Why the behaviours of your favourite customers matter to your brand

 ~ 15 min brand building exercise #3 ~

This blog is part of a series that will illustrate to business owners/start-ups/moonlighters/team leaders/product development teams how many different ways you can build your brand strategy DIY style easily for FREE. 

Discovering who your brand's ideal customer is can be an epiphany for a business :

1 Accept that your business is a people business. This is true no matter what you are selling if you are trying to pull at the needs, wants and desires of your customer. If you want loyal, happy customers you are going to have to figure out how to the adore the customers you have, or you have the opportuntity at any time to define the customers you want and then go find them. 

source

2  Make a list of behaviours that your favourite clients exhibit. It may be as simple as a smile. One could have a dog and makes your business part of their routine. Listing the behaviours of your favourite customers should take you 15 minutes.

It could be only 2 out of 10, but then you'd be ready to discover that wonderful 80/20 Rule that states : '80% of your customers will provide 20% of your business and 20% of your customers will provide 80% of your business.' 

It is a shocking realisation for some brands, but if you think about those lovable customers in the 20% category, wouldn't you rather all your customers be more like them?

3  With your list in hand, ask yourself how your current customer base stack up to your new standards?
Now identify the customers in that 20% and strike up a conversation with them.

• Find out things about them. You are looking for patterns in the customers you like. Maybe they like the Proms and you can consider a promotion that mentions that. You are simply connecting and showing that you are interested in them.
• Tell them that you consider them to be one of your favourite customers because....
• Tell them you are considering some changes in your business and then ask them why they like coming to your shop/online business? They will be telling you your strengths and the benefits they get from you.
• Ask them if they'd like to see anything different, or is there something that would make the experience better for them. You can offer a teaser idea to gauge their response. Your testing your brand growth ideas to see if they match your customers expectations.

4  After the conversations (at least one a day for 5 days...if this sounds daunting) refine your list of behaviours exhibited by your favourite customers and lavish those customers with your newly borrowed brand values(see that blog).

5  Now that see some patterns in your customers, see how you can reach out to more in the pattern. 

Happy brand building today @BrandStarMe


~ A Message from the Brand Concierge team at BrandStarMe ~
It is just over a week to go on our crowdfunder campaign to introduce small business geniuses like yourself to the business game changer experience that you will receive when you take a a few minutes out of your day and build a solid brand strategy for your business. We are offering to review your brand, show you what goes into a brand strategy, how to create one step-by-step, plus give you the insights you'll need to turn your business in the right direction for about 60% off what our Brand Concierge would normally charge. We are only doing this once because we are a start-up about to launch our online tools and we are feeling super generous, so if you want in, pick your reward on the campaign right now.

Go here if you want more of your favourite customers

Create brand values for your brand

 ~ 5 min DIY brand building exercise #2 ~

I am going to create a series of blogs that illustrate how many different ways you can build your brand strategy DIY style easily for FREE. 

Creating BRAND VALUES for your brand :

1 pick a brand you love, admire or one that at least makes you smile. Scour their website and find their values. Without changing it, make those values yours.

You can't possible go wrong with borrowing Gregg's.

"We will be enthusiastic and supportive in all that we do, open, honest and appreciative, treating everyone with fairness, consideration and respect."  

- Gregg's brand values statement 

2 Now try it out on your employees, vendors, associates, clients and customers....for a day....then 2 days. If it works for your business, adopt it permanently. It is okay if everyone is wondering if you had a personality transplant, or if you are in love!

Happy brand building today.     @BrandStarMe

~ A Message from the Brand Concierge team at BrandStarMe ~ 
It is just over a week to go on our crowdfunder campaign to introduce small business geniuses like yourself to the business game changer experience that you will receive when you take a a few minutes out of your day and build a solid brand strategy for your business. We are offering to review your brand, show you what goes into a brand strategy, how to create one step-by-step, plus give you the insights you'll need to turn your business in the right direction for about 60% off what our Brand Concierge would normally charge. We are only doing this once because we are a start-up about to launch our online tools and we are feeling super generous, so if you want in, pick your reward on the campaign right now.

