Tune in every Monday at 5:20pm to KPEL FM 105.1 on your radio or online at www.kpel1051.com for another installment of Brand Buzz. On this week’s episode of Brand Buzz we will be talking about how to harness the power of branding to sell.
One of the most important elements is credibility. If the brand identity is credibility based then the customer will not want to buy anywhere else. This is achieved through psychology and persuasion.
Credibility needs a stronger brand image. With a great brand identity then the credibility is instantly gained and now it’s just yours to lose.
If you would like additional information, please click here to download the free ebook and learn more about how to harnass the power of branding to sell.
The most important aspect of building a brand is establishing an emotional connection with the consumer. That comes from changing the conversation and telling a story that the consumer will feel while highlighting benefits they want, not from a list of features.
Feel free to contact us if you have questions for the show. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to receive the Razor Branding Blog either via email or reader to receive daily updates and information regarding branding.
We are starting a new series at Russo entitled Brandom Thoughts. Andy and Ashley will examine the lighter side of branding. Every Friday expect a new video and let us know what you think.
This video series will focus on one of blogs from earlier in the week, in this case, 8 Principles of Branding from Monday, and discuss it through a new perspective…a fish eye perspective.
Mostly, it just really makes us laugh when they make these videos, which they do whenever we aren’t looking, and we thought you would enjoy them also.
Tune in every Monday at 5:20pm to KPEL FM 105.1 on your radio or online at www.kpel1051.com for another installment of Brand Buzz. On this week’s episode of Brand Buzz we will be talking about the EIGHT PRINCIPLES OF BRANDING.
Be Distinct
Be First
Be Insightful
Be Reliable
Be Emotional
Be There
Be Smart
Be Conversational
Branding is the business buzz word for the past few years. What is it exactly? Why should you care?
Do you have Brand Advocates?
Are your consumers forming an emotional connection to your company and it’s products?
Who are your consumers? No, really who are they deep down? What are their wants and needs?
If you would like additional information, please click here to download the free ebook and learn more about how important branding is to the growth of your company and what you should do to get your brand in order.
The most important aspect of building a brand is establishing an emotional connection with the consumer. That comes from changing the conversation and telling a story that the consumer will feel and highlighting benefits they want, not from a list of features.
Feel free to contact us if you have questions for the show. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to receive the Razor Branding Blog either via email or reader to receive daily updates and information regarding branding.
This week we are looking at the five best ways to destroy your brand.
On Monday, we focused on Discount Sales. When a business discounts prices they position themselves as cheap instead of valuable and it will diminish the brand. The consumer is prevented from making an emotional connection and is forced to think of the relationship from a transactional point of view.
On Tuesday, we examined another great way to destroy the brand, cutting the budget. Often companies look to the marketing budget a place to make a first cut to improve the bottom line. However, this is only a short term fix and unfortunately a very short sighted one. Although, it is a great way to destroy the brand.
On Wednesday, we reviewed the need for authenticity. If a company is acting like they are something that they are in fact not, the consumer will know and will never trust the company. When companies make promises, it has to be based on an authentic point of differentiation.
On Thursday, we talked about thinking beyond advertising. The best way to destroy your brand is to think of it as only your logo or your product. Instead, you have to recognize your brand as your consumer’s emotional response to those things. Your brand isn’t a tangible item that is sold in a store. Your brand is a feeling that your consumers hold in their hearts.
Today we are talking about the brand promise. The 5th and best way to destroy your brand is to break your promise. Branding is an emotional relationship and consumers need reassurance they are making the right choices. If your marketing activities create mistrust by under-delivering on their expectations of your brand, consumers may quickly switch to a safer (a.k.a. less expensive) alternative.
So what are you promising? What is your Brand Promise?
Think about Fedex. Their promise is pretty clear. Deliver the world overnight. If they are consistently late and their deliveries start taking 2 or 3 or 4 days to arrive, what would happen? How would they fare in the marketplace?
Think about your business. What is the brand promise that you make? Do you keep it? Most importantly, does anyone care? Is your promise unique enough that it stands out? These are the best ways to destroy your brand. Now what?
Focus on your company and review these five branding busters. Do you need to make any changes? Do you have the emotional connection with your consumers that you need to grow your brand?
