Stretch Brand

 

Effective marketing starts with a powerful brand.

 

If there’s one thing that’s going to get your business through this recession, it’s your business brand. Sweeping statement? Perhaps! Let me qualify that a little more.

Planning, managing and communicating your business brand effectively will attract more of the right sort of clients. You’ll build loyalty, gain more repeat business and you’ll make your marketing much, much more effective.

Imagine being in a position where you didn’t have to go out and permanently tout for business. Imagine having clients coming to knock on your door wanting to buy the products and services that are the most profitable for you. And imagine a situation where the vast majority of your target market knew who your business was and how you could help them! Use your business brand effectively and you could be in that position.

Powerful brands are about much, much more than your visual identity. It’s about the whole experience: how people perceive you, how they react to you, and how they feel about you. Powerful brands think and manage not just how their business looks, but the whole experience.

And creating a powerful brand isn’t just reserved for large corporates with eyewatering budgets to match. Any business, large, small, yours… can create a powerful business brand that will help you get through this recession.

Here’s how…

1. Create a strong brand promise that means something to your customers.
2. Communicate and deliver what you promised
3. Use your brand promise to win more of the right type of customers for less money!

 

1. Create a strong brand promise that means something to your customers.

 

Start by thinking what makes your business tick. Who, specifically, are your clients? What are their needs? Problems? Motivations? What brands do they buy and what are their shopping habits? What solutions does your business provide to help them with those needs, problems or motivations?

What are your key products and services? Which are you best at? Which ones are most profitable for you? Which do you enjoy selling or providing the most? Is there a particular product or service you offer that will provide a good lead in to other services?

Take a look at your competitors. Who are they? What messages are they sending out and how do you differentiate yourself? It’s easy to say that you don’t care about the competition because you’re confident enough in your own proposition. That may be true, but you can bet that your clients will be checking out your competition as well as your own business. So make sure you know what they do and what makes you different – just don’t get paranoid about it!

Talk to your clients. What do they like about your business? What don’t they like? Where do they see the real value? It might be rather different to what you think! If you’re not sure, ask them! Consider online surveys, telephone surveys or just informal chats.

By now, you should be starting to form a view about what makes your business successful. Make a note of words or phrases that sum up what makes your business unique. For example, your key brand values might be integrity, creativity and delivering above and beyond expectation.

 

Are you capable of delivering your brand promise?

 

Anyone can say that they will deliver on time. Anyone can promise exceptional creativity. Not everyone has the capability to deliver that.

Promising something you or your team can’t deliver is an absolute disaster. Always, always under-promise and over-deliver. Nothing will waste your marketing budget more than failing to live up to your customers’ expectations. Not only will you fail to win more business from them, you’ll also develop a bad reputation. And if you’re trying to win business from a small town or a niche market, then that will kill your business. If you want to build a powerful brand you have absolutely got to deliver what you promised. No excuses, no failures, no mistakes.

 

Do your customers care about your brand promise?

 

Don’t make the mistake of building a brand around something that is meaningless to your clients. Sure, one of your benefits might be that you make the cheapest widgets in Guildford. But if your customers aren’t price sensitive they’re going to continue to buy from your competitors.

Take couriers as an example. Price might be important to many clients, but talk to someone who’s stayed up till midnight to get a tender document finished and they’ll tell you that reliability and delivery on time is far, far more important than saving a couple of quid. You’ve got to understand your clients, and present your
brand promise in such a way that they feel it in their gut.

 
Make your brand promise absolutely compelling.

 

No one wants to compete on price. It’s not a nice place to be. Especially not right now. Price doesn’t build brand loyalty. And it doesn’t usually return a profit. You’re forever chasing your tail and losing customers to the next upstart who comes along and undercuts you by a fiver!

Develop a one-sentence brand promise that will guide everything based on what you do. Think about what’s important and profitable to your business. But most of all: create a promise that you are capable of delivering and that your customers and potential customers can identify with.

 
How Perform has created a brand promise parents feel in their gut!

