Why branding? What is the value of a brand? The simple answer is this: Brands help customers make choices.
[Reference: What is a Brand?]
Just look at it from the customer’s perspective. A customer is having some problems with her car and she doesn’t know what’s wrong with it. She begins her search for a potential repair shop. What does she see during her search? An indistinguishable landscape of repair shops that are all claiming the same thing. She hears what businesses think are the three big guns of marketing:
1. Quality products and services.
2. The lowest Price.
3. Great Customer Service.
Which repair shop does she choose? She has not a clue because everyone is saying the same thing, and everyone looks pretty much the same to her. And yet businesses continue pour money into marketing and advertising to look and sound the same as their competition. That’s where branding comes in.
Imagine instead this same customer is looking for a repair shop, and one of those shops has developed a remarkable brand with a differentiated brand promise. Now what does she see? She sees two things: the distinguished brand….and everyone else. Now, she has a choice, pick a repair shop from the crowd or pick the remarkable brand.
Unless you develop your brand and let it lead your marketing, you are not saying anything that customers are not hearing somewhere else. Therefore, they still have no reason to choose you, no matter how much money you spend on advertising and marketing bells and whistles.
All things being equal, the better branded business wins.
How do you help customers choose you?
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