This week we are looking at the five best ways to destroy your brand.
On Monday, we focused on Discount Sales. When a business discounts prices they position themselves as cheap instead of valuable and it will diminish the brand. The consumer is prevented from making an emotional connection and is forced to think of the relationship from a transactional point of view.
On Tuesday, we examined another great way to destroy the brand, cutting the budget. Often companies look to the marketing budget a place to make a first cut to improve the bottom line. However, this is only a short term fix and unfortunately a very short sighted one. Although, it is a great way to destroy the brand.
On Wednesday, we reviewed the need for authenticity. If a company is acting like they are something that they are in fact not, the consumer will know and will never trust the company. When companies make promises, it has to be based on an authentic point of differentiation.
Today, we are talking about thinking beyond advertising. The best way to destroy your brand is to think of it as only your logo or your product. Instead, you have to recognize your brand as your consumer’s emotional response to those things. Your brand isn’t a tangible item that is sold in a store. Your brand is a feeling that your consumers hold in their hearts.
Branding covers all of the touch points between your business and your consumer, from your direct mail to your website to your environment…even your invoices and warranty. Every touch point is part of your brand - consider how changes in your company’s activities and structure may affect your consumers.
Companies who think about branding too narrowly, and ignore the other touch points, are missing the big picture. Once you recognize that the consumer owns the brand then you can connect with them in a place of their choosing. That is when social media becomes so impactful.
The quickest way to destroy your brand is to misunderstand what it is, how it works or how you can grow it.
This week we are looking at the five best ways to destroy your brand. On Monday, we focused on Discount Sales. When a business discounts prices they position themselves as cheap instead of valuable and it will diminish the brand. The consumer is prevented from making an emotional connection and is forced to think of the relationship from a transactional point of view.
On Tuesday, we examined another great way to destroy the brand, cutting the budget. Often companies look to the marketing budget a place to make a first cut to improve the bottom line. However, this is only a short term fix and unfortunately a very short sighted one. Although, it is a great way to destroy the brand.
Today, we review the need for authenticity. If a company is acting like they are something that they are in fact not, the consumer will know and will never trust the company. When companies make promises, it has to be based on an authentic point of differentiation.
All too often every company in the space is making the same promises about the “best service” or “best price” so the consumer can’t tell them apart. Those promises are so generic that there is nothing genuine about them.
Be authentic.
Figure out who you are and how you are better. Then, and only then, can you make an emotional connection with the consumer that will build their advocacy on your behalf. And that’s what you want. Your consumers using the power of their word of mouth connections to grow your business and build your brand.
This week we are looking at the five best ways to destroy the brand. Yesterday we focused on Discount Sales. When a business discounts prices they position themselves as cheap instead of valuable and it will diminish the brand. The consumer is prevented from making an emotional connection and is forced to think of the relationship from a transactional point of view.
Today, we will look at another great way to destroy the brand, cutting the budget. Often companies look to the marketing budget a place to make a first cut to improve the bottom line. However, this is only a short term fix and unfortunately a very short sighted one. Although, it is a great way to destroy the brand.
Business journals are filled with case studies of companies that have maintained or increased their marketing budget, especially during lean economic times. This has enabled them to maintain and then grow their “share of voice” within the market, which then leads to an increase in market share and top-of-mind brand positioning. When the market improves the company then experiences exponentially better growth.
When everyone is flourishing and spending, it is very hard for your company to break through that clutter and connect your message with consumers. When the competition is quiet, or when you can find a channel where they aren’t dominant, then your message can be heard without their noise interrupting you.
So if you want to destroy your brand, then be sure to cut your budget and spend what’s left in the same channels as your competition. If, however, you would like to grow your brand and improve the bottom line, you should invest in the relationship with your consumers. Invest when the competition isn’t spending. Invest where the competition isn’t spending. Most importantly, invest better than the competition.
You have to change the conversation so you aren’t saying the same thing everyone else is. When you say something better then you can be heard.
Focus your message on your authentic core competency which is relevant and beneficial to your consumer. When you are able to make an emotional connection with them then and only then will they become brand advocates for you.
