Build Your Brand: It’s your competitive advantage
August 3, 2009 6:22 pm Business Strategies, MarketingGuest Contributor: Jane Toohey
A great brand can set your company apart, give you a competitive advantage and encourage loyalty from your customers and staff. In current times, it is even more important! Small business owners can be forgiven for being confused about where all this fits with growing their business and getting leads in the door. The most important thing to realise is that the brand is much more than a logo, it’s:
- The complete look and feel of all your company’s communications material.
- How customers think and feel when they hear your company’s name, or see your company’s vehicle or advertising material.
- What customers, staff and other stakeholders expect of your company and say about it.
- What you promise the market and how you position your company’s products and services.
- About the way you run your company and the way you communicate with others about it.
- In the integrity and consistency in all of your company’s dealings.
Brand is something marketers go to University to study, but as a small business owner, you don’t have time to head back to school. What you do need is a basic understanding of branding so you can start applying the principles to your business, and often someone you can trust to manage it.
Virgin, QANTAS, Bonds, Volvo, IBM, Bunnings, Nudie. Very different companies, yet all sit well in the same sentence because of their strong brands. Virgin and QANTAS are in the same industry, they provide people with flights. Yet how you think about each company will vary widely. Maybe when you think: QANTAS: Australian, safe, trustworthy, stable, more expensive and Virgin: economical, people’s champion, fresh, maverick, Richard Branson.
Both of these companies have spent millions of dollars getting you to think this way. But just because you don’t have millions to spend doesn’t mean you can ignore developing your brand.
The strength of a brand for a small business can be increased with some simple actions:
- Define who you are talking to, profile them and really get to know their needs and wants.
- Match your products and services to the right people, to the people you want to sell to.
- Define what they are looking for and where they look for it.
- Make sure your products and services can be found where they are looking!
Your business and your brand are the same thing, so focusing on your brand helps focus on the direction of the business. Brand is not just how you advertise and the way you communicate about your business, it’s the way customers actually feel about it based on the way you are running it, and in comparison to your competitors.
Getting your brand right or reinvigorating a stale brand can set your business on the path to success. Start focusing on it now and, if you are juggling too many hats, find a good partner to manage it for you!
