Your Brand, Don't Ask Me, Ask Your Customers!

What is the single biggest financial asset your business has? Every company has one, even if you don’t think you do. You won’t see it listed as an asset in your balance sheet but it underpins the value of your operations more than anything else you’ll find listed. What is it? Your Brand.

Where did I leave my brand…?

For something so fundamental to business success (my Serious Business Growth Fundamental Rule Number Four in fact) why do we often find our brands so hard to define? Part of the difficulty in pinning down a brand is what makes it so powerful in the first place – its all-encompassing nature. Your brand is everywhere you go, everything you say, every person you employ.

Your business exudes your brand Out of every pore.

Your brand is alive in every customer “touchpoint”, the way you greet clients, the way you fulfill orders, your website usability and more:

• When your receptionist answers the phone, that’s your brand. When did you last call your own office? What does the way you are greeted say about your brand values?
• How your truck drivers behave on the highway, that’s your brand. Have you ever seen a dirty FedEx truck?
• How your sales people dress, that’s your brand.
• How your product or service performs, that’s your brand.
• Your packaging, that’s your brand.

Control freaks look away now

The other reason our brand can be so hard to describe in monetary terms is that we don’t really own our brand or have final sign-off on it: our customers do. Of course we can develop our logo, design our store, write our script, improve our service and so on. We can use all our marketing know-how to shape and influence how our brand is perceived, but ultimately our customers decide what our brand actually means to them. If you’d like to see my definition of branding and understand how it fits into my Six Fundamental Rules of Business Growth, send an email to info@jacksims.com.

Customers decide what we are

When they buy our stuff, when they recommend us to a friend, when they complain or rave about us to their spouse or when they read a story about us in the press. Customers own our brands and they decide what it represents. All we can do is give them our best. And here’s another branding truth you might not like: consumers may shop intellectually, but they purchase emotionally. Emotions are a lot harder for us to measure, understand and influence so branding just got even harder!

Most marketing stinks!

Since your brand is the single biggest financial asset that you or your company has, you probably want to treat it right. But if you want to achieve, sustainable business growth, there is one thing that you should never delegate to someone else, and that’s your marketing. Most marketing stinks! And after founding and running the largest marketing agency in the country, I should know. To avoid falling into the worst traps, email me for a copy of my “Top 15 Marketing Mistakes” and save yourself some pain!

For more on Branding and my Six Fundamental Rules for Serious Business Growth, visit www.jacksims.com.