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A brand is not an icon, a slogan, or a mission statement. It is a promise to the consumer. It promises relevant differentiated benefits. Find out what promises your customers want businesses like yours to make and keep. Look at your competition and decide which promise would give you the best competitive advantage. This is the promise you make and keep. Everything a business does should be focused on enhancing delivery against its brand's promise.
In defining your brand there are four areas that should be addressed:
1 Define your target customer/client.
Businesses exist for one purpose-to meet human needs. This means that any business or brand initiative must start with a solid understanding of the customer.
Customer targeting is the first step in brand design. Look for customers who meet the following criteria:
- They have an important need, and your brand meets that need.
- Your brand has the potential to be preferred by them.
- There is something about your brand that they admire.
- They have the potential to provide your business with ample revenues & profits over the long run.
At a minimum, you should identify and understand the following target customer attributes:
- Demographics
- Lifestyle
- Needs/desires
- Hopes/aspirations
- Fears/concerns
- Product/service purchase behavior
- Product/service usage behavior
Some suggestions for understanding your customers better:
- Conduct customer surveys
- Establish and monitor blogs devoted to different customer groups
- Establish customer membership groups
- Ask key questions when performing sales calls
- Have a customer profile report generated from your past customer database
2 Define your brand promise.
To be successfully positioned in the market place, a brand must promise must be relevant, compelling and offer a differentiated benefit to the target customer. The benefit should be very important to the target consumer and address a need that your competitors are not addressing. The most powerful benefits give people hope that they can overcome their anxieties, fears or problems.
A brand promise must:
- Address important consumer needs
- Leverage your business strengths
- Give you a competitive advantage through differentiation
- Inspire, energize, and mobilize your people
- Drive every business decision, system, action, and process
- Manifest itself in your business products and services
A brand promise should drive, or at least be congruent with your business:
- Mission, Vision, Strategy
- Values & Behaviors
- Communication
- Products & Services
- Operations, Systems & Logistics
A brand promise is often stated as:
Only (brand name) delivers (benefit) in (product or service category).
Some examples are:
- Volvo: Only Volvo delivers assurance of the safest ride to parents who are concerned about their children’s well being.
- Harley-Davidson: Only Harley-Davidson delivers the fantasy of complete freedom on the road and the comradeship of kindred spirits to avid cyclists.
We took a slightly different approach to our promise statement:
U Creative Group: Especially for small businesses, U Creative Group, is a passionate, creative firm that provides inspiration, motivation and marketing results, allowing its clients to release their fears around their business and concentrate on what really matters - their customers.
3 Define your brand essence.
This is the “heart and soul” of your brand-a brand’s fundamental nature or quality. Brand essence should define the category of business and should be memorable. It should be short, crisp and vivid in meaning. It should be personally meaningful and relevant.
Some examples are:
- Nike: Authentic Athletic Performance
- Hallmark: Caring Shared
- Disney: Fun Family Entertainment
- The Nature Conservancy: Saving Great Places
- U Creative Group: Conscious Creative Abundance
4 Define your brand personality.
Brand personality refers to adjectives that describe your brand (such as fun, kind, sexy, safe, sincere, authentic,
sophisticated, cheerful, old fashioned, reliable, progressive, etc.)
Describe your brand as if it were a person. If your brand were an animal, what would it be? Draw associations with already identified icons, i.e. would your brand be better described as a Cadillac or a Jeep? As a willow tree or an oak tree.
Some examples are:
- Vail Ski Resort: refined, celebrity, world traveler
- A-Basin Ski Resort: extreme, adventure seeker, gen-Xer
As demonstrated above, sometimes it can be a well-defined brand personality that differentiates one brand from another. Both brands in the above example are ski areas but each has it's own distinctly different personality and therefore, attracts a different customer. One isn’t “better’ than another. Each is unique.
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Contact us or call at 303.679.6328 if you’re interested in your developing your brand, or do-it-yourself with our step-by-step workbooks.
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