectual, Nike is power, etc. These are all ways we identify brands or products.
As a small business owner, you may be selling a product or service, but you may not think of yourself, your product or your service as a brand. I would recommend for you to start doing so because brands communicate to the customer. Brands create awareness, recognition, customer loyalty - ask any Apple owner - we are very loyal to that brand.
According to Alina Wheeler in Designing Brand Identity:
“Compelling brand identity presents any company, any size, anywhere with an immediately recognizable, distinctive, professional image that positions it for success. An identity helps manage the perception of a company and differentiates it from its competitors.”
All small business owners and employees are pressed for time. Creating a brand can be overwhelming so breaking it down in small, easy steps will make it a little more digestible. Let’s roll up our sleeves and start with creating a foundation on which we will build your brand.
• Conduct research on your competition.
If you have been in business for a long time you may have conducted research on your competition as well as your target market in the business plan stage, but during a branding initiative, it is a good time to revisit. Much changes over time and your competitors several years ago may have shifted. You may be facing a whole new onslaught of competition. Maybe you used to only compete locally but now that physical boundaries are blurred by the Internet and your competition could live on the other side of the world.
If you are starting up, you need to go through a competitor analysis as part of developing a business plan. Find out how the competition is perceived by their customers. What makes your offerings different or better? How do you wish to communicate those differences?
• Know your customer.
Are they urban or suburban, tech geeks or not technically savvy, are they tourists or locals, are they senior citizens or tweens?
Know who your customer is or who the potentially could be. You want them to embrace your brand. People gravitate to people with like interests so you want them to spread their loyalty to your brand, so create one that speaks to them.
For example, I have friends who own a fitness center. Every time you go there, they have predetermined workouts ready for you. These
workouts are hard, but they are ideal because they are short—you are usually out within thirty minutes. Their typical customers tend to be people over thirty who work or have kids in school and have lost interest in wandering around a gym for an hour. They want to work and feel motivated and they are willing to invest a little more money than the typical monthly gym fee to feel a sense of accomplishment and for the one-on-one service. So they bread down to men and women, ages 30-50, financially stable, suburban professionals that live within a 5-mile radius of the facility and value exercise and a healthy lifestyle.
If you have been in business a while, think about your current customers—who are they and how can you position yourself to get more of them. Talk to your customers and find out what they like about your company and what they associate with your offerings. Your customers are your best resources.
• Compile a unique selling proposition.
Now that you have researched your competitors and became one with your customers, whether existing or potential, you will create your unique selling proposition. In a few sentences, describe your offerings and think about what separates you from your competitor. Are you more efficient, less expensive or do you offer a higher quality product or service? Marinate on this statement and most importantly, make sure everyone on your team agrees with it and believes it.
These are good first steps to getting your brand developed. Next week, we will develop a plan of attack to get the tools you need to start communicating your brand.
All the best!
Wheeler, Alina. Designing Brand Identity. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2006.