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Your Brand is Born in the 'Expenses Column'

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Today, we live in a ‘commoditized’ world. No matter how great you think you are at producing whatever it is you do, there’s always someone else (or soon will be) doing pretty much the exact same thing for pretty much the exact same price. There are SOME exceptions to this rule, but, generally speaking, this is life in the 'information age.'

It used to be you could invest time and money into developing a product that was truly superior--and get noticed for it. Advantages due to product or process superiority are hard to come by these days because once Company A makes a gain, companies B, C, D… and Z are quick to follow suit. Creating and keeping a competitive edge in terms of a ‘better product’ has become damn near impossible.

Does that mean quality does not matter?

NO! Quality still matters. It’s just that today’s customer EXPECTS a high quality product from EVERYBODY. High quality is a given – why on earth would anybody spend money with you without it?!

So, if you want to build your company into one with staying power in spite of our ‘commodotized’ world, being purposeful about your company’s brand is the only way to survive.

Many times I am asked, “how does one build a brand?”

This is a great question because it tells me, at the very least, you care about building a brand for your company. Building a brand in today’s world is not accomplished by overwhelming the public with advertisements and quippy messages.

Today, you have to be willing to spend time developing what your company stands for--meaning your position (and don’t say ‘quality’ because… do I need to remind you?).

Answer these questions:

WHO are you for?  (hint: if you’re for ‘everybody’, you’re for nobody)

WHY are you for them? What’s your story? Why did you decide to connect with these people vs. others?

WHAT is the main reason people should do business with you over other businesses offering roughly the same thing at roughly the same price? (this MUST be unique and please, don’t say ‘quality’!)

HOW do you want people to mentally categorize your company in their minds? This is important to consider because the human brain wants to categorize EVERYTHING--and once your company is "categorized," you're in for the long term--but it's not an easy task to accomplish.

When I say, “safe car”, what name pops into your mind? That ‘category’ is a mental position and your brain has neatly stored a name there. Think real hard – how many more names has your brain stored for that exact same category? 1 more? 2 more? 3? Not very many, right? 

Now think about the unique category your product fills-- and if another product is already in that space, forget it. Don’t think for one moment you’re going to get the human brain to ‘unseat’ a name it already has for an existing category. Ain’t gonna happen!

In summary…

Once you define the "who, why, what, and how" for your company, then everything you do should be measured against that. And, I mean everything--from which vehicles to purchase for your fleet, to which CRM software to go with, to which napkins you put out at your tables (if you are a restaurant). 

And, quite frankly, you'll only be safe if you always ask yourself, “will this course of action support our goal of being known as the [put your Position here]?”

When you take this attitude towards your business, it’s easy to see how your brand isn’t created from ‘cost of goods sold’, but rather from the ‘expenses column’!

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