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Identifying your brand

A brand establishes, in your customer's mind, your product or service's worth and where it stands against all your competitors. It telegraphs what you offer, how good it is and how much better it is than your competition. Brand awareness adds confidence to purchasing decisions.

Successful branding follows a few key rules:

• clearly defined objectives
• is ubiquitous and consistent
• devotes enough resources to make an impact
• is positively focused
• focuses on quality, not price
• establishes a memorable, simple message to champion your brand
• uses consistent research to confirm success or failure

"You must know your competitors and know what they are saying, understand how you are different and whether you are differentiating yourself," says Leisa Gill, marketing director at the Leading Edge accounting firm of Lattimore, Black, Morgan and Cain PC in Nashville, Tenn.

Do you walk the talk? "Branding is more than a tag line or a logo—it's the essence of your organization. It's what you do today. It's a trust people put in you—an advantage or benefit that is a value for giving your trust and business to the company," she says.

There are two things you need to identify your brand, according to RCS's Simon:

1. Deep thinking to isolate your core values, followed by articulating those values in writing.
2. Market research and direct interaction with customers, clients, employees, prospects and the public.

If you're starting from scratch, you need to start with a mission statement. What are the values by which you will ask your employees to live? A mission statement is often one of the results of a strategic planning process.

Ask yourself: "What makes someone want to do business with me and only me? How do clients perceive me? How do prospects perceive me? What do I deliver to clients?"

Maybe your business has evolved over time and now you're looking for the marketing mix to put you over the top. You may be communicating too many things. Those things may not be conflicting, but they're incongruent, says Simon.

You will be successful if you listen to your customers. Today Citibank is no longer selling banking services, it is selling self-actualization, says Golden. "They're not selling checking and saving accounts. The new ads in the New York area basically say that he who dies with the most toys is still dead, so why not enjoy the journey while you're alive," she says, adding that is a very different message than "get your free toaster with our low-interest checking." "What Citibank is selling is a sense of how to handle your money today, a kind of medicine."

The bottom line to successful branding is to keep your message relatively simple, says Simon. "Disney is fun and family, Apple Computer is innovative, even iconoclastic thinking."

Build a brand from the inside, out

Before you launch into a new ad campaign or design new sales materials, you must first build or communicate your brand internally. "It's a matter of living that culture," explains Simon. "At Disney, everything you experience is an extension of its brand. They are dogmatic about their approach. They don't let any of their employees smoke or eat in public. All employees are referred to as 'cast members' since they have a role to play."

Branding begins with identifying attributes and making sure that those are expressed on all levels. "Those attributes are experienced by customers on every level—with the person who answers the phone, the people with whom they interact, the Web site. Does the experience on your Web site fulfill the brand promises? A lot of companies talk about convenience and efficiency, but you can visit their Web site and experience just the opposite," says Simon.

People understand that every experience with a brand either reinforces or detracts from it. "If what you say and what you do conflict, you're in big trouble," says Simon.

Both Revlon and L'Oreal make hair color. "It's the same blond bleach, but why is L'Oreal more expensive?" asks Golden. "It's because they've built the perception that those who value themselves are willing to spend a little more ('L'Oreal, because I'm worth it.')."

Many large corporations have understood consistently over the decades that they must do this well. Think of Quaker Oats, Kellogg's or Coca-Cola.

However, the importance of branding has now migrated down to the smaller companies who are able to reach many more customers through technology and who can compete on a larger level by going after pieces of larger companies. "Branding offers businesses a unified way to repeatedly talk about its products and services to all audiences," says Simon. And his company helps businesses implement their brand strategy.

"We don't develop their brand strategy, but we use the Web, interactive CD-ROM and video or DVD to communicate those brands," he says.

Professional services firms may have a specific level of expertise that they use to market their brand. For example, a law firm may specialize in contracts for car dealerships. That firm builds its brand as an expert to dealers by advertising in auto trade journals, attending trade shows and sending direct-mail brochures to that market.

"You're already putting out your brand personality, so you might as well get used to the idea. It's not this big, labor-intensive thing, although it can be. It's what clients say when you leave the room," says Golden.

So what are they saying about you? If you don't know, it's time to find out. e