 

There are a lot of children’s theatre groups and performing arts coaching classes around, but Perform (www.perform.org.uk) is one company that I’ve watched grow from its inception. I now send my daughter to their classes and they have absolutely lived up to my expectations (that are incidentally more than twice the price of the ‘mom and pop’ type dance/drama lessons). Why? Because their brand promise is compelling and consistent.

Perform understands that what most parents want is a confident and happy child. Sending your daughter to a drama class to develop her confidence skills is much more palatable than creating the new Macaulay Culkin (am I showing my age here?). No one wants to be a pushy parent. But we do want to nurture our children and watch them have fun, while they unknowingly develop their skills.

Perform’s emphasis on confident children means that it’s a hard proposition to walk away from. And this emphasis on confidence is a part of their DNA. From the games they play in the sessions to the messages tackled in their end of term performances – everything Perform does is about confidence.

What does this do to me as a customer? Well to start with it’s an attractive, compelling proposition for me to buy in to. So they’ll build more business. But more than that, it’s a promise that builds loyalty. Confidence isn’t something you ‘get’. It’s something you build. And something that needs to be continually worked on. And that means continually investing in the classes. Clever eh!

 

 

2. Communicate and deliver what you promised.

 

So you know what makes you unique, what makes your business successful and you’ve created a one-sentence brand promise that your customers and potential customers will buy into. The next step is communicating that.

And you need to start by looking at your ‘moments of truth’. ‘Moments of truth’ is based around the idea that every time a customer comes into contact with a part of your organisation, they’ll form an impression: positive or negative. Manage these points of contact effectively and you’ll gain loyal clients who will recommend you to their friends.

Focus on just getting the business in and letting the rest go to pot? Well, you can guess what I’m going to say can’t you? You’re wasting your time and money. Think of the Nationwide adverts with the fat bank manager ‘reeling customers in’ for the ‘introductory savings rates’ and ‘introductory niceness’ and you’ll see what I mean.

 

All of these ‘moments of truth’ can be managed.

 

I never cease to be amazed at the number of businesses who fail to communicate and deliver their brand promise. What do I mean by that? I mean taking your brand promise and making sure that every contact your customer or potential customer has with you is ‘on brand’. And that’s about more than just your website or brochures. It’s about delivering the product or service, it’s about how your invoice looks and how you
answer the phone.

Start by making a list of all the touch points your customer makes with your business. There are the obvious ones: business cards, website, how your staff answer the phone. And there are the less obvious ones: how your loos look, what the delivery box looks like and your after care. Think about the message each of these ‘moments of truth’ sends out and work towards managing each of them to create the right message.

 

Get your team involved.

 

Powerful brands involve the whole team. Branding isn’t about the MD sat in an ivory tower deciding how the brand is going to look. It’s about every single one of your staff living and communicating your business brand. So get them involved!

Ask your team for ideas on how they can help you create a fabulous brand experience for your customers: one that supports your brand promise and keeps your clients loyal.

 

Brand inconsistency is a false economy.

 

I recently booked a small, independently owned hotel for our team Christmas party. The brand experience just didn’t live up to the expectation. The food was mixed and the visual identity confusing.

We had excellent home-made bread and a delicious starter followed by inedible roast potatoes and a claggy, reheated, frozen bought-in pudding. It was like the chef had gone home halfway through the night! We were disappointed to say the least. It felt like they just hadn’t bothered.

The visual identity: website, posters, marketing literature was equally inconsistent. A mix of well-printed and professionally designed leaflets (which was what inspired us to book) alongside dreadfully designed self-printed posters in the loos and on the bar tables.

And where does that leave me as a consumer? Confused, disappointed and lacking loyalty, that’s where! The point is that once we’ve bought something, we often experience post-purchase dissonance, where we regret spending the money with a particular company and wished we’d gone elsewhere. Making sure you deliver an experience above and beyond expectation is a way to combat that rather unpleasant feeling your customers will get, and ensure they come back to you next time.

