Brand; What People Say About You When You Leave The Room
Do customers have the best impression of your business?
What do people say about you when you leave the room?
Think about it for a minute.
Was it hard to imagine?
How can you ensure that what is said about your brand is in line with what you want people to think of you?
As emotional creatures, we pay particular attention to our connections and communications with other people. We might heed to a dress code to a particular event, or change the tone and language if we are speaking with a small child. It would be amazing to think that someone said how much he or she loved your style or said what a great person you are.
Now, imagine what people would say about your business.
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, famously said “your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room” and people’s responses to brands can be as emotive as they are to other human beings. How many times have you said that you ‘loved’ a product or brand? (I personally love my new Mahabis slippers in part for their beautiful design). A mediocre brand is rarely remembered, whereas a great brand is remembered (in the right way) and people remain loyal to it.
Your business’ personality
Branding isn’t just about the logo, it embodies the personality of the business, it speaks volumes about who you are, where you are going, and why people should love you.
Lois Geller writes about why brands matter - the point here is that brand is extremely important to the success of the business and can’t be done quickly. Don’t ignore your brand as you’re starting out or building your business - ‘it’s shorthand for what you are’.
It’s what you stand for and helps others to understand why they should buy into what you’re offering. It also plays a part in helping you stand out from the competition.
How to develop your brand
So, how do you develop your brand?
At 25eight, we start by understanding your vision, what is the change you want to see in the world, why your business exists, perhaps why you get out of bed in the morning. Simon Sinek talked about understanding your ‘why’ so that people know what they're buying into. We think the benefits go beyond attracting and retaining customers and liken it to putting a destination into Google Maps 📍, the software knows where you are going and can work out the best route to get you there. If you know exactly where you're going it will help you get there and influence every decision along the way to help you get there faster.
Next, you want to understand why you are different, and how you are positioned in the market.
What is the value you provide to your customers that they don't get from an alternative?
This is a very crucial step. You have to put yourself into your customer’s shoes; what is it that they see as valuable? Hopefully, this aligns with what you are the best at. And we definitely want to outrank our competition on value and if we don’t, how do we do something that we can outrank them on.
Then you have to understand who will see those things as valuable, who are the ‘low hanging fruit’ prospects, that when they hear about what you are trying to do will buy into it straight away. This isn’t just about a particular market segment or demographic, we want to get to the heart of who these people are. What drives them, what are their goals and ambitions, what are their fears and challenges, how are you helping to solve their problem or improve their situation and why do they care about it. The psychographics.
Understanding the human (regardless of whether we’re B2C or B2B) is at the heart of being a human-centred business - and human-centred businesses continuously outperform their counterparts. There will be people that value what you do more than others and those are the people you want to consider when developing your brand.
Brand is a perception
You can only influence someone’s perception of your business and we can do that using communication through the senses. We want people to feel something when they interact with us (hopefully in a positive way).
Think of cheap versus premium; when you encounter a premium brand you get a sense of it being premium with everything you interact with, prior to purchasing through to the purchase and the after-sales, the way we experience it feels premium and we associate a higher cost to it.
Our expectations are definitely a lot lower when we interact with a cheap brand (especially when it comes to cost), however, cheap may be what the brand is built upon, think of budget airlines. Their value lies in being cheap.
For your business, think about this. What are you promising your customers, and what might be their expectations of you. Are you a high cost, premium offering or a budget? Does everything about your business reflect that?
You need to think about all of the touchpoints (the points of interaction) they will come into contact with. How can you communicate (visually, verbally or through experience) so that they leave feeling what you want them to feel?
For example, we supported a business owner whose restaurant name translates to ‘Grandma’s house’. The owner wanted everyone who experienced the restaurant to feel like they had visited their Grandma’s house. Within the Brand guidelines (a document developed to ensure everyone in the business created the right experience) it detailed the right tone of voice, type of language and even the emoji’s to use in any written communication. Before you even encounter the restaurant itself, you feel the warmth and love as if you’re interacting with your Grandma 👵.
Brands build advocacy
If you get it right, it can be game-changing for your business. Especially if you’re in the early stages trying to get traction (ie attracting and converting more customers) with little resources (think time, money and human resources!).
There are many benefits to creating a really great brand, but the best by far is the advocacy and loyalty you will get from the customers that love what you do.
They’ll help spread the word of your awesomeness and do your marketing for you!
This is the holy grail of business growth 🏆
Why Brand is important to business growth
Brand is included in every one of our business growth programs as small changes here can make a huge impact. This applies to every stage of business growth, whether you are trying to get off the hamster wheel of building a solid pipeline of new customers, ensuring your existing customers keep spending with you, expanding into new markets, launching a new product or planning your exit.
Oh, but you say ‘My challenges are building systems and managing staff’ so are internal. Brand comes into play again here. Your Brand acts a guideline for how things should operate internally, allowing you to delegate tasks, onboard new staff quicker or allow for more autonomous productivity.
A great brand doesn’t just attract and retain customers, it attracts and retains employees. investors, partners and opportunities.
Get to the next stage of business growth
We focus on helping businesses reach the next stage of the business growth journey through personalised MBA accredited business education, world class business coaching and industry mentorship.
We’ve created this fun quiz to help you identify what stage your business is in and what you can do to get to the next stage.
Is this the year that you take your business to the next level? 📈
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