Business Owners: Make Your Brand More Valuable and Reap the Rewards

Assuming that you're truly delivering your brand promise and doing so consistently, a more valuable brand can provide these benefits:

If you choose to sell your company, chances are you'll get a higher price for it.
More valuable brands can charge higher prices for products and services, generating more profit. This is a real boon — imagine not having to engage in price wars!
You'll have a loyal fan base that will spread the word among their friends, family and social networks about how great your brand is and how it helps them, leading to more sales. (The reverse is also true. Don't deliver on your promise and they'll spread bad news even farther and wider, faster.)
If you make a mistake, you'll be forgiven if you make it right (by delivering on your promise) quickly, graciously and with a smile. This can create more brand loyalty and even increase sales as the customer shares how well you took care of the problem. (But make too many mistakes and your brand goes into the toilet.)
You'll have stronger purchasing / negotiation leverage with your suppliers, thus reducing your costs and possibly even helping you launch new products or services sooner. (Because suppliers want to be associated with a valuable brand — they want your business to grow their own businesses.)
You'll have stronger relationships with your distribution channel partners (i.e. companies that re-sell your products or services), leading to both more sales and reduced costs.

That's a whole lot of good reasons right there that should make your mouth water! But how do you do that? What does it take to make your brand more valuable?

Developing A Valuable Brand

In an earlier post, we talked about how positioning your brand will drive your company's business strategies. Strategies such as the products or services you offer to customer service or pricing or marketing communications and PR (to name just a few).

Be Crystal Clear

In today's crazy world of being able to buy whatever you want, wherever and whenever you want it, consumers have a gazillion choices. And with all those choices, comes a great deal of information overload and feeling overwhelmed and confused. The deadliest of those is "confused." Because a confused mind always says "no."

So your brand promise needs to be crystal clear. Crystal. Clear.

Whether someone walks into your retail location or surfs onto your website, what they experience should be an accurate reflection of your brand's promise.

For example, let's say you owned a neighborhood bike shop and your brand's promise was about providing the most comfortable and efficient options for using a bicycle to get around town, go to work, or do errands because your target customers care about reducing their carbon footprint and they want to get healthier.

You'd want to reinforce your brand promise by offering bicycles and accessories (cushioned seats, comfortable handlebars, bikes with shorter distance between the seat and the handlebars, headlamps, fenders, panniers and baskets, rain gear, safety vests, ankle lights, etc.) that made the bicycle comfortable to ride, so the rider is very visible to cars, and could carry different sizes and types of items.

You'd want to have sales people who were enthusiastic bike commuters themselves, who tried out different products, wrote reviews and posted them online and in the store where customers could read them. Sales people who were knowledgeable about different and safer routes to/from various places. Sales people who understood the challenges of riding in bad weather or at night and how to stay safe and visible.

You'd want customer service people who could train someone how to ride their new bike and use their new accessories. Service people who could show someone how to fix a flat tire while out riding or to jury-rig a front light if their bicycle light generator failed for some reason. Service people who could help them adjust their seat and handlebars to get the most comfortable position.

You'd want your store to be organized so a visitor could quickly and efficiently find what they needed — you'd also want signage and floor diagrams placed strategically to help them do that.

You'd want your staff to answer the phone in a specific way that showed the company was filled with eco-conscious, helpful bike enthusiasts.

You'd want your accounting staff to be quick and efficient in working with suppliers to negotiate prices and terms, pay bills on time. Ditto for paying staff.

Your store's graphics, signage, colors, logo would support that brand personality. And your website mirrors your store.

In doing all of these things, your business exudes a cohesive, congruent and CRYSTAL CLEAR experience of your brand's promise.

What Do You Do When the Promise Isn't Kept?

That's a really important question. Think long and hard about it. How far are you willing to go to make that promise the single most important thing in your business? And since your brand's promise isn't just kept just by you, but by every single person in your firm, what are you going to do to make sure that when the promise isn't kept, the customer's experience is turned around, AND that whatever happened, doesn't ever happen again?

As an example, the Ritz Carlton publishes their "Gold Standards" that are 100% in line with their brand promise. They give their employees extensive training and even make them sign an employee pledge. And most importantly, they give every single employee the authority to make right a lady or gentleman's off-brand experience in their hotel. To the tune of up to a certain dollar amount per guest per day.

I can remember staying at the RC in Chicago one miserable, snowbound February many years keep-brand-promise ago. When I arrived, my room was missing towels, which I didn't notice until I was about to take a much needed long, hot bath. When I called housekeeping, not only did they bring me enough towels within 2 minutes to fill an average linen closet, but by the time I emerged from my bath, I found a beautiful table replete with hot chocolate, sweets and a note saying a masseuse was standing by to give me an in-room massage when I was ready — all on the house.

THAT is keeping your promise. Do you think I stay at any other hotel? Not if I can help it. Do I tell everyone I know about what happened to me at the Ritz. You bet I do - wouldn't you?

Think deeply about the experience you want your customers to have with your brand. Clearly describe and communicate it to yourself, your team and your customers. Now figure out how you can encourage and empower every one of your team to deliver that promise, so that even if you're not there, they know exactly what to do should something go awry.

Take It In Stages

Don't try to do everything all at once, unless you've got tons of resources at your beck and call. Rather, first get clear about your promise, what the experience must be, over share that vision with your team and get them involved in figuring out what needs to be improved, how to improve it and in what sequence. Let them tell you what they think they need to have to make things right should something go wrong. Work on it as a team — chances are they've got great ideas and may even come up with more cost effective, clever and spot-on solutions than you would on your own.

And don't forget to create that sense of pride, accomplishment and pleasure whenever a team member does something right. A genuine, heart-felt "thank you" or "great job" can work miracles. As grandma used to say, "you catch more flies with honey, than vinegar."