positively need to develop and manage a strong brand image for the following reasons:
✔ People buy your service based entirely on their belief in your brand promise. People need to have faith in you, your ability, and your reputation before they decide to commit their business.
✔ Before signing on the dotted line to purchase a service, customers need to believe that their expectations will be met. If they know nothing about you or lack confidence in the quality of your service, they’ll take their business elsewhere.
Examples of globally recognized service brands include Google, eBay, H&R Block, Charles Schwab, and FedEx. For examples of local-level service brands, think of your region’s leading law firm, best hair salon, most innovative homebuilder, or most trusted medical clinic. Each earned its reputation by building a clear identity and consistently conveying a believable promise that people trust in while they wait for the purchased service to be performed and their high expectations to be met.
Business or corporate brands
Many large companies and corporations build product or service brands in addition to their business brands. (The section later in this chapter titled “Brand Architecture 101” describes how business and product or service brands relate to each other.)
Procter & Gamble, for example, has a corporate brand in addition to a portfolio of consumer brands. On a smaller scale, you probably can think of a local land developer that builds product brands for each new residential community in addition to a brand for the land development company that holds the individual brands.
Table 2-1 summarizes how product or service and business brands differ from and complement each other.
Table 2-1 Comparison of Business Brands and Consumer Brands
If you build only one brand – and that’s the advice we give to any business with limited marketing expertise or budget – build a business brand because business brands accomplish the following:
✔ Lead to awareness, credibility, and good reputations
✔ Pave a smooth road for product introductions
✔ Inspire employees
✔ Attract the interest of job applicants, investors, and business reporters
✔ Contribute to customer preference for your products and services, often accompanied by a willingness to pay more for the association with a leading, high-esteem business
Branding individuals (namely, yourself)
Individual brands are a hot topic and the focus of Chapter 4. They come in two types: personal brands and personality brands.
✔ Personal brands reflect personal reputations. They differentiate individuals by creating awareness of who they are, what they stand for, what they do best, and how they contribute to the world around them. By developing your personal brand, you establish yourself for your expertise, enhance visibility, develop preference, gain influence, and power success toward your personal goals. You prepare yourself to take every opportunity to make a great first impression.
✔ Personality brands are personal brands gone big-time. They’re individual brands that are so well-known that they not only become celebrities (think Oprah, Kobe Bryant, Donald Trump, and, like ’em or not, any of the Kardashians) but also create significant value when associated with products or services (for example, think of George Foreman, David Beckham, Beyoncé, LeBron James, and a long list of other celebrities who launch or endorse product brands). But personality brands aren’t exclusively for the uber-famous and ultra-rich. For example, community leaders become local personalities whose endorsements of projects or fundraising campaigns turn otherwise obscure efforts into overnight successes.
Whether you aspire to be a successful job applicant, a sought-after speaker, or a star in your community or industry, start by building a personal brand. Chapter 4 gets you started. Then look into Susan Chritton’s book Personal Branding For Dummies, 2nd Edition (Wiley) for in-depth guidance.
Branding starts before most brand-builders even know it. As soon as people form an opinion about you or your business, product, or service – perhaps based on real-world or online encounters you don’t even realize are happening – they form the basis of your brand image in their minds, which is where brands live. Branding is the process that aligns the opinions people hold about your brand with the image you want them to believe.
The path from brand essence to esteem
This section covers major branding steps and where to turn in the upcoming chapters for step-by-step branding advice.
Step 1: Decide what you’re going to brand
Are you branding a product, a service, a company, or an individual? If the distinctions are a bit blurry, flip back to the section in this chapter titled, “So, What Do You Want to Brand?”
As part of your decision about what you’re going to brand you need to decide if the brand you’re developing will be your one-and-only or if it will live alongside or under the umbrella of other brands in your organization. The upcoming section on brand architecture helps you plot, plan, and decide the relationship between your business and your brand or brand.
Step 2: Do your research
When you’re clear about what you’re branding, the next step is to analyze your offering and the market in which it will compete. Think of this as your discovery phase, which is comprised of two major steps:
1. Find out everything there is to know about your market.
Begin by researching your prospective customers – who they are, where they are, and what motivates their buying decisions. Then analyze your competition to discover what solutions already exist in the marketplace and exactly how the offering you’re branding is different and better.
2. Find out everything there is to know about your product or service.
You need to know what makes your offering unique, what attributes make it excel over competing alternatives, and how it solves your customers’ wants or needs.
Flip to the first pages of Chapter 5 for help with this fact-finding mission.
Step 3: Position your product or service
Positioning defines how you’ll differentiate your brand and how you’ll slot it into an available space in the market and in customer minds.
Determining your brand’s position is an essential early step in the branding process because people will make mind space for your offering only if you can convince them, in a split second, that you provide unique solutions to problems or needs that aren’t already being addressed by competing solutions.
To determine your market position, follow these four steps:
1. Determine which distinct and meaningful consumer needs or desires only your product or service addresses in the marketplace. Don’t try to take an already established position away from a competitor unless you have the budget, expertise, and time to do so.
2. Communicate your point of difference.
3. Win a unique position for your offering in the market and in the consumer’s mind.
4. Perform so well that no competitor can compete against or unseat your position.
Chapter 5 takes you on a step-by-step walk through the positioning process, including how to locate your market position, how to communicate your position, how to win your position in your consumers’ minds, and how to