Welcome back to the Brand Boost Blog. Today we are talking about building a brand that will support your small business growth.
Branding is a buzz word these days. It is thrown around on social media like a bone to a hungry dog. Yet, much of what is being said about branding isn’t what branding is.
Influencers tell us that branding is what makes our business “look pretty.” Or, branding is a marketing or advertising strategy. Others say that “the brand” is what we, the owner, say it is. But none of these are correct. In the midst of building our businesses it can be downright confusing. This confusion can cause us to ignore one of the most powerful business growth tools we have.
Branding isn’t Your Business
While branding isn’t your business, creating a brand should be your focus. Your business involves your products and services. It is about your bottom line. You probably already have your business in place. But are you focusing on the deeper, more sustainable connector of your business with your customers that will actually lead to growth?
At the core, a brand is the way customers think about your business. It is what they think about before making a purchase from you or a competitor. This perception is formed through each experience a customer has with your business. As small business owners, we have a tendency to get so caught up in what we think we are providing we don’t take note of what our customers are truly seeing or feeling when they experience our brand.
Brand Boost Challenge: How do you hope customers are experiencing your business? What words or feelings would you want customers to use when describing their experience with your brand?
Take time to review what customers are really saying. Use comments or reviews from social media. Send out surveys to customers or run a brand audit. Identify areas of misalignment and make a plan to course correct.
Building Trust To Build Your Brand
We all want to buy from people we trust. I remember the early days of Instagram marketing. So many accounts offering “too good to be true” deals usually ended up “too good to be true.” (Anyone else get sucked into the Instagram scams?). As small business owners, we want our customers to trust what we offer. We want to go beyond delivering a product to delivering a promise.
Consider this, gaining a new customer typically costs 5 to 25 times more money than retaining an existing customer. Those numbers are staggering. When most of us are already boot strapping our way through each day, spending double for something can be make or break. This is why cultivating trust with your customers is so important.
Building trust is building a brand. When customers perceive that they can trust your business, they have begun to build your brand in their mind.
No one wants to be untrustworthy, but without a clear, consistent experience mistrust is often what we are communicating to our customers. Inconsistency creeps in when we fail to keep our promises, post inconsistently, lack cohesive messaging, or lack a clear position in our market. Mistrust also arises when we are inconsistent in our brand visuals using a different logo, color scheme, or typography for different touch points.
Brand Boost Challenge: Evaluate your consistency. Are you keeping your promise to your customers? For instance, if you promise fast, reliable service. Is that what your customers are experiencing at every purchase, in every touch point? When you evaluate your promise, make sure that the words you are using are authentic to your brand. Don’t promise something because it sounds good or seems to be the “buzz” in your industry.
Are customers experiencing your brand consistently across all of your touch points? (website, social media channels, advertisements, etc?). Assess both your branding and the overall experience. Again, if you are promising fast, reliable service, ensure your website is optimized for fast loading on every type of device.
Being Different Is Being A Brand
For most of human history, people bought goods they could not produce themselves locally. They bough from farmers, small, family-owned shops that were located in their own community.
Today, in our global economy, it is not uncommon to source goods from all over the world the world. Thus, the options of where to purchase goods and services has grown exponentially. As small to medium sized business owners, we aren’t just competing with the shop across the street, we are competing with the shop on the other side of the world. And, to top that off, we fight “choice overload,” the stress our customers feel over making a purchasing decision.
To effectively compete we have to understand our difference to grow our small businesses. We have to be able to articulate what our brand is, the value it provides to our customers, and why it matters. Asking ourselves what makes our business, goods, or services unique among the market we are in.
For example, I have been a Canon camera user for decades. I began photographing during high school. My passion has always been to photograph people. Canon is known for their color science. Canon generally delivers softer skin tones and a more flattering contrast. That differentiation is what stood out to me making a Canon camera an easy choice.
Brand Boost Challenge: Think about the unique, one-and-only that you bring to your customers. It doesn’t have to be complicated. What value does that bring to your customers? Why does it matter? Write the answer to these questions down. Live with them, test them, refine them until it is authentic and true!
Branding is a Growth Strategy
Aligning your customer experience, creating consistent communication, and identifying you uniquely bring value to your customers are powerful tools to grow your brand and your business. When we invest in these tools we connect with our customers on a deeper level. We create a place where our customers want to offer their loyalty, and eventually become our advocates.
There is no shortcut in the branding process. Remember, we are dealing with the perception of other people. We can’t just throw a few Reels or carousels out there and call it a brand. We must invest. And, we must invest in building trust. A decade or so ago, they would have called it building a reputation. It isn’t hard, but it is work. It is work that ultimately becomes your best growth strategy.
