Many small business owners I talk to already understand that branding is essential to their business, but a surprisingly high number of them don’t really know why. Owners often recognize the link between successful businesses and strong branding and aspire to build a brand that emulates similar success for themselves. Business owners also often understand that branding is not just a logo or how their business is perceived externally. The problem with branding is that it’s misunderstood by many Business owners. Branding is the heart beat of the business as your brand is where your business is derived from.
In order to be successful in building your brand, you must first understand it’s a way of defining your business to yourself, your team and your external audiences. It could be called the business’ “identity”, but only on the understanding that it embodies the core of what the business is and its values, not just what it looks and sounds like. Customers of all sorts of businesses are so savvy today that they can see through most attempts by companies to gloss, spin or charm their way to sales.
To create valuable, sustainable customer relationships, great brands don’t sell customers on contracts—they seduce them with connections. Impactful, memorable, emotional connections lead to true brand loyalty.
First, it is imperative to understand that customers connect emotively because they share the same values and beliefs of a brand it typically leads to higher sales and better brand differentiation. It also leads to loyalty, advocacy and can even protect your price in times when competitors rely on promotional discounts to drive sales. It can also give you the ideal platform from which to extend your offering or range. Stop a minute and think about what happens each year with super bowl advertising. Think about all the hype that centers around brand connectivity to the target audience. See for yourself: A real emotional connection
How to Establish an Emotional Connection with your customers:
1. Ground your brand identity in emotional values that set you apart from the competition and resonate with your consumers. Service testimonials and product features should be used to support those values.
2. Give long-term customer relationships priority over short-term sales.While this is a widely accepted notion, the pressure to demonstrate immediate return on investment and the traditional managerial imperative to reach for top-line revenue goals lead companies to put sales ahead of relationships. That is a ‘No-No’ in today’s business climate. Business owners and thought leaders need to resist the urge to chase the sale, and their best defense is a firm commitment to their brand identity and educating the client on the ‘value-proposition’.
3. Use your brand—not product categories—to determine your business scope and scale. Your focus should be on creating deeper emotional bonds with customers. It is these bonds that should drive service-product innovations and brand extensions.
4. Perpetually ask and answer: “What business are we really in?” This is really important. Mixed, or not clear brand messaging creates consumer confusion. As positive message example that I remember growing up and still exists today:
Virgin America isn’t in the business of selling flights. Its business is making good friends during relaxing, luxurious, and affordable experiences. With this level of commitment to making an emotional connection, Virgin, like other great brands, continuously redefines consumer expectations and challenges the business norms of its industry categories.
Great brands have the same business goals as most companies do: long-term customer loyalty, retention, and satisfaction that generate a continuing revenue stream from existing customers. But great brands achieve their goals by forging personal and meaningful bonds with customers. An emotional connection is the most powerful switching cost.
Question: What emotional connection do you make with the little boy with the watering can?
Steven Cohen, Principal of GreenMark Consulting Group is a business management and operations consultant, mentor and coach with more than twenty-five years of landscape/snow industry experience. Steven has an extensive background in managing cross-functional business operations, business strategy and market growth projects. He prides himself as being both an analytical and a conceptual thinker who effectively partners with business owners to assess opportunities, facilitate strategic decisions, and drive successful implementations. GreenMark Consulting Group specializes in helping growth-oriented companies see through challenges and map out operational and growth strategies.
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