TED Magazine - September 2015

selling

Author and Direct Marketing Hall of Fame inductee Seth Godin describes a brand as “the set of expectations, memories, stories, and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another. If the consumer… doesn’t pay a premium, make a selection, or spread the word, then no brand value exists for that consumer.” He explains that a brand’s value is measured by how much extra people will pay for it or how often they will choose a particular product, service, or company. It is the sum total of customers’ experiences, expectations, memories, stories, and relationships with one brand vs. alternatives.

According to NAED’s “Managing Your
Marketing Effectiveness” study pub-
lished in 2012, survey respondents felt
that “brand” was very important in their
customers’ buying decisions, yet most
didn’t have a formal positioning or
branding statement—all of which raises
the question, “How do you market your
brand if you don’t know what it is?”
The answer is you can’t, and under-
standing a company’s brand starts with
defining its position.

Determining a company’s position is
knowing what it does and what it is,
To define and verbalize a position,
a little research and analysis must be
done:

1. Customer perceptions

Learning how customers perceive a business is the first step toward defining or redefining a brand. For statistically significant results, hire a professional research firm to conduct a survey with a representative sample of the firm’s population. This will ensure that the process is both valid (really measures what it claims to measure) and reliable (would yield the same results if duplicated).

For businesses with a limited budget, an option is to ask daily or weekly questions on the company’s social media accounts or hold a customer contest with a drawing box. To yield the most accurate results, ask several different questions, such as the following:

• What’s the one thing you count on from XYZ Company?

• What does XYZ Company do best?

• What does XYZ Company do better than our competition?

• What one word best describes XYZ Company?

• When you need _____________, you go to XYZ Company.

• The people at XYZ Company are really _____________.

• What I like best about XYZ Company is _____________.

• I wouldn’t go anywhere except XYZ Company for _____________.

• I know at XYZ Company, I’ll always get _____________.

Ask both open-ended and closed-ended questions to get a full range of opinions and answers. This may also uncover areas for improvement.

2. Company capabilities

Once it is known why customers do business with the company, build on those strengths and enhance them to build customer loyalty and drive sales. Playing on existing strengths also adds credibility to messages.