I’m fascinated by branding. Perhaps it’s because I worked for two large consumer goods companies, Pepsi & Kraft Foods, where brands are what they live and die for.
But, branding in the world of consumer goods is very different than what you or I should do to build the brand of “You”.
A good to place to start, if we’re going to create a branding strategy, is to define what we mean by “branding”.
Here’s how Entrepreneur.com defines it: “Your brand is your promise to your customer. It tells them what they can expect from your products and services, and it differentiates your offering from that of your competitors. Your brand is derived from who you are, who you want to be and who people perceive you to be.”
That last sentence is particularly important and underscores one of the primary reasons why so many branding strategies just don’t gain much momentum.
People focus on the wrong stuff.
Here’s what I mean.
If the goal of the branding strategy is to become very well known by those who can hire you or refer you business, then the name of your company, your logo, website banner, the colors you choose for your marketing materials, becomes secondary.
What? The name of my company is “Secondary”? Bear with me-I’m not saying it doesn’t have value, I’m merely suggesting that you need to focus your efforts elsewhere.
Quite frankly, you just don’t have the marketing muscle and the financial resources to imprint a new name, or a logo onto the consciousness of your market. The last company to do that was Accenture, and estimates are that they spent over $200 million to do so. (Plus they had you-know-who as their celebrity endorser.)
So does that mean that attempting to brand yourself and your company (and I’m using the separate terms “yourself” and “your company” deliberately) is a fool’s errand? Not at all.
Rather, what I’m suggesting is that you approach branding from a different perspective. Remember the last sentence of the definition: “Your brand is derived from who you are, who you want to be and who people perceive you to be.”
A branding strategy has two distinct components. The story about the company and the story about the person behind the company. It’s the stories that get remembered, not the logo, not the name, not the font…the stories.
It’s a two-pronged strategy.
First are the stories about your company. These would include the stories about the problems you solve. Your case studies. Your successes. IMPORTANT… Remember that these need to be actual stories. Not three paragraphs which give a bare bones problem/result summary. Nobody’s going to remember those. And that’s what branding is all about-getting remembered by those who matter.
Flesh them out. Tell them in an interesting way. Make the reader or listener want to know what happened. If you engage me, not only will I remember you, but I’m also likely to tell your story to others.
Ted Irwin is a financial planner in St. Louis. He told me that his referrals went from 3 a month, to over a dozen. For him, that’s a huge jump. What did he do differently?
First, I’ll tell you what wasn’t responsible.
It wasn’t any new system, software, social media or marketing method. Ted gets almost all his business from speaking.
The change was that Ted shifted from telling audiences what he did, to sharing stories about his clients. Their hopes. Fears. Frustrations. How he helped. That got him remembered. That got his name passed along. That’s what quintupled his referrals rate.
That’s branding.
But it’s only the first part.
Back once again to the definition, “Your brand is derived from who you are, who you want to be and who people perceive you to be”.
The second area (and personally I think that this is the most important) is creating a brand around you. How you got into the business, how you experienced the pain your clients face, what you’re like as a person.
Judy McDonald is a HR consultant outside of Los Angeles. She’s been in business for 12 years and had by her own admission a practice that was, “OK, but not great.”
Her best year was 2009.
2009? Wasn’t that the year all the financial implosion occurred? When the unemployment rate went through the roof? When companies cut back on spending on anything deemed non-essential?
That was her best year?
It turns out that Judy made a shift in her marketing and branding strategy. She says, “I remember one thing you told me that you can’t out-McKinsey, McKinsey. If you’re not a big firm there’s no point in trying to be perceived as something you’re not. So I decided to take the opposite approach. I embraced my ‘smallness’ which meant that I started telling the Judy McDonald story.”
“Turns out that it resonated with people. HR executives at some very large companies liked my eclectic background as a former troubled teen, social worker and eventual leadership coach. It’s a unique story, that only I can tell, and it breaks through the clutter of all the ‘me-too’ solution providers that I compete against.”
“You wouldn’t think that a multi-billion dollar aerospace company would select me and my programs when they had the pick of all the large mega-firms in my space. But they did. And when I asked them why, they simply responded, ‘At the end of the day, we hire a person not a company.’”
Branding doesn’t need to be complex nor does it have to be expensive. If we remember that ultimately it’s all about being remembered by those who matter, then the strategy shifts from logos, fonts and image; to stories.
Well told stories about both your company and yourself.
That’s what gets you known. That’s what builds your brand.
Food for thought.
Mark
Related Links
Coaching on Developing your Stories
The Best Self-Study Marketing Program in the Universe (seriously)
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