Do you want to generate ever increasing profits in your business? Would you like to separate your business from its competition and eliminate comparison shopping? Wouldn’t it be great to have instant name recognition for your business?
You can obtain all of the above and more by developing a powerful and attractive brand for your business!
The Importance of Branding
The textbook definition of a brand is the name or symbol used to identify and distinguish a specific product or business. A brand is the overall image or value statement you are trying to create in the market for your product or business.
But, why is having a brand image important?
Developing and communicating a brand reduces the perceived risk to your customer of making a purchase decision. With a strong brand identity, your customer feels that your product or business has a known identity, thereby reducing the uncertainty and risk they face compared to purchasing another product.
We see the substantiation of strong brands in the 2016 study by Brandz of the Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands. Some of the top brands were Google, Apple, Microsoft, AT&T, Facebook and VISA and as a result they are able to dominate their respective marketplaces and achieve the aforementioned results.
The Results of Branding
As companies focus on developing their brand identities one can see the results right in front of them, particularly when they incorporate an impactful and memorable tagline into their brand.
For instance, Arby’s restaurants has developed “We have the meats” into great name recognition. The Sandals Resorts brand of “luxury included” communicates that it provides serene blue water, white sand and casual fun in the sun. Lastly, regional fast-food chain Zaxby’s has developed the brand of a having fast-food experience that is cut above other fast-food chains with great food images in their commercials and the tagline that their food is “indescribably good”.
How would your life be different if you could charge a premium for your product (I will use the term “product” to include services in this article)? Additionally, people want to work for an organization that is going places so what would it be like to have employees jump at the opportunity to work for your business?
The Benefit of Successful Branding
Your brand (defined as “the name used to identify and distinguish a specific product or business”) starts with psychological connection to your market and continues on to the actual experience that a customer has with your product or business.
The psychological brand identification is created in the mind of your target audience by your marketing program; its intention is to create the expectations in your customer’s mind that your product’s quality surpasses or is better suited for their needs than that of your competitors’. The experiential aspect includes the combination of all interactions with your business or its product. This is what is known as their “brand experience.”
The Power of Branding
Having a recognized brand is one of the most beneficial and powerful elements in your marketing plan providing unique marketing opportunities to your business and your product.
The power of branding is that it sets an expectation in the mind of your customer of what they will experience with your product or business.
A brand is the overall image or value statement you are trying to create in the marketplace for your product or business. It is what you want to be known for. Your brand should be what you are famous for; such as having the best hamburger in town or phenomenal customer service.
If this expected experience becomes a known commodity in the marketplace you will be able to catapult your product or company ahead of your competition. The ultimate level in branding is that you are perceived as the only one that does what you do, thus eliminating all of your competition.
Branding is for Organizations of All Sizes
Bear in mind that you don’t have to be a big business to develop a brand. Branding is available to any business – it is just the size of brand area that changes. The scope of your brand could be your city, county, region, state, section of a country, the entire country, or worldwide.
Let me share three local brand success stories in the North Atlanta area where I live.
- Alpine Bakery developed a reputation for exquisite desserts, expanded to a much larger location, and started a companion, co-located restaurant, while still supplying desserts to various other restaurants.
- A local restaurant developed the image of an upscale diner with a very impressive menu, desserts to “die for,” and a unique logo to establish a string of diners – Diner at North Point, the Diner at Sugar Hill, etc.
- Reliable Heating & Air used its great reputation, marketing savvy, and brand message to expand into plumbing, electrical and home performance, all branded with the “Reliable” name.
Five Steps to Developing Your Brand
There are five steps to fully developing a brand:
- Determine your intended brand identity
- Validate your brand identity by asking questions of your prospects and customers such as:
- What do they think when they hear about or see your business or product brand?
- How do they describe your business or product brand to others?
- Fully develop your branding by making changes to your brand based upon step 2.
- Determine how you want to communicate your brand to your target audience.
- Implement the marketing and promotion of your brand throughout all of your marketing materials and efforts.
Begin today to build your brand recognition by analyzing your business’ strengths and weaknesses and the message you are currently communicating to your market. Then make the necessary changes so that your target audience has a positive brand image of your business firmly etched in their mind.
In this way, you will create a business that can charge a premium for its products, grow its profits, differentiate itself from its competition, gain instant name recognition, and attract good employees. Who knows? You may grow your brand reach to your county, state, country or the world in a few short years.
If you need assistance with fully developing your Brand Image, please contact us using the below information so we can show you how beat your competition and separate your business from the rest of the pact via your Brand Strategy.
Fountainhead Consulting Group, Inc. is an Innovation and Business Planning firm. During the past 17 years we have shown over 1,200 companies how to achieve their goals by using our unique, comprehensive and systematic, innovation, business planning and growth Structure of Success™, Innovation Academy™ and FastTrak Innovation Program™ methodologies. Using the components in these methodologies, each month we examine an aspect of how to transform your business or organization into a true 21st Century operation.
Office phone: (770) 642-4220
www.FountainheadConsultingGroup.com
George.Horrigan@FountainheadConsultingGroup.com
Tags: Business Planning, entrepreneur, front end of innovation, innovation, invention, small business consulting, small business planning, start a business
