Five easy and practical branding tips to scale your business

Brands offer a unique source of value to businesses.

Any customer decision to purchase a product or service is driven by myriad factors — product features, quality of service, price, people, the list goes on. Those factors will vary from one sector to another, from one company to the next, but what’s certain is that one of those decision-making factors will be your brand.

Simply put, your brand plays a role in whether or not customers decide to buy from your business.

Consequently, you need to invest the right amount of energy into managing your brand, just as you invest into other areas like product development, customer service, pricing and HR. Because when you strengthen the link between your brand’s purpose and the everyday experience, your brand gives your business a measurable — and sustainable — competitive advantage. That means your customers are more likely to buy your products or services, more often. Which means good brand management is not simply good business, it’s essential.

Big businesses understand these dynamics and spend millions of dollars developing, designing and delivering their brand through the products, services and experiences they offer.

Small businesses, however, have their big marketing ambitions challenged by limited marketing resources. But there are strategies that mean limited resources don’t have to limit your brand’s potential.

Here are five simple, practical ways to leverage your brand and create meaningful habits for competitive advantage against the bigger players.

If you want your brand to work hard for your business, the simplest strategy is to be crystal clear. The more time you spend clarifying your brand and its proposition, the less money you’ll waste on marketing efforts with low ROI.

A useful technique to help you clarify your brand is to ask ‘5 whys’. It’s a technique whereby you and your team ask yourselves ‘why is that important?’ in order to probe what it is that your business offers and reach what might sit at the heart of your brand.

For example, if your brand sells home décor fixtures and fittings, asking yourself and your team ‘why is that important?’ might reveal the following five answers:

Because our home décor fixtures and fittings are well-designed.

Because good design can be expensive, but our products are designed both for aesthetics and affordability.

Because the increasing cost of living is putting pressure on household budgets.

Because every little counts.

Because it’s the little things that can often make a big difference.

In which case crystallising the singular focus of this hypothetical brand on ‘attention to detail’ gives the business the clarity it needs to aim its marketing and align its team.

Always be clear and you’ll quickly see the strategic benefits.

The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer — without customers, there are no businesses. So it stands to reason that you should get to know your customer, and the rational thing to do is dive into the data in order to understand their buying behaviours.

But customers are human and prone to being quite irrational. Whether it’s B2C or B2B, it’s emotion that drives decisions. Consequently, a simpler — and more cost-effective — solution is to ask yourself how you want your brand to make people feel.

If we continue with the hypothetical home décor brand with its focus on ‘attention to detail’, that business might want people to feel ‘relieved’ that something so time-consuming as finding exactly the right fixtures and fittings could be straightforward, or ‘impressed’ that someone cares even more about their home’s décor than they do.

If you can identify and deliver this feeling through the customer experience, you’ll have found a simple way to elevate the moments that matter.

Millions of dollars are invested every year in brands that look and sound like all the other brands.

‘World-class” healthcare brands pictured in labs with microscopes. Professional services brands where “our people are the difference” and always shaking hands. “Innovative” technology brands in a future of time-lapse neon.

Standing out demands that you don’t fit in.

Find what makes your brand distinctive, then show that in an equally distinctive way. It’s something that the academics call ‘distinctive brand assets’: they not only provide brand recognition but also communicate meaning, and therefore help customers make a meaningful connection with your brand. Find your distinction and show it in every interaction.

Your brand is everywhere your business goes, so it makes sense to give all your people — not merely your marketing team — the brand management tools to follow it.

Be clear about what your brand represents. What makes it distinctive. How it makes customers feel. And, most importantly, don’t just tell them, train them and give them the tools to deliver the brand via the customer experience.

Language is an essential brand management tool. However it is often overlooked or simply underused. Not everyone will need to know the technical details of how to design logo lock-ups or set typography, but everyone in your business will naturally use language to communicate. If you equip your people with the right tools to know what to say and how to say it, you will not only set the platform for a consistent, end-to-end experience but an all-the-more impactful one too.

The most successful brands are defined with clarity and purpose, but ultimately they’re defined by the experience. But if there’s a gap between what you say and do, then your brand is likely to disappoint instead of delight your customers.

You will have heard the age-old adage — actions speak louder than words — and it’s no less true for brands. While a compelling proposition can spark customers’ interest, it’s the brand experience that unlocks customer demand.

So next time you think about your brand, remember that big ambitions don’t always have to start with big budgets. Use these five lessons to make the most of your brand and your budget, and make sure your brand is ready to give your business a competitive advantage.

Rich Curtis is the CEO of FutureBrand Australia & New Zealand, a global brand transformation company, and has a Master’s degree from Oxford University in Litterae Humaniores — that’s Latin and Ancient Greek. He is also a Good Design ambassador, an MGSM Alumni, and a husband, and dad of three.