We often focus on building brands. What organizations should do to ‘get it right’. But this week we will have a five part series on common mistakes that are made which actually destroy the brand.
Part 1 - Discount Sales
Not all advertising spending is beneficial. That probably seems contradictory. You might expect an agency to promote any and all advertising. You would think that we would believe as long as you are spending money on marketing and getting your message ‘out there’ that it will have positive effects.
Not true.
Advertising without a brand message or plan can be very detrimental. Advertising the wrong message can be downright fatal.
The biggest ‘wrong’ message? Quick sales.
All too often, organizations stray away from their brand message. Abandon it in favor of an ‘urgency’ campaign designed to generate cash flow. Sometimes it works. Usually it works too well.
Instead of building a brand and establishing a position in the marketplace that is better than the competition, all of a sudden the target consumer starts to see the product as ‘cheap’. Once that notion has entered the conversation, there is no going back.
In addition to a little bit of short-term cash flow, you now also have a reputation as being cheap. Even companies that have built their brand on being the affordable choice (i.e. Walmart) are spending their efforts building their brand, focusing on their core message and establishing a relationship with their consumer built on benefits (Save Money. Live Better).
Walmart abandoned the focus on cheap and saw their profits rise. Consumers don’t make purchases on rational thought. They make decisions based on emotion. That is why it is so crucial to establish an emotional connection. It is through this connection that you will truly build brand advocates. Don’t be the cheapest. Instead be the one they consider to be the best.
So one of the best ways to destroy your brand - cheapen it in the hearts and minds of your consumers.
Part 2 tomorrow - Budget.
image of Circuit City sales insert via Mad Magazine
How often do you say to yourself, or anyone around you that will listen, “If I could just teach them what we do and explain how it will make their life better, then they will buy it in a second.”
Do you think that if you could just educate them on the intricacies of your product and process then they will be convinced of your greatness?
Stop. Please. There are a number of reasons why your plan to educate the world won’t work. The biggest of which is that your consumer doesn’t care about you. They don’t care about your product. They are way too busy living their life and do not have the time or interest to care about you and your product.
The problem is this: no spreadsheet, no bibliography and no list of resources is sufficient proof to someone who chooses not to believe. The skeptic will always find a reason, even if it’s one the rest of us don’t think is a good one. Relying too much on proof distracts you from the real mission–which is emotional connection.
The emotional connection is the whole point. Stop trying to convince. No list of your features and really great data on your greatness is going to convince them. Focus on them. Talk to their imagination. Appeal to their heart. Establish the benefit to them. That emotional connection is stronger and better than any logic.
Businesses are facing tougher challenges than ever before. More competition from other businesses and more distracted consumers. Add to that the amount of control that consumers now possess and it puts companies, most companies at least, at the bottom of the pile.
So what should an organization do? There are literally thousands of opportunities to grow the brand. New technologies that can be embraced. Conversations that can be joined. Potential consumers that can be courted. Opportunities that can be investigated.
What is the first step?
Admitting that you have to change. And that is the scariest step of all. I sit in a lot of board rooms right now and listen to CEOs tell me that their industry is different. Their consumers are different. They either don’t see, or don’t want to see, that change is here and if they don’t adapt they will die.
I leave those meetings and wonder why they don’t see it. Why don’t they want to embrace the change? Why not start doing something differently and getting a different result?
“Good Enough”
They aren’t in enough pain yet. Their profits haven’t dropped to a low enough point yet. They aren’t compelled to do anything differently because it is still “Good Enough”.
Good enough is the enemy of great. Good enough is the beginning of a loss of brand equity. Good enough is what happens right before the profits start to slide.
Consumers aren’t interested in good enough. Consumers want you to work for their love and loyalty. They want to connect with you and they want to know you care enough to work for it. It’s like the early stages of dating. If you aren’t innovating, changing , looking for ways to do it better, then it’s like you stopped opening the car door, bringing flowers, and complimenting her. She will start feeling taken advantage of and will start looking for that attention somewhere else.
Yes, it used to be easier. But it’s not anymore. Start looking for ways to make your brand better than just “good enough”. Or your competition will come along and redefine your space. And then it will never be good enough again.
Razor Branding Blog
