Strategy and the relationship between your business and brand.
You’re off on a date for the evening. What do you wear? Most successful dates start with a stunning first impression, dressing and grooming yourself for the occasion is essential. Then, as you get to know each other, you both try to ensure that you distinguish yourselves from other suitors and highlight that you’re a good match. Finally, you end the date hoping that you’ve made enough of an impression to at the very least secure another liaison. Branding is very much a similar scenario, every time your brand engages with a potential customer; it’s similar to a date.
Keeping with the dating analogy, look at it this way. You are your business, and how you express yourself during a customer engagement, i.e. a date, is your brand story. Your appearance is the brand expression, and how you plan the date and go through with it is your brand strategy. Simply put, on a date you are selling yourself.
Before you head off on your date, what do you do? Well, hopefully, you have enough time to plan. You’ll have a long-term goal, whether it’s to find your life partner or a casual friendship, with your short-term goal to have a successful date. You want to be memorable, leave a lasting impression and hopefully start a relationship. In addition, you may have a budget for new clothes, a haircut and some personal grooming. Finally, you may want to purchase a gift to break the ice and promote your desires and intentions. So, if you apply this to your business strategy, what are your long-term and short-term goals, five year and one-year plans? What budget can your business allocate towards branding, so you have enough to make a great first impression and sell your story well?
Your business strategy guides your brand strategy, informing your brand story to inspire brand expression.
Your business strategy guides your brand strategy, informing your brand story and inspiring the overall brand expression. The relationship between your business and your brand must be honest and open. Imagine that during your date, you present yourself as something that you are not. As your relationship blossoms and your partner gets to know you better, the truth will come out. If you don’t present your business as it truly is, then when your customers experience your products or services, and they are not what you purport them to be, that disconnect can have a severe long-term impact damaging your brand and business.
What would you want to achieve on your date? An enjoyable evening, the chance to meet someone new, hopefully ignite the flames of passion that kindle a new relationship? In business terms you want to persuade passion in your products, convince customers and grow a new relationship. You need to develop a brand that you are proud to represent your business — a brand that you take pleasure in utilising to promote your business, its products and services. Your brand strategy should be the enabler for your business strategy; if you want to sell more, it should help you achieve this, and if you’re going to grow your business over time, your brand strategy should embody the potential to do this.
Every engagement with a new customer is a date for your brand. Your brand is an opportunity for your business to dress itself in a distinctive and appealing manner, with enough charisma to be more attractive than your competitors. Every successful ‘date’ your brand goes on should support your overall business strategy, and in doing so provides one more step forward to attaining your business plan.
I’ll leave you with some ‘think’ as I complete my fifth issue of digest.
How aligned is your brand strategy with your business strategy and is it an enabler for the success of your business plan?
As much as I love analogies, comparing the relationship of business and brand strategy to that of a date does have its limitations. Like most relationships, it’s complicated, but I hope that on our first date discussing this, I’ve managed to present myself well and explain the importance of marrying your business closer to your brand.
I’m hoping it’s a date next week, and you’ll join me once again on our brand journey.
Until then, enjoy your weekend!
Mike
Mike Marshall is Managing Director of eatsleepthink, an award-winning strategic branding and digital agency based in Chesterfield, UK.
You can contact Mike by email: mike@eatsleepthink.com