Go here if you want more of your favourite customers

Our Crowdfunder.co.uk Campaign - Pledge your support today!

 

 

 

Hello Brand Builders : 

We have launched a campaign on Crowdfunder.co.uk to get enable us to hire our branding/marketing team to populate our new Brand Database with the competitors of our Crowdfunder.

READ ON IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE.

OR

GET FREE COMPETIVE ANALYSIS WHEN YOU PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT HERE

OUR PROJECT : A BRAND DATABASE
We are building a Brand Database for small businesses to have access to affordable ££-£££ competitive analysis. A traditional branding agency would charge you £,£££-£££,£££ to build your brand for you. 

With the funds we will hire 3 marketing graduates for 6 weeks to populate the Brand Database with Brands so we can launch our site and our first Brand Strategy Tool. 

We want to put YOUR COMPETITORS in our Brand Database first so you, our Crowdfunder Supporters can receive full benefit from our first Brand Strategy Tool on the day it is launched.





HOW THE BRAND DATABASE IS KEY TO HELPING SMALL BUSINESSES
We excel at making people happy about shopping and we want to show you how you can create your Brand Proposition, Story, Values Culture & Vision through an analysis of your competitors. Our tools do this. The Brand Database is connected to each brand strategy tool and when selected, populates each tool with the competitive information for you, enabling you to leap over the branding learning curve and position your brand in your market with an informed point-of-view.

OUR FIRST BRAND STRATEGY TOOL :
Our first tool is a Brand Proposition tool. You'll learn what your competitors offer to customers in exchange for their business and which brand offerings you should focus on to have a chance to be successful in your market. You'll then position your brand in amongst your competition by the value of importance that each offering has for your business and to your customer. At the end of the step-by-step tool, you'll be able to download your results as a presentation-ready graphic. This is Branding 2.0.





WHY WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT :
1) It has always been our plan to initially populate the Brand Database with Brand information before we launch. We want to make a positive financial impact for every business that uses our Brand Database, so we've decided that we should fill the Brand Database with Brands that our Crowdfunder supporters have identified as their competitors, so they can receive full benefit from the first tool on the day we launch.

2) Our Brand Database will later be populated by crowdsourcing and, or by hiring our Brand Concierge service to populate the tools for you. This is a unique opportunity to receive some traditionally expensive competitive analysis for a truly low price.

3) Our Brand Culture has a mentoring facet : Everyone on our BrandStarMe team has mentored graduates into competent, confident human beings who now love their careers. We'd like to do our part and put some graduates into the workforce in a field they actually studied.

OUR BUSINESS :
We are bringing affordable branding to small businesses, which is an underserved market. So many businesses are failing and our tools can help small businesses audit their brand from a customer point-of-view. We want your customers to love you, believe in you, trust you, go to you and recommend you.
We aren't designing logos or brand identities, we only focus on helping businesses create the vital brand strategies they need to become more successful businesses. After you have a solid brand strategy you can then re-design your logo and market a brand identity that truly suits your business.


OUR BRAND CULTURE :
"Our Team is Your Team" Building a great Brand is about focusing on what your customer needs and wants. In that spirit : Our attention is focused on all aspects of what what our customers' need to build their brands. We want you really enjoy working on your brand.

(A not-so-secret-secret : successful brands work on their brands every single day, that is why they are successful)
Once you like/love your brand you can live it and then you'll want to work on it everyday too.

WHY WE ARE DOING THIS :
After 17 years of designing stores for high-end and luxury retail brands for my full-time profession and gifting my time to startups and small businesses for branding strategy sessions; I found that I could make clear and quick impacts in peoples livelihoods, by running their business or idea through my branding methodologies. I really enjoyed helping entrepreneurs align their business to a brand they could champion, so I founded BrandStarMe and recruited some talented branding enthusiasts to build it with me.
We turn businesses into brands. Support us to help us bring this vision of affordable branding to small businesses.

