Customers judge your brand in a split-second.
Yours and the other 3,000+ media messages they receive each and every day.
This new post will show you what they look for when they’re deciding whether to choose your brand or a competitor’s.
When you send a vanilla message for your brand, you’re telling a customer you can’t be bothered to clarify why you’re valuable or worth choosing.
Every detail about your brand needs to convey you’re the brand to solve the problems (or enhance the benefits) you’re getting paid to clarify, solve or simplify.
It’s painfully simple:
- A purchase happens. Or it doesn’t.
- Someone wants your product or service. Or they don’t.
Failure to compellingly convey your brand’s value and differentiation from the rest makes customers work at figuring out whether or not you’re the better value. An oversight that costs you customers and revenue.
That customer may politely tell you they’ll “think about it” and get back to you later.
But when you’ve left it to chance by ignoring the details, one thing happens:
They. Never. Return. To. Buy.
Your once-hopeful branding starts to erode, lacking the required punch to get noticed and the necessary meaning to penetrate and rise above the noise. Your brand ages right before your eyes, accumulating cobwebs and yellowing with age. Minutes, hours, days and weeks pass by.
This can only go on so long, especially if there is a need that’s eating away at your customers or potential customers. Or a burning desire they must fill. It could be an amazing treat to buy with their coffee. Or an anti-aging product to shave years off their looks. Or an energy drink to add more bounce to their step.
Why your brand isn’t an option.
Failure to build a brand that customers are loyal to is a death sentence for any company.
And an unclear brand story simply erodes your chances for repeat business, the foundation for success in any industry.
Until at long last, they choose another brand than yours.
The ugly truth: an amazing brand is not a luxury. It’s a necessity.
This is why branding is critical. Vital. Mandatory. Essential.
Many companies will take weeks, months or years to perfect their brand, spending valuable time, resources and finances on their “branding.”
Yet, it too often becomes an exercise in internal debates and intra-office political career steps — rather than a front-line assault on:
- reclaiming marketshare from the competition and
- obliterating outdated perceptions of what the brand stands for in the minds of existing and future customers.
If you had gotten your branding right, it would have meant:
- more sales
- more opportunities to expand those brand successes
- increased distribution with new and expanded channels
- less time wondering “who was right” (or wrong), and more time knowing what worked
In short, truly great branding means: more money, more opportunities, more successes and better (and more) brand insights.
This post walks you through the key steps to nail it.
Before you tweak another brand detail, read this.
Our biggest competition for a great brand is too often ourselves, our own failure to reach for something truly amazing, unexpected, fresh. Or being distracted by internal politics, agendas or debates.
Some may try to convince you that the brand is just another product, option or wannabe (yet it’s what clients and customers know and embrace). But that attitude is accepting defeat before you’ve really started. That’s business naivety, shortsighted thinking and branding suicide. (And anyone who tries to convince you that their opinion of your goals — branding or otherwise — is more valid than yours is not an ally nor your friend.)
All the freshness of your brand resides in your conviction, your willingness to stare down any notion (yours or anyone else’s) that you’ve got to shoot for anything less than awesome.
The point here is one of conviction. I’ve seen some of the best branding concepts presented with a “maybe this will…” type of presentation. That wouldn’t convince the most pliable of prospects.
Have the conviction. Remember a time when another was SO excited, maybe a son or daughter, niece or nephew, that their energy got you (simply from their contagious enthusiasm) super excited as well?
That is the key quality that will transfer to those you speak with.
Stay tuned for the next installment in Creating a Brand That Wins You Customers.
