I get it. You want to move fast. You’ve put your company’s marketing last on your to-do list and suddenly realized you need to do it NOW.
First conversations with our prospects are enlightening. Nearly everyone goes straight to marketing without mentioning brand. In our world, marketing follows branding.
Your brand is the foundation. I’ll say it again in a different way: your brand is foundational to your company. It’s who you are, communicated to those you want to do business with.
You shouldn’t skip building a foundation for your company any more than you should start framing up a house on bare ground.
Brand is the Foundation
Your brand, the foundation, determines the architecture of your message. The elements of brand are:
- Brand Core (The Why)
- Brand Positioning (The Where & For Whom)
- Brand Personality (The How)
- Brand Identity (The Look & Language)
Put more simply, you must understand and communicate your company vision, values, personality, and promise. I’ll dive into all that other stuff in a future post.
Market without communicating your brand, and you’ll end up competing on price, and by default, put your company in competition with a bunch of other foundationless companies promoting hollow offers to anybody. And you don’t sell to “anybody,” you sell to people with specific wants and needs. And those people need to trust you…and they’ll know they trust you by understanding the elements of your brand.
Time for the Apple cliché
I understand that mentioning Apple at this point is more than cliché. But there’s a reason they’re one of the most profitable companies in the world. They’ve spent untold time, effort, and money to build a brand that billions of people across the globe understand and love. They’ve done it right. It’s not up for debate.
Let’s do some brand math here:
Apple’s Brand + Apple’s Products = unparalleled success
When Apple launches a new product, people believe it will be awesome. Apple has built brand equity over four decades and they’ve never stopped. Every Apple marketing effort you’ll see is anchored by their brand.
I could go on and on about Apple…but you probably get it because Apple has implanted what they believe in your head, too, whether you’re a fan or not.
As for me, I’d pay $1,000 more for an Apple computer than a Dell or any other brand. My experience has told me it’s a good choice.
Ok, enough Apple fan-boy talk, let’s get back to YOUR brand.
You can’t build a product or service that will make everyone happy
Not everyone wants the same things. I know people who wouldn’t be caught dead with an Apple product. They have their reasons, I have mine.
There is a lesson here: YOU CANNOT MAKE EVERYONE HAPPY.
If you do try that fool’s errand, NOBODY will be happy. You MUST differentiate yourself. You have to turn some buyers off. There are some problems you simply will not solve. There are services you will not offer. There are products you will not manufacture.
I hate Swiss Army knives. They suck. 99.999% of the time I need a knife, I’d never consider a Swiss Army knife. They’re built to do it all…and they suck at almost everything. It’s not a good knife, file, or screwdriver. It’s the last option.
And if you try to do it all, you will be everyone’s last option too.
Design follows function
Still with me? If you’re trying to do it ALL, you’ll do nothing well. You must express what you will and won’t do and your brand is the foundation of that message which will ultimately attract or repel prospective customers.
I’m a Toyota 4Runner guy. Why? They’re built to last 30 years in a third-world country. You can abuse and fail to maintain them and they defy the treatment. They are widely regarded as the most reliable automotive brand in the world. I’ve put 210,000 miles on my 2012 4Runner Limited, and it works like the day I bought it in 2013.
I don’t give a flip about a Range Rover. Give me a 4Runner all day, any day. I’d rather be on the road than in the repair shop.
Is Range Rover successful? Drive down Franklin Road any day of the week and the answer is an unequivocal YES! You’ll see plenty of them…at least the ones that don’t have a mechanic crawling under them trying to figure out what went wrong this time.
Is Toyota successful? YES! The point here is Toyota and Range Rover have planted their flag in the proverbial brand ground. And when they…here’s the money shot…are marketing their products…they each know who they are and who they serve with their products.
Let’s land the plane
We can’t successfully market your product or service with an undefined brand.
OK, actually, that’s not true. We CAN, but it won’t work very well. You’ll attract the wrong leads and spend a lot of money in the process.
Here’s one more real-world example: One of our newest clients, Nashville Dip Pools, builds small pools. That’s it. They won’t build you an Olympic-size pool, but they’ll refer you to someone who will. Why? They don’t build big pools. They stay in their lane because they have defined their brand (with our help) can be wildly successful marketing to the people who want and need a small pool.
Be like Nashville Dip Pools and define your brand!