Check out our Branding REWARDS HERE.

Brand Propositions : Your Promise to your Customers

I like this 'Brand Idea Chart' from Adliterate. An entire brand can be created on this little simple chart. Gob smacking isn't it. Once you've answered the question in each circle in one or two sentences, then you need to refine your statement to the world.

This refinement of the right hand circle where it says 'Your Promise' is called a Brand Proposition. It will be your brand statement of clear and deliverable benefits your customer(s) will derive from choosing your brand.

A good Brand Proposition will also include your USP(Unique Selling Point) customer benefit that no one else can provide.

Ultimately a brand proposition is a promise that you'll deliver what your brand says on its tin.

Deeper than that it should build an emotional connection, be engaging, unique, relevant to your intended customer and be easy to understand.

Once you've grasped what your brand is about and you believe you can deliver Your Promise, then you can set yourself the challenge to create a Secondary Brand Proposition.

A Secondary Brand Proposition is an expression/action of your brand promise without using your statement or products.

Give yourself two quick homework assignments.

First fill out the diagram pictures above for your brand and see if you can give Your Promise an emotional connection.

Then think of a highly visible and effective altruist action that your brand team can do to 'live' your Brand Statement.

Create a spring cleaning list for your brand

 ~ 30 min DIY brand building exercise #1 ~

It is time to give your business a spring cleaning and get it ready for building it into a blossoming brand!

In writing on this theme, I have decided for this blog post to channel the sage words of Simon Middleton, the self-described brand strategy guru. He has a lot of really great things to say about building a brand. In fact he has written a book called, 'Build A Brand In 30 Days.' (anything in quotes is from his book)

While it will in reality take you longer than 30 days to craft a brand that grows without much effort, its beginning chapter highlights what every business needs to do, which is sit down as a team and review the business from top to bottom, inside and outside. 

It is a spring cleaning for your business. I suggest that you do this before you brief your branding agency or your marketing/PR firm for your next marketing campaign. It is well worth doing and will likely lead to an increase in sales.

Step 1 of spring cleaning is to decide if you want to be a commodity or a brand :

You have two choices with your business. You can either be a commodity or a brand. 

Yes, it is that simple.

Many businesses survive as a commodity. It is a tough road though. "You need to be cheaper, quicker and more convenient than your competitors." This is what customers expect of you.

As a brand you are judged on different criteria.

There are benefits and meanings that customers buying in each industry expect to see, but once you know what those are and make them your own, you can add your own brand personality to them. You aren't tied into being cheaper, quicker and more convenient, although you will likely be pressured to be. Owning your brand is like putting on that stunning suit and shoes that make you look and feel confident. It is okay to say 'no' to something that doesn't fit with your brand, or branding message.

Step 2 of spring cleaning is to measure which aspects of your business are strengths/positives :

• Draw a large A2 size North/South East/West diagram
• Put 'positive' at north, 'negative' at south, 'weak' at west and 'strength' at east.
• Now put your brand's characteristics/offerings on the diagram and see where your business has strengths and where your customers are positive about your brand.

Examples of what to measure : people recognise your brand, you have a clear message(positioning slogan) that fits expectations of customers of your market, size of your geographic brand area, your name, services, pricing, ownership, guarantees, offers, personality, business emphasis, logo, website, staff, your brand is understandable to the customer, words and descriptions and imagery that describes your brand, what comes to your customer's mind when your brand is brought up, repeat business

This diagram is a spider web of all aspects of your business that you customer can see, feel, touch, experience, dream about, cringe about, watch, imagine, hope, aspire to....etc. This is an exercise of seeing your brand through the eyes of your customer. Hopefully you find it fun and enlightening.

Step 3 of spring cleaning is to ask your customer what they think :

....what they think about your self-identified strengths and positives. If you don't know what your customers think about you, ask the next one that walks in the door. Ask why they elected to buy from you. Those answers will be your true strengths and positives.

