Brand doctor, James Hammond, provides some timely tips on building a brand that will help you beat the downturn – and prosper
Whenever a recession strikes, the response from SMEs is predictable: they batten down the hatches. This usually means adopting a cost-cutting approach, trying to compete on price and hoping to stay in business long enough to see better times.
Sadly, the one thing that tends to gets neglected is one of their most important assets: their brand. Yet time and time again, research has shown that, in a downturn, a strong brand is the most resilient asset a company can own. For example, in the early 1990s, Nike’s focus on building its brand saw it emerge with nine times the profit it was making before the downturn began. Meanwhile the famous “Intel Inside” campaign began right in the middle of the recession, as Intel’s brand became the crucial element in the company’s growth.
Brand benefits
But it’s not just global companies who can stand out from the crowd because of strong branding. A powerful brand gives clear, tangible benefits to any size of business. During a recession, it can:
• Help maintain premium pricing opportunities.
• Encourage customer loyalty at a time when price-cutting strategies scatter the customer base.
• Attract new customers, as the strength of the brand proposition is more appealing to value-conscious customers.
• Motivate employees and increase their productivity as they see the results of an effective brand.
What’s more, by focusing on effective brand management, costs can be reduced as expensive marketing and promotional activities that offer little return on investment are scrapped.
What is a brand?
Firstly, we need to define a brand. It isn’t a logo, colour or mission statement. Whilst such elements can be important, they’re only part of what constitutes a powerful brand. The real meaning is the “total customer experience” – it’s the customers’ perception of your company, service or product, a perception that is so strong that it remains in their long-term memory, creating a preference for your brand over that of your competitors.
The key is to develop an experience that isn’t just a one-off event, but happens consistently every time customers do business with you.
With this in mind, let’s consider my low-cost, high-value, four-stage plan to make your brand stand out from the crowd.
It’s not just global companies who can stand out from the crowd – a powerful brand gives clear, tangible benefits to any size business
Stage 1: Create your ESP (emotional selling proposition)
A brand is, by definition, an emotional customer experience – not a rational one. It’s about how people perceive your brand – and perception comes about through emotion. Think about the Andrex puppy: there is no rational connection with toilet paper, but emotionally it keeps the Andrex brand ahead of its competitors.
In a recession, your ESP is crucial, because it’s the one connection with your customers that is uniquely yours and differentiates your business from the competition.
So, what emotional benefit are you offering your customers? This is often one of the hardest things for a business to determine, yet it is a vital brand element. Here’s one way of approaching it: make yourself a list of all the potential positive emotions a customer could have and decide which one is the most relevant for your company.
If you employ staff, get them involved in the exercise. Even call some of your satisfied clients and ask them what they like about doing business with you. Is it a feeling of pride in using your product or service (a typical emotion the owner of a BMW or Mercedes would experience, for example)? Or is it peace of mind, like a safety-conscious Volvo driver might feel? What about relief? Or satisfaction? Or excitement? Concentrate on only one emotion and use this to underpin and drive your brand.
Stage 2: Create your brand reflections
How do your customers get in touch with your business? Through your website? By email? Perhaps you or your staff call them or they call you?
Each time this customer contact takes place, it’s an opportunity to promote your brand in a consistent manner. These points of contact are what I call “brand reflections”, because they are very powerful times in which to demonstrate just how different you are to the competition by reflecting your brand values.
First, you need to define when you communicate to your customers through the three main phases of the buying cycle: before a sale, during a sale and after a sale. It’s unlikely that there will only be a single contact point within each phase. There’ll be in-bound brand reflections, where your customers are making contact with you, and outbound activity, where you are contacting them. But not every contact point will be as important as others.
So plot the most valuable brand reflections for you and your customers – the ones where concentration of effort will create the best brand opportunities to improve your customer experience.
Stage 3: Introduce a sensory experience to your brand reflections
We’re now ready to incorporate your emotional benefit into each contact point. How do you do this? Emotions are the result of perception. And perception, in turn, is something experienced by every customer through the five senses of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. All too often businesses focus purely on sight, the visual sense, churning out leaflets, brochures and flashy websites, and neglect the other four senses.
How, therefore, can you incorporate as many of the five senses into each brand reflection as possible? Branding is about details, so here is where you need to be creative and innovative. For example, if one of your main contact points is your website, can you include some sounds on it that are relevant to your emotional selling proposition – perhaps some downloadable MP3s that discuss aspects of your product or service, emphasising the emotional benefit? Or even some proud, satisfied customers giving testimonials extolling the virtues of your business?
If you have a busy reception area, how about offering your visitors innovative refreshments that are different from the typically unexciting tea and coffee options? Perhaps branded biscuits or sweets, special types of beverages or soft drinks – all of them aligned to the emotional benefit from your product or service.
Even if you rarely meet your customers face to face, you can still enhance your brand through the senses. Take packaging, for example. Do you merely send out your goods in a standard envelope or box? How about introducing a distinctive “touch” experience to the packaging through a tactile surface? Silky-smooth or sandpaper-rough – whatever your emotional benefit, there is a corresponding feel to it. Check with your printer or carton supplier what options are available.
Stage 4: Tell your story
Psychology tells us that we are literally hard-wired to experience the world around us through narrative – and our need to be inspired, excited and motivated by stories. Storytelling has been a lost art in our technology-led society. But the rise and success of social networks like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn demonstrates the increasing importance of storytelling to the public.
This is just as true for customers who are crying out for meaningful dialogue with companies. They don’t want to keep hearing about technical features or cold facts and figures. They want to hear emotive tales of what you – and your business – stand for.
So what’s your story? Why did you start your business? What drives you? Who was your inspiration? Any product or service can have an emotional benefit that can be communicated through compelling storytelling. There are historical accounts, alignment to social and environmental concerns, staff achievements: somewhere in your business is a story with a “wow factor” that will keep your customers interested and loyal to your brand for the long term.
Generate your emotion-based story, then tell it as often as you can. Send press releases to relevant media, write articles, send emotive newsletters to your customers and convey your story whenever the opportunity arises within your brand reflections.
Branding is about the heart
Remember that branding is about addressing the customer’s heart, not the head. And purchasing decisions are always made emotionally – with the heart. That’s why a brand is the most valuable asset any business can own.
Yes, we’re going through some tough economic times. But branding is a proven lifeline, whatever kind of business you run. So while your competitors may only be thinking about tightening their belts, why not strengthen your brand?
James Hammond, The Brand Doctor, has been a brand consultant for 30 years. He is author of the current international best-selling book, Branding Your Business, part of the Sunday Times Business Enterprise Series, published by Kogan Page, ISBN: 978-0749450731.