PimpYourMarketing w/chrisdonaldson.com

There’s a lot of chatter about the make-up of a brand.  What is it? What does it mean to be a successful brand - and what you need to do to make sure your brand breaks through the clutter and resonates with customers?

When you’re buried deep in paperwork or just trying to fulfill orders, it’s easy to forget about the importance of your brand. As a result, many people put their brand on auto-pilot and don’t worry about it for weeks or months on end. This is the wrong approach and needs to be avoided at all cost.  Just ask Starbucks, who forgot what their brand meant, strayed from their origins, and is now paying the price (though they’ll be back, because their brand is strong enough to survive even these gaffes).

But first: what is a brand, anyway?

* Is it a logo?
* Is it the color scheme on your site?
* Is it the way you answer your phone or what you wear?
* Is it your product or service?

The answer is: all of the above and more. A lot of people can argue about brand and what it means (and whole books have been written on the topic) - but I’ve come to the conclusion that the brand is simply ‘the experience’. The totality of your customer’s experience when they interact with your product or service is what they will equate with your brand. Basically, it’s the taste left in your mouth, and either that taste is something you want more of, or something you want less of.

So in essence a brand is the logo, the color scheme, the way you answer your phone, and the kind of pants you wear. It’s how you treat customers, and how your customers perceive how they’ve been treated. Some of the biggest brands in the world are popular just because you and I know what we’re going to get, before we eat it. It’s a consistency in experience, and in excellence. Or not. And that’s why some brands that once shined (American car companies are just too easy to beat up on) falter: because they forgot to provide the customer with an experience they needed or wanted to repeat again and again.

So how does that apply to your business? Deliver to your customrs what they want, when they want it. Make Customer Service a foundation of your mission. Make things simple and fast to use. And smile, which is exactly what you’ll notice every barista doing these days. Good Product+Good Service=Good Brand=I want more.

If you’re a smaller company, you can afford nothing less.

My better half Lisa just ran a half marathon over the weekend on Whidbey Island in Washington (one of over 700 named islands off the coast). She’s never been much of a long distance runner, but what she did was smart. When she signed up for the run 6 months ago, she set a schedule for herself that slowly increased mileage. She set a series of easily attained milestones, then she put her head down and logged in the hours.

As a result, she finished feeling good. She accomplished a great goal. How? By breaking the pretty intimidating task of running 13 miles into bite-size pieces.

The same is true of marketing. It may seem intimidating, but if you come up with a solid marketing plan, break that plan into achievable bite-size milestones, and then execute, 9 times out of 10 you’ll reach a level of success. I’ve been good at doing that throughout my career, and that’s why I do make a decent living at marketing in the digital space. The first steps can be characterized as follows:

1. Understand your product or service.
2. Understand who this product or service provides value to, i.e. what is your demo?
3. Figure out ways to reach this demo in ways that are efficient.

Looks easy on paper, but we all know that even #1 can be a real challenge. Identifying product and associated product value isn’t easy, nor is then targeting the appropriate demo with messages that sell . I’ve had a hell of a time for example executing some of my Bite Size Pieces (Ad Sense, Ad Words, Twitter, etc). But if you keep at it, you will get there.

If you keep at it. That’s the secret.