It’s unlikely that I, or the other company (who booked 100 places!) will patronise that particular hotel in future. Why? Because they just didn’t live up to the brand promise.

Start with the visual identity.

 

People often confuse branding with a company’s visual identity because it’s such an externally obvious part of what they do.

When you’re creating a powerful brand, your corporate identity should be an important part of your focus. You can be delivering your brand promise as much as you like, but if your visual identity doesn’t communicate this, you’re missing out on a lot of opportunities.

Start by making sure your logo and corporate identity support your brand promise. Get some feedback from a design professional and don’t think you can survive without a strong corporate identity. You might survive, but you won’t thrive. And you’re just making life harder for yourself.

A strong corporate identity will help you attract more of the right sort of customers. Customers who are prepared to pay what you want to charge. Did you realise that two thirds of companies who ignore design have to compete on price? Not a nice thought is it?

A strong, consistent, professional corporate identity will also enable you to build customer loyalty and combat post-purchase dissonance. That means you’ll gain more repeat business and your customers will feel more comfortable recommending you knowing you’ll do a good job. A strong brand builds reassurance.

 

Don’t underestimate the value of professional design.

 

Just how hard can it be to create a logo anyway? Surely it’s little more than knocking something up on Photoshop?

What many businesses don’t realise is that there’s a lot more to creating a powerful corporate identity than being able to find your way around a graphics package. Great logos use fonts and colours that will appeal to a specific target audience. They combine this with a professional layout and an injection of creativity to spark an identity that will inspire, engage and attract your target audience. Unless you’re a graphic designer, don’t try and do this yourself!

 

Create a set of brand guidelines: and use them!

 

Do you have a brand manual for your business? It needn’t be overly complicated, but it should contain a list of typefaces, palette of colours and information about your brand promise. And you need to make sure that whenever you create a piece of marketing literature for your business, you stick to your brand guidelines.

 

Measure client satisfaction.

 

Best intentions aside, the best way to measure the effectiveness of your business brand is to ask your clients about their experience. What do they say? Have they picked up on and experienced what you set out for them to experience? Let’s say your brand promise was all about delivering a creative solution with integrity. Have they used those words when feeding back their experience to you? If so, well done! You’re living up to what you say you will! If not, look at areas you can tweak.

 

 

3. Use your brand promise to win more of the right type of customers for less money!

 

You’ve created a compelling brand promise and a visual identity that your customers can identify with and feel loyalty for. Now use it to market your business effectively.

If you start by thinking about your brand promise when you’re creating your marketing plan, you’ll be creating more powerful marketing for less money. Why? Well for starters you won’t be wasting money on things that don’t bring you in the right sort of clients. Secondly, you’ll have planned from the outset, so you’ll be communicating a consistent, powerful message. And thirdly, because you’ve set a budget you won’t be spending money you don’t have.

Remember that hotel I told you about? What I found most unsettling about the whole experience was the inconsistency. It felt like they were impulsively lurching from one decision to the next – most of which felt last minute and unplanned. From the food not being what we expected to any number of inconsistent messages and designs, it was unsettling and off-putting.

From their point of view, working without a plan (at least that’s how it seemed externally), chasing the ‘cheapest’ option all the time and making last minute decisions based on price or urgency can’t be an enjoyable task, and it certainly won’t be profitable.

You can use your brand promise to create a marketing strategy that will seriously boost your profits. How do I know? Because that’s exactly what I did two years ago, and I grew my net profit by 250%. Here’s what you need to do…

 

Stay focused.

 

So your brand promises a taste of authentic Italy? Focus your marketing efforts on activities that are going to communicate that brand message.

Brainstorm lots of ideas – how can you get that message across to people? What could you do to attract the right sort of customers and build loyalty?

Now be ruthless! Get rid of anything that isn’t likely to benefit your marketing goals or support your brand! What we’re trying to avoid here is lurching from one impulsive marketing activity to the next. If you want to do newspaper advertising, do it because it’s an important part of your marketing strategy and you are committed to doing it properly. Don’t just sign up for a one off ad because it’s cheap and then wonder why it doesn’t bring you in any business!

