Everyone wants to have their own “Brand”…one their audience can easily identify with and differentiate them. They want an icon, a slogan, a product, or something else that immediately triggers their company when they see or hear this in the market. But is that really what carries the most impact to a customer?
When there were fewer products and services, this made a lot of sense. Today, there are tens, hundreds, even thousands of choices in different product/service categories to choose from. Having a brand associated around this today is a difficult, if not impossible, battle to win…at least not without large sums of money to spend to manipulate the customers thinking.
Brands like “Kleenex” which created a brand based on a product many years ago and clearly owned the space doesn’t have this advantage today. When someone goes into their local drug store or Costco or grocery chain, do they absolutely have to find the Kleenex brand? Not any more…everyone knows the other generic brands are just as good and usually much cheaper. So how valuable is the Kleenex brand today?
It’s only valuable if PEOPLE ARE TALKING ABOUT IT.
Today, your Brand is far more valuable when people (customers and your desired audience) are talking about you…what you do…the experience you deliver…why it is so great to work with or buy from you. Having the most “recognized” name on TV or radio or in print advertising might work great for the company but it isn’t working for the customer audience. They are now able to shop you based on many factors today because of the prolific nature of the internet.
This means that while you might “push” your brand out to a mass audience, they are ignoring it today. They don’t need it “pushed” on them any longer because they can “pull” it to themselves when they are interested or in the market. When they are ready to make a purchase or begin doing their research they can “find you” easily. And what kind of research do they do?
Most customers (B2B or B2C) today will have completed 57% of the purchase evaluation and their decision before they every contact your company. And a predominant part of this research is coming from their social networks…not advertising or brand slogans. It comes from listening to what OTHERS ARE SAYING ABOUT YOU and your products and/or services. They are asking people they TRUST what they think and who they should be dealing with…this is the CONVERSATION that is happening you may not even know about.
Whatever they are saying is what your BRAND is today. If they say you are “red” and all your advertising says you are “blue”…you are red. It’s what the audience today says about you that determines your brand.
The real question today is how do you get the desired audience to know your brand and communicate the right message to others…this is a huge challenge for companies. But it can be done…and can be done very effectively. Without going into great detail in this post, allow me to give you some insights into how this can effectively work for your organization. There are two primary components you want to have working for you to communicate your brand effectively today…
- Your CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE has to ROCK…if it isn’t awesome, incredible, amazing, WOW, and memorable, it won’t capture their attention enough to talk about. However, if it is truly remarkable and memorable, customers are happy to share this with their friends and connections because they are truly blown away by how they were treated. Customers will take the time to talk about something “over the top amazing” but won’t talk about “great”…time to have a very specific strategy and plan to move to being remarkable and memorable.
- You need to COMMUNICATE, COMMUNICATE, and COMMUNICATE more than you have ever before about how you want them to see your brand. However, THIS IS NOT advertising and self-promotion…they will turn that off immediately. What you need to communicate is information that is INCREDIBLY HELPFUL to your desired audience so they see immediate value in how this will help them improve their lives or jobs. When you communicate this type of information in a way that they find very helpful, they will not only listen, they will start to understand more of who you really are. From the example above, if you write 100 blog posts talking about what it means to be “red” they will stop thinking of you as “blue” because you never talk about that…you talk about “red” so they learn this is who you are and what you are about. But the key is two words…HELPFUL and with HIGH FREQUENCY.
While there are other things you can do, if you just focused on these two areas, you would have a BRAND in the marketplace you want and that your customers could rave about and tell others. This is a critical step towards CUSTOMER MARKETING where your customers are part of your marketing team and help you in the marketing process (more on this in future posts).
The old way of BRANDING IS DEAD…the new revolution we are living in is all about the conversation, sharing with others, and word-of-mouth. Tap into these areas with your desired audience and you can not only establish the brand you want, you can become the recognized leader in this area by the one group that matters the most…your customers.
