It’s In Your Hands: Five Ways To Build A Top Brand
Monday, January 11th, 2010Btb Guest Author
Gerard Tannam
More and more, customers are making their choices based on brand.
So what are you waiting for?
When I talk with business-owners who’ve been slow to set about building their brand, I find their reluctance often comes down to a belief that brand-building is an expensive business. Of course, the big brands often spend a lot of money on creating their brands and even more telling the world about them but building your brand doesn’t need to cost the earth. In fact, given that the strength of your brand is based on the quality of your relationship with your customer, you can build a great brand using little more than ‘blood, sweat and toil’.
Sounds like too much hard work? It is, but here’s my five ways (each with a practical step attached) to build a top brand without putting your hand into your pocket:
1. Roll Up Your Sleeves That’s right; the first thing you’ve got to do is roll up your sleeves and get stuck in. Brand-building can be a messy business and you need to show your customer that you’re ready to get your hands dirty in order to make things work for them.
Practical Step: Schedule regular meetings with customers where there’s no sales agenda.
There’s no better way to show your commitment to your customers than meeting up with them to find out what’s going on in their lives. Of course, depending on your business, your meetings don’t have to be face-to-face. You can reach out to customers by ‘phone, email, SMS or twitter just as well.
2. Make Your Story Your Customer’s Story Now you’ve got to show your customers that you’ve been listening. It’s no good just listing your qualifications and achievements as so many of us do. You’ve got to link your story with the stories of your customers.
Practical Step: Put together case stories that show what you can do for your customer.
It’s very powerful when we can demonstrate to our customers what we can do for someone just like them. It’s not enough that we’re excellent at what we do; we must be able to show our customers how that relates to them right now. Good case stories offer a really effective way to do this.
3. Be A Big Fish In A Little Pond Too many business-owners make the mistake of battling it out in over-crowded marketplaces. Unless you can jump higher or shout louder than your competitors, there’s every danger that you’ll simply get lost in the crowd.
Practical Step: Make yours a category of one.
Find some aspect of what you do that immediately sets you apart from the competition. That might be something you specialise in, a unique service feature or guarantee, or a particular theme to what you do. The important thing is that you don’t make the make the mistake of fighting it out with bigger and better-armed competitors.
4. Build Your Own Network This isn’t simply about joining networks, although naturally enough you’ll need to do that too. This is about building your own system of vital links; that network of connections that links you to the important people in your marketplace.
Practical Step: Prompt word-of-mouth.
Don’t think of word-of-mouth as something that happens by accident. It’s up to you to design the network that will carry your message to those you want to influence. Of course, you’ll use existing networks wherever you can, but you need to be prepared to forge links between and beyond those networks.
5. Become An Expert Somewhat surprisingly, expertise is underrated when it comes to building brands. But it’s hugely attractive to customers, particularly in areas where that expertise can really make a difference between getting it right and getting it terribly wrong.
Practical Step: Publish your expertise.
Become the go-to expert in your field. This isn’t about being academic or technical. Work hard to build your expertise and then give it away freely to those who are open to it. Customers are rarely tempted to take things on themselves; when it comes down to it, they’d much prefer to have an expert take care of things for them.
Over To You: It really is over to you now. Put these five ways to work for you in building your brand and keep me posted about how you get on.
Gerard Tannam has long been fascinated with brands and how they work, rest and play. This fascination has taken him from his philosophy studies in Dublin to Asia where he worked with brands including the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Remy Martin, Cathay Pacific, Prudential, MTV and Chanel. More recently, he set up Islandbridge where his clients include Maldron Hotels, Lee Valley Clothing, Children First and Aussie Ice. Gerard is a regular contributor to discussions on branding in both Ireland and overseas and offers a Brief Word on Brands on The Persuaders radio programme and podcast. He writes regular features: The Blend on the implications of branding for hospitality and tourism and The Pitch on branding for SME’s. He is also a frequent visitor to the Irish Management Institute, Dublin City University and Dublin Institute of Technology where he presents on brand innovation. Gerard set up Islandbridge in 2004.
Engaging with people is the fundamental first step towards creating person to person relationships. Relationships equal more in business; way too much talk now focuses on the venue, tool or technology – when really these are all secondary to the simple act of SAYING HELLO…. So whether it is making a face to face introduction, picking up the phone, asking a question, leaving a comment on a blog or RTing a tweet – remember the real power lies in DOING rather than the talking about it.
Listening is probably our most powerful sense, yet so few of us use it well. We often pretend to listen rather than actually listen. Listening requires effort and concentration but it is worth its weight in gold. Think about it! Through listening we can HEAR what our customers want, where our markets are, where opportunities exist for us, how we can innovate and ultimately how you can be successful.
All of mankind greatest achievements have come from us working together. From leaving Africa, to building the pyramids and putting a man on the moon, these achievements serve to constantly remind us – that together we will always be greater than the sum of our parts. Technologies serve to create new exponential opportunities for us to realise our collective potential. All we need to do to get there is reach out to one another.
Celebrity culture now infests our weaker minds; it’s like a drug that threatens to deceive the masses. A lack of genuine leaders has created a gap in a market where people are desperate for something to follow. The real power of influence is in what you do with it, not in how much you can eat. If bestowed with leadership, become a real leader rather than just another leadership abuser, because they are ten a penny.