 

Create a budget.

 

A budget isn’t an opportunity for you to spend as little as possible on everything that will damage your brand and your credibility. Set a budget: work out what you spent last year, what you can afford to spend this year and think about the results you want.

Then commit to investing that money. Marketing your business isn’t something that will yield instant results. And you can’t market your business for free. So create a realistic budget and invest. You’ve got to be committed and persistent.

Stay on brand.

 

Before you decide to do anything, think: “Will this help me attract the right sort of clients? Will this support my brand promise?”. If it doesn’t, don’t waste your money.

Create a plan for the year. That’s right. Commit a plan to paper and diarise what you’re going to do. Measure the results, and most of all, stick with it! It will pay off!

 

And finally…

 

We all have the capability to build a powerful brand. Sure, it’s easier if you have billions of pounds at your disposal and an army of staff to put your ideas in place, but what we’ve talked about in this article is possible for any business: large, small, yours!

Start with defining a brand promise that your customers can feel in their gut. Create, communicate and deliver your brand promise. And create a powerful marketing strategy that will win you a lot of profitable business.

And most of all: have fun! Don’t get stressed out or knotted up over this. Even if you start with only a couple of these suggestions you’ll be well on the way to improving the power of your brand.

 

Putting it all into practice: A real life case study…

Imbibros

 

Imbibros Wine Merchants are based in Godalming and Farnham and specialise in supplying a range of fabulous wines to both the general public and restaurant trade alike. We started working with the company a year after their inception, and have helped them build a strong brand that’s instantly recognisable.

What’s so successful about the Imbibros brand is that they’ve managed to maintain consistency of design throughout all their communications. Why? Because they’ve worked with one design agency (us!) and we’ve always been incredibly focused about ensuring that everything looks like it comes from the same company. That doesn’t need to be boring, it’s just reassuring!

 

in:colour Consultancy

 

in:colour is the UK’s leading colour consultancy and helps individuals and companies communicate more effectively through colour. Although Bernay had a logo that she was happy with, we worked with her to define a brand strategy, re-write her websites and create some designs that would appeal to her target audience.

It’s early days for the in:colour rebrand but here’s what Bernay had to say about what we’ve done so far… “I found our session together very informative; it has enabled me to stand back and take an objective view of my website and it’s potential for marketing to and increasing potential custom.” Bernay Laity, in:colour

 

And while we’re blowing our own trumpets, here’s what a couple more of our clients have to say about us…

 

“It was such a pleasure doing business with Printing.com. I found all the staff very professional, approachable, creative and enthusiastic. A great part of the process was them getting to know me and my business so they understood exactly what my needs were and they then portrayed them beautifully. I have no hesitation in recommending them to anyone.” Emma Armstrong www.time2beme.com

“What I really value about Printing.com is the fact that they don’t just do printing. They recognise that before printing anything, they have to understand their clients’ business and their brand and create some great designs and copy to match. Fiona’s advice on all aspects of branding, design and marketing is down-to-earth, practical and really useful, and her blog is well worth a visit.” Anna Saverimuttu, Photographer

 

Would you like to work one to one with Fiona Humberstone or Guildford printing.com?

 

If you’re serious about creating a powerful brand talk to Guildford printing.com on 01483 401 818 or email
guildford@printing.com.

We offer an initial free 45 minute branding consultation. We’ll discuss your business and objectives with you, give you some feedback on your visual identity and you’ll have the opportunity to view our portfolio (and see whether you like us!).

 

What’s the next step?

 

Book a two-hour Brand Strategy session with us.

We’ll help you create a powerful brand promise, review your ‘moments of truth’ and shape a compelling brand strategy. You’ll leave armed with a clear idea of the steps you need to take to make your brand
more powerful and a tailored report you can use to take positive action for your brand!

Investment: £227 plus VAT.

To book your session contact us on 01483 401 818.

We look forward to hearing from you!