Do they think you deliver your slogan/positioning line? Do they understand your logo? Does your store environment fit your product(price of your product). Ask what your brand means to them in regards to quality, value and service. Ask about characteristics of your business that you weren't sure where to position on your diagram. Ask where you can improve.

Now in another colour write your new customer revealed strengths and positives on your diagram. Don't forget to put the weaknesses and negatives on there too.

Step 4 of spring cleaning is to sweep away the negatives & weaknesses cluttering your business:

Here is the action part and it is the most important thing you will do for your business this year.

• On your diagram sheet if you have room - Make 3 columns and at the top of columns put 'Focus On', 'Fix' and 'Stop Doing'
• Everything written on your diagram can now be placed in one of those columns.
• In the 'Focus On' column put the positives and strengths identified by your customers.
• In the 'Fix' column you'll need to use your best judgement and put the items from all 4 quadrants that you/your team identified as crucial to your business/industry, but your customers weren't wowed by your efforts.
• In the 'Stop Doing' column are all the rest of the time wasting things that you have left in the strengths/positive quadrants of your diagram and the listed weaknesses/negatives in the other quadrants that you obviously haven't been doing well.
• Only list items once.

There is your brand spring cleaning list! 

Step 5 of spring cleaning is to come up with a strategy :

• Create a strategy on how to improve each item in the 'Focus On' column and how much time/money/effort should be allocated to each. Give the tasks and act on them.
• Pick one item on the 'Fix' list and come up with a strategy for fixing the issue. Implement your plan and see if you see any measured change in your customers' behavior.  

For example : more people come in, you get compliments, or you get less complaints than usual.

• Stop doing everything in the 'Stop Doing' column.

This doesn't mean stop doing your taxes. These are all the things you are doing for your customer that they don't see the need for, you aren't making money on, you are losing money on and the customer doesn't appreciate.

Good luck and send me comments and let me know how you did on this task and whether it helped your small business.

Taxonomy of BRANDING : an education, a clarification and a coining of 'ACCIDENTAL BRANDING'

Someone recently asked me, "Why would someone would want to be a brand instead of a business?"

It is a valid question and since I am in the 'Education of Branding' business, I thought it would be worth breaking down the taxonomy of BRANDING. 


BRANDING HAS 3-PARTS

1) LOGO   2) IDENTITY   3) BRAND

1) LOGO is a mark/symbol/flag/signature. It is designed, thus it is part of 'brand design' = it is for identification of your brand

2) IDENTITY is a group of communication devices that form the overall 'corporate' image of a brand. These visual aspects include the logo, stationery, slogan, marketing collateral, uniforms, packaging and signage.  It is also designed, thus it is part of 'brand design & brand identity' = it is for visual communication of your brand

3) BRAND is the personality of an organisation, service or a product that is shaped by the perceptions of the audience. A BRAND also stands behind the IDENTITY ('corporate image') as the core concept, which proposes that "everything it does, everything it owns and everything it produces should reflect the values and aims of the business as a whole." "It is then the consistency of this core concept that makes up the company, driving it, showing what is stands for, what it believes in and why it exists." "A designer cannot design a BRAND, but the designer can form the foundations" for the personality and the people in the business can live and exude the personality it would like to be known for. It is the audience that turns a BUSINESS INTO A BRAND. We say that a business is a BRAND when the audience recognises it. A consistent personality then becomes a business's reputation.

*The bulk of the descriptions above came from a blog by a graphic designer called, Jacob Cass. His clarity on the topic explains it well and allows me to elaborate further.

So what does it mean when it is all put together as BRANDING?

A LOGO goes into the IDENTITY. A BRAND wears the IDENTITY like clothing and the clothing it wears helps it remember to exude a particular personality, but it is the core concept of the BRAND that makes the BRAND behave in a particular way. A consistent personality indicates a strong brand has been created and everyone in the company understands it and in turn takes on that business personality to deliver consistency. Over time that consistent business personality becomes the business's reputation.

