Does your business have a brand? or just a logo. . .

Monday, 10 May 2010 10:52 |

Written by Vanessa Lanham |

What exactly is a brand?

It is certainly so much more than your logo and your strapline and you need to work on your ‘brand’ – or ‘business personality - in order to bring it to life for clients and prospective clients.

To me it’s about defining the manner in which you do business – the passion and the energy that you bring to what you do. It’s the reason your customers will decide to do business with you – rather than a competitor. And most importantly, it’s the reason they will stay with you. For without a compelling brand or personality, you are highly vulnerable to competitive attack. After all, what is there to keep them loyal?

And this isn’t just so much marketing ‘in speak’, this is potentially BIG! As an example, a year or two back NIKE reported that value of the NIKE brand amounted to 86% of the balance sheet. Now that’s not just big, it’s HUGE!!

But what do we mean by the NIKE brand?

Is it NIKE’s logo? The swoosh? The ‘Just do it’ strapline, their advertising strategy? Or even Tiger Woods’ involvement? Tiger Woods most certainly has done a lot to build the NIKE brand – and perhaps has helped in decreasing its value in recent months, which only goes to show just how founded in beliefs and intangibles brand values truly are.

But what does the Nike brand stand for? For me it’s the sense that NIKE can liberate the inner sportsman in all of us, will help us to achieve our impossible dreams, will help us overcome insurmountable barriers. Giving us the freedom to ‘just do it’.
It’s HUGELY emotional.

Now, it’s easy to say – ah, but that’s fine for NIKE, but it’s not the same for a financial planner based in Cheshire. And of course it’s not the same in terms of their power to communicate their brand, but the principles stand true.

Service companies need to take special note ...

Branding is even more important for a service business where there is no tangioble product to define your offering .One thing I often say to clients is that ‘you are the sum of what you stand for’ – and the fact is, if you don’t stand for very much – or if you don’t articulate what you stand for – arguably your brand ends up not standing for very much at all. Customers will notice!

Having clearly defined brand values will really help you with this.
How do you define your brand values?

Three easy starting points for determining your brand values:

Ask your current and past customers what they think about your service. When is the last time any of you conducted a formal customer survey?
Another useful tool is the competitor survey – vital for understanding where you fit in your marketplace – which may be geographic, or niche based.

What is their positioning?
What are their brand values – what does their website say?
How does it compare to your experience of them?
How are they communicating their brand messages to clients?
How do you compare?
What is different about what you do?

3. When you’ve defined your values, these become your charter. Everything you do and say about your brand MUST be congruent with this.

Differentiate– and gain a competitive advantage!

The nub of the differentiation is understanding precisely why people should put their hand in their pocket and sped their hard-earned with you – as opposed to someone else. And this needs to be clearly communicated in your branding; clients and prospects need to be able to understand this message in a moment.

It’s pointless you having a strong intellectual understanding of the reasons why – you need to be able to get this message across to your potential customers in order to get them to either a) do something (battle with inertia) or b) choose you rather than a competitor.