“Discover your difference and embrace it. Flaunt it. And make sure

it doesn’t sound like, or make the same promises as, your

competition.”— David Brier

Table of Contents Introduction

Branding Is Not A Choice........................... p. 2

Carving Out Your Real Estate

But Is It Different? .......................p. 3

How Is Your Brand Defined?.................. p. 5

What Does Your Brand Stand For? ........ p. 7

Introduction Branding Is Not A Choice First, let me state unequivocally that I’m no brand guru. Far from it, in fact. I’m a careful observer who has grown increasing frustrated at seeing countless small (and large) companies throw away opportunities to define who they are, what they stand for in the mind of their core clients. Sure, most companies are great at highlighting what their product or service does and how much better than the competition said products and services are. Neither of these matter all that much to customers, however. What most folks desire to know before making a purchasing decision is how your product or service is different from the competition, a fact that companies have been slow to grasp. Also, customers care less about tangibles when it comes to making a choice between competing products. What matters most is the space you occupy in the mind of the consumer (i.e., how your product or service is perceived). For example, the folks who visits Starbucks each day care less about the quality of the company’s coffee, lattes and danishes than they do about excellent service, the attention to detail of the baristas and the overall convenience of having a location on seeming;y every corner. So when a coffee shop opens up around the corner and promises better coffee, cheaper prices and faster service, Starbucks is unfazed, owing to the “competition” having missed the point as regards what matters most to their core customers. How does this happen? Most companies know what they do. They don’t, however, have a firm grasp of who they are, what space they occupy, in the mind of the consumer. Don’t let your business fall into this trap. Peruse the three pieces that follow and ensure that you can successfully answer each of the questions. If not, there’s a good chance you don’t have a solid handle on what space your business occupies in the marketplace, which veritably guarantees that your customers/potential customers are equally as befuddled.

1. But Is It Different? At least once per week, I get a call from someone who wants to know my thoughts on his Internet business or idea. Often the idea is still in the development stages, with more work to be done, but the person on the other end has a clear vision that it will serve the bass market, provide how-to information and gear reviews for tournament anglers, and cover the news of the industry. Just as often, though, are the folks who ask my opinion of sites they’ve already launched. Many feature nice design, have all of the features you’d expect from a website of its kind and attempts to thoroughly cover the bass fishing market and bass fishing tournament scene. The questions (and the answers) are always the same: Them: “Hope you’ve had time to look over my (website or idea). What are your thoughts?” Me: “I like what I’ve seen (or read), but how is it different from the dozens of other similar websites?” No matter what they say, or have come to believe, their sites or ideas are not, in any significant way, different. Which is a problem. A very big problem. One of the first steps to creating a successful business is defining your business’ point of differentiation (POD)—that is, how your business is different, in a significant way, from all the others occupying a similar position. Determining POD is a first-order priority because without it, your business is but one in a sea of me-too products and services. Maybe most important, defining a POD gives business owners the ability to really hone in on a product or service that could meet demand of an underserved audience or market. What I find is that most companies have at least one person who recognizes the need for having a POD, but few understand exactly what it is, and even fewer understand how to go about establishing it. Identifying Your POD Using the website example, POD can be determined along the following lines: 1. Features (e.g., departments contained within the site) 2. Content (e.g., blogs) 3. Audience (e.g., consumers, business-to-business) 4. Format (e.g., newsletter) 5. Revenue stream (e.g., membership or subscriber fee) When I started my newsletter, I knew I did not want to do what everyone else was doing. I spent weeks researching the market, the audience, the offerings to come up with my main PODs: exclusive content, service to the trade, newsletter format and a subscriber fee. The list above is by no means exhaustive; instead, it serves as a jumping-off point, if you will, to get the process started. I say that mainly because determining your POD is not entirely up to you. It’s just as much about the competition and the market you’ll be serving as it is about your business.

The Role of Competition You’ve heard the saying that “To be successful in business you need to do better at what the competition already does well.” If you’ve been reading my blog, you know how I feel about “better.” It’s far too vague, often insignificant and places your business at the whims of the market. No, as Michael Michalowicz makes plain, “It’s better to be different than to be better. One of the simplest and most often used means of ascertaining POD is to use the old 1-2-3 model: 1. Define your competition; 2. Define the ways you are similar; 3. List the differences. Simple, right? Well, it’s too simplistic for my taste. My central dislike of going down this path is how easy it is to focus only on select competitors instead of recognizing all significant competition. I also don’t trust that the folks inside the company are best able to honestly assess similarities and differences, especially in light of the fact that it’s tough to be objective when you are too close to the project. A Better Way For my money, the best way to ferret out points of differentiation is through interviews with customers and potential customers. I know a lot of folks like to resort to fancy polls and such, and doing so is easy in today’s electronic world. But one of the pieces of professional advice I ever received came from publishing consultant John Brady, who, years ago advised me against trusting polls when making business decisions. Instead, he said, interviews were a much better, more accurate choice. Here’s how to do it: 1. Reach out (via email and phone) to a few dozen potential customers of yours who are already customers

of your competition. 2. Ask them 15 to 20 prepared questions, which might include: likes/dislikes of the competition’s site; what

they would change; what features they access most; how much time they spend on the site; which features they’d prefer to see in a similar site; what would a competing site need to have to pull them away.

The list could be endless, but I’d try to keep the questions under 20 or so. Also, keep in mind that consumers are often poor judges of what they want until they’ve seen it, so I’d refrain from asking questions meant to judge things they’ve yet to experience (e.g., features your site might have but that they have never come into contact with). The ultimate goal in determining a POD is not to define the features that set you apart from the competition. Rather, it is to determine the features that set you apart and that resonate most with your core market.