Poorly communicated BRAND VALUES and BRAND STORY that are part of that core concept of the brand = a poorly received BRAND.

A strong BRAND with a consistent business personality will have a strong, well thought of and well received business reputation, which = increased revenues if you have a revenue model operating.

When you have designed a few successful retail store brands like I have you'll begin to take the taxonomy of a BRAND further.  And this is the part that most people miss !!!!

That core concept with the all the parts of the business including the BRAND VALUES and the BRAND STORY should be created from the point-of-view of the main type of customer, who lives within the audience. It isn't good enough to focus on the customer as a BRAND. It is important to see every aspect of your BRAND from their shoes and fix what doesn't reflect your core concept. The true meaning of a BRAND is when your customer likes you so much they can feel it, but have no idea why they like having you around.

When you think in terms of your business from your point-of-view then it is about your narcissism. To have a BRAND is to make your business about your customers' narcissism.

Do you remember when you were a kid and your parents consoled you by saying that "not everyone is going to like you in this life"? It applies here too. Your audience as a BRAND is potentially everyone who, thinks, sees, hears, feels, tastes or experiences your business personality. They aren't your customer, but they will shape your BRAND and judge you on your core concept. The only people you really need to seek and please is your customer. If your core concept resonates well with them, then you probably have a strong brand.


Or if you think you don't have to worry about all this BRANDING malarkey with your business, you'd be wrong, or at least in denial.

If you are a parent you may have heard of the term 'accidental parenting', meaning you aren't being pro-active in setting a routine, or outlining and reinforcing expected behaviour.
I am going to coin the term 'ACCIDENTAL BRANDING'.

In short, every business is a brand!
A business that has a BRAND foundation/core knows who it is, what it believes and why it exists.
A business that hasn't bothered is just 'ACCIDENTAL BRANDING' and the results may vary.

RECIPE DELIVERY! The new grocery shopping.

I needed dinner inspiration. At some point everyone needs it.

Of course there is online grocery delivery and Waitrose seems to have an endless selection of prepared meals, but frankly, I am bored of online grocery shopping and in-store shopping. Waitrose prepared meals have lost their appeal.

I want to cook and end up with meals that are an explosion of flavour and taste. 
I went in search of the new grocery shopping and 'Recipe Delivery' is where I have found my inspiration.

Recipe Delivery is a tasty business model. 
I have been exploring four UK based startups seeking to restore your domestic god and goddess status in the kitchen.

On my short list of services to try are HelloFresh, Gousto, Jessica'sRecipeBag and Dinnr.

All of the companies will deliver recipes with ingredients to your door for specific number of meals each week. The ingredients will be exact to eliminate wasted food and most of the meals take around 30 minutes to prepare.

The variation of each business model can be found in the details, both on their sites and digging beneath the surface.

I looked at aspects that are important to me, such as selecting recipes for my bag/box order, perusing ingredients, delivery days, mixing vegetarian with non, exotic ingredients and prices.

You may want to consider a few of these details before you select your Recipe Delivery service.

Delivery days :

Jessica'sRecipeBag delivers on Monday evenings

Dinnr delivers Monday through Saturday and has same day delivery

HelloFresh and Gousto deliver on Tuesdays

 

Prices of ingredients and delivery : 

Since I had a refrigerator full of vegetables and Gousto had a downloadable recipe list, I decide to start soft and both shop and cook the first week. I checked prices of a complete DIY meal in comparison with a delivered recipe meal to see if customers were getting charged for a premium food delivery service and if they were getting value for money on the groceries.  

The simple answer is you'll be getting charged the premium delivery service as expected and getting charged above retail prices on the food as well. All of these services are fledgling and they probably aren't yet getting access to wholesale prices on food. When they do, they most likely will keep the savings to aid growth and the customer won't see the deals get better.

If you only want 1 dinner this week, but 4 the next, then Dinnr is your service. It does appear to be slightly higher in price, but it is costly to deliver one dinner at a time.

