Page 108 - Duct Tape Marketing

92 Part II: Sharpening Your Marketing Focus

An essential online ingredient

Without a brand, you have to build the case for your business before every
sale. Doing that is tough work in person and even tougher work online, where
you can’t be there to make introductions, inspire confidence, counter resis-
tance, or break down barriers.

People are buying everything online — from contact lenses to cars — without
the benefit of demonstrations or test-drives. Why? Because customers arrive
at e-businesses with confidence in the brands they are buying. If they don’t
see a brand they know, the odds of the online purchase occurring plummet.
But if they see a brand they know and like, then they’ll check the price and
terms, make their selection, and purchase the product.

Branding facilitates sales and spurs business success all the way from Main
Street to the cyberhighway.

Six steps to brand management

Good brand management follows certain steps.

1. Define why you’re in business.

What does your business do? How do you do it better than anyone else?

Refer to Chapter 5, which can help you put into writing the reason that
your business exists and the positive change you aim to achieve.

2. Consider what you want people to think when they hear your name.

What do you want current and prospective employees to think about
your business? What do you want prospects, customers, suppliers, asso-
ciates, competitors, and friends to think?

You can’t be different things to each of these different groups and still
have a well-managed brand. The brand image held by each of these
groups has to synch into one identity — one brand — that people will
trust and believe.

For example, if you want employees to think that you pay the very best
salaries in your competitive arena, you can’t also expect customers to
think that you provide the most bare-boned, low costs in the market.
Likewise, you can’t have an internal company mind-set that says “econ-
omy at any price” and expect consumers to believe that no one cares
more about product quality and customer service than you do.

Figure out what you want people to think when they hear your name.
Then ask yourself whether that brand image is believable to each of the
various groups with whom you communicate. If it isn’t, decide how you
need to alter your business to make achieving your brand image possible.