2. How Is Your Brand Defined? Each day I get at least a couple of emails regarding how a brand is defined. Most folks seem to think the process begins and ends with the product or service. It does not. How a brand is defined is as much about values and emotion as it is about anything concrete. I’ll share a recent example. The owner of a small company asked for my input in defining his brand. To that point, he’d conducted no research, done no brainstorming, so he had little information to go on. “I’d like my company to be seen as the brand every outdoorsman identifies with,” he said. “Weak slogan,” I said, “and one that says nothing about your brand. The first step in defining your brand is not to come up with how you’d prefer consumers to describe your products; it’s to determine which qualities, features and attributes of your products will most resonate with your core market. Most folks I talk to go off on the wrong path, immediately thinking, “I want to be seen as having the best product...” OK. Best as determined by what or by whom? What does best even mean? Better yet, how can you quantify it? I love to use the example of automobiles: “Who makes the best car?” I ask. No matter which brand they say, they’ll be wrong. Are we talking best in terms of overall sales? Are we talking quality? Performance? Engineering? Survey reports by owners? See my point? Porsche, which is my favorite sports car brand, isn’t defined as being the best in the world. It’s defined as being the brand for enthusiasts who are willing to sacrifice neither refinement nor performance. So, despite the large number of competitors who have faster or more refined cars, Porsche and its loyal followers feel that no other brand gives you both at the same level. The company has honed that image over the years, and today the brand is used as a benchmark by companies who want to create fast cars that retain a high degree of refinement. See, it’s not about best, per se. It’s about the space you can occupy in the minds of consumers. To help you get started with this, here are my four pillars for branding success: 1. Define what the brand means to you. A lot of branding or marketing folks refer to this stage as defining

the core values, or principles, of the company. I don’t disagree, but I see it as more about defining the values and objectives that will resonate most with your core audience. It’s easy to have the most grandiose vision, but—assuming you want to be successful—that vision needs to be one that your core market will buy into and reward you with sales.

2. Peruse research. Once you conducted the research I outlined in the last blog, look for those elements/descriptions that link together in how people see your product or service. This feedback is invaluable at highlighting the position your brand already occupies in the marketplace. From there, you’ll be able to ascertain whether or not the market’s view of your product is the one you’d envisioned. If not, you can change course. If it is consistent with your values and goals, messaging is the next step.

3. Create an emotional attachment: No brand inspires loyalty without an emotional tie-in. It could be the belief that your product enhances their image, it could be that the brand inspires them, or maybe it’s that the brand makes a statement that reinforces a core belief. Whatever it is, your task is to align slogan, packaging and the entire marketing message so that it continues to hit home with these core constituents.

4. Don’t play fair. A fact that’s seemingly lost on many fledgling entrepreneurs is that their success will likely come at someone else’s expense. Your goal is to get someone to buy your product so they won’t buy anyone else’s similar product. Your brand’s messaging and positioning, then, should play up your product or service in relation to your closest competitors. The big, successful brands have made an art of this with catchy slogans and clever marketing: “When you care enough to send the very best,” Hallmark; “The king of beers,” Budweiser; “There is no substitute, “ Porsche.

As you can see, defining your brand is a process-driven undertaking. At the core, it’s about having a vision, ensuring that the vision resonates with your core audience, shaping the message to best suit that audience, then steadily honing the brand’s image to meet their needs. It’s also just as much about being willing to elbow competitors out of your space. Defining a brand is not something that should be left to chance.

3. What Does Your Brand Stand For? If you were asked what your brand stood for, could you answer? If so, what would you say? “Quality products for the cost-conscious”? That’s a slogan, actually, and not a very good one, mind you. “Quality” and “value” and “sustainability” are words I hear often, and though they do get us closer to the goal, what they lack in blandness, they make up for with vagueness. For most small-business owners, thinking about their brand is about as exciting as being poked in the eye with a pencil, but before you dismiss it outright, consider this: What your brand stands for is the totality of experience your brand evokes in the minds of the folks who encounter it, whether visually or verbally. A simple way to think about this is to envision a co-worker asking you what you think of someone you both know. Typically, in those situations, you say the first thing that comes to mind, right? “Annoying,” “trustworthy,” “lazy,” “brown noser,” “poor planner.” In your mind, this is—based on all of your experiences with him or her—what that person stands for. It’s irrelevant whether or not he/she actually is that person; it’s what that person stands for to you. Your product or service is thought of the same way by consumers and potential consumers. I challenge you to spend some time thinking about this topic, attempting to gain as clear an understanding as possible of what your brand stands for in the marketplace. Why is such an exercise necessary? 1. It helps shape your overall messaging. Many brands are all over the place. Their slogan says one

thing, their packaging another, and there is no clear messaging communicated from the company’s website, printed materials or blog. If they really, understood in depth the space their brand occupied in the minds’ of consumers, all of these elements would be aligned.

2. You gain a clear understanding of how your product or service is viewed. If you care anything at all about your brand, you’d better know what people are saying about it. I’m not referring to what they say to you about your product; I mean what they are saying to one another. Many times, companies drink the Kool-Aid in thinking their product is so great they don’t need to conduct research to discern how consumers really feel about it. This thinking is flat-out dumb. You need to spend some time on the phone, Web and email, talking and listening to folks, figuring out (a) who your core audience really is and (b) how they view your brand.

3. You can accurately mold your brand’s image. A lack of adequate information means no accurate

information in my book. Attempting to create marketing, sales and media materials without first having a clear idea of what “space” your brand occupies in the market is an exercise in futility. With the information gleaned from research, however, you can start to fashion the brand in the likeness you envision for it.

I hope you get the point that defining your brand is no small, insignificant task. It’s not only important, but can be richly rewarding as well. In the next installment, I’ll look at how to go about defining your brand.