Grab Bag or Recipe Bag Curation : If the recipe is important, then you should know that HelloFresh and Gousto let you see the recipes when you order your recipe bag/box for the week. 

Dinnr doesn't spell out their recipes or ingredients, but on their site you order each meal separately so it isn't an issue and pictures sell the dishes well. They also have starters and desserts, which the other services don't have.

Jessicasrecipebag just lets you order a bag of meals of their secret curation. There are lots of images on the site of the types of meals one can expect to receive, but it looks like 'comfort food' reigns here so I am not sure if this service is for me if I can't see what is going to be delivered to my door.  

Seeing the recipes on HelloFresh and Gousto have the added benefit of indicating the number of calories/fat/carbs/protein on each recipe.

Since this is a branding education-esque blog, I'll point out that Jessicasrecipebag acts more like a parent brand, where they give you what they think is best instead of the peer-to-peer model of letting you decide if you would like to order what is on offer by revealing the week's recipes. It is rare to go into a restaurant and let the chef make you whatever he feels like, unless you are paying for the privilege and even more rare for a grocery delivery service to pick all of your groceries for you. It simply doesn't happen often in food service, thus a brand needs to be aware that hiding their recipes may put some people off making that first order. Trust comes after the customer enjoys their first order.

Even seeing the recipes I managed to miss something important to me. In the 5 recipes I made from the downloadable Gousto recipes, 3 out of 5 had onions in the ingredients, of which I am not a huge fan. I didn't even realise it until the third recipe. 

Ingredients - everyday ordinary or are we seeking something more unique in a service :

Once I began thinking about the onions, I explored the ingredients and recipes of each brand further.

Each brand had recipes that I could order from a local takeaway. Maybe it is knowing how much salt is or isn't in the food because I have the pleasure of preparing it, that is at the heart of the Recipe Delivery business model. Or does it offer the opportunity to be more?

Now that I am engaged with the business model, I want more. I want to cook with flavour and lots of it. I want to try recipes of cuisines that I don't currently know how to cook and learn how, but I want them to taste better than my local takeaway. I want to be a burgeoning master chef in my own house!

Two of the recipes I tried from Gousto were slightly Eastern Asian in design and taste, but I was left a little disappointed that extent of exotic ingredients was a little fish sauce, rice noodles and bean sprouts.

There is real opportunity for one of these brands to breakaway from the pack and inspire the home cook with authentic meals that are flavorful works of art. Give us recipes with hard-to-find, expensive ingredients that expand our taste buds. Give us a reason to choose your brand over another by giving us ingredients we can't find ourselves at Sainsbury's. Build a little story of origin or discovery that we can share at the dinner table. Engage us, delight us and we'll be your biggest fans.  

HelloFresh is moving in this culinary direction. It has stories about cinnamon and chocolate and begins to make the ordinary, extraordinary with a slight twist of ingredients. Unfortunately I just missed two weeks of great recipes. This week they have comfort food and I see a few onions, so I'll try them out in the near future.

The recipe bags - a little customisation would increase conversion

One thing I have noticed about all 4 of the Recipe Delivery services is that there is no way to indicate that you don't eat pork, or that you are trying to omit meat for one meal a week and you'd like one meal to be vegetarian to expand your palette a bit more. I have an entire cookbook devoted to vegetarian meals, but still struggle to make a meal from it. I'd welcome a little help as long as I didn't have to endure 3 meals a week that are vegetarian. 

Some customer customisation would be a great feature to see in the future of these brands. A 'I'd like to try seafood once this week' bag or the 'no comfort food for me please' bag would make it more interesting.  Even a way to indicate upfront dislikes would help the brands to understand why a loyal customer takes a week off.

I plan to try each of the Recipe Delivery services in the coming weeks. I really enjoyed cooking the Gousto meals, learning how much lentils to serve for two people and knowing how many calories were in the meal I was serving. I am sure I will be delighted in ways I didn't imagine. 

Happy dinner exploration!