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Sowing the seeds of business success: Establishing the brand fundamentals

NEWS: New services launching today!

I’ve been listening to you over the past few months, gathering insights from many calls and emails, and I’ve been learning what’s really needed. As a result, we’re now re-launching our services to be more specific to those needs.

As we launch these services, I’ll be writing a corresponding article on each strategy or tool and why it’s so important.

First up it can only be the brand fundamentals.

Whenever I’m coaching early-stage startups, this is always the part where they’re struggling the most (or, worse, the part they’re ignoring), and the first thing we get to work on in order to set the business up for success. And it’s not just startups: established businesses can get distracted by fancy marketing antics and lose sight of the foundations on which those strategies are built.

Sowing the seeds: Establish the brand fundamentals that will ensure that your business is set up for success

sow the seedsIt’s so easy to get caught up in designing Facebook ads and YouTube videos, trying to improve click-through rates and chasing media coverage, coming up with app ideas and fancy websites… The truth is that there’s a big step that we often rush through, or miss out completely: that step is defining your brand fundamentals.

You may think that it’s not that important to fiddle around with such formalities because you’re such a small team, you’re just starting out or, conversely, you’re already well established and you know what you’re doing. But not having these fundamentals in place can cause all sorts of headaches, making the simplest of decisions more complicated, causing unnecessary disagreements, and ultimately preventing you from building a coherent brand.

Your brand framework is really the basis for everything else that you do in your business.

It ensures that everyone in your team or organisation is working towards the same vision; it helps you to be consistent in your communication; in fact, it feeds into each and every decision you make in your day-to-day business. Getting this right can save you endless hours of disagreements, confusion, and inconsistent results further down the line.

So what does a brand framework look like?

A brand is essentially a promise to the customer. It communicates what you stand for, what customers can expect from your products and services, and how you’re different to your competitors. Your brand is what makes you more than just a commodity, it’s what creates loyalty among your customers and, if you’re really good, sometimes even love. Clearly, it’s a lot more than just a logo and some brand colours!

To start with, of course, you’ll need to understand who your customer is – this understanding is really at the heart of brand building.

At Procter & Gamble, we used to say that the “consumer is boss”, which meant understanding and delighting that consumer from the product shelf through to using that product. This idea was at the core of everything we did, to ensure that we were developing products and campaigns that were based on real customer needs and wants, rather than just designing things that we thought would work.

You’ll need to understand the positioning of your brand in the marketplace: what are the key variables for the category in which you’re operating, where are you on an equal footing with your competitors and where are you going to be different and ideally better?

You’ll need to choose the core equity elements that will really represent your brand in the eyes of your customers and will become associated with, or perhaps are already associated with, your brand. Playing around with these elements too much, making changes too often, will leave your customers confused, they won’t associate your advertising with your brand, they won’t find your product on shelf or online, and you risking losing all the benefits associated with building a distinctive brand.

What you’re trying to do is create a distinctive and cohesive brand experience for your customers over a period of time and across different touch points. In theory, this means that if you hide your brand name then your consumer can still identify the branding elements as being associated with your particular brand. This is the basis for brand awareness, engagement, and, ultimately, sales and loyalty to your brand.

Discover our new services to help you establish your brand fundamentals:

  • DIY coaching

If you’re an early-stage startup with limited time, money and manpower, then the DIY coaching solution is for you. After all, you’re the expert on your business! You’ll be in the driver’s seat, with an expert there to help you navigate the roads.

  • Workshop facilitation

If you have a larger team and want your key stakeholders to be involved in the process so that the brand framework is really anchored in the organisation, then the interactive workshop is the most effective solution. This can also be of value if you’re already an established business but are finding that you need to go back to basics to make sure you have a strong foundation in place. We’ll get together and share best practices, spend time on key exercises to draw out important insights, and pull it all together into a strong brand strategy that will serve as the basis for your business.

  • Customised solution

Finally of course there is a fully customised, ‘done-for-you’ solution that we can develop to be tailored specifically to your situation and objectives.

Read more about our brand fundamentals solutions on the new service page >>

Or get in touch directly to discuss how we can support you and your goals >>

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How to Build a Brand for Your Business

brand strategyWhen we think about brands, we probably think about logos. Coca-Cola, Disney, Nike, Starbucks, Apple… But a brand is so much more than a logo.

A brand is essentially a promise to the customer. It communicates what you stand for, what customers can expect from your products and services, and how you’re different to your competitors. Your brand is what makes you more than just a commodity, it’s what creates loyalty among your customers and, if you’re really good, sometimes even love.

Ultimately what you’re trying to do is create a distinctive and cohesive brand experience for your customers over a period of time and across different touch points. In theory, this means that if you hide your brand name then your consumer can still identify the branding elements as being associated with your particular brand.

To achieve this, you’ll need to choose those core equity elements that will really represent your brand in the eyes of your customers and will become associated with, or perhaps are already associated with, your brand. Playing around with these elements too much, making changes too often, will leave your customers confused, they won’t associate your advertising with your brand, they won’t find your product on shelf or online, and ultimately you will lose all the benefits associated with building a distinctive brand.

Here are 4 questions to ask yourself in order to build a brand for your business:

1. What’s your overall mission?

The best place to start to build your brand is with your why, your purpose. This is the reason you’re in business. It’s who you are, what you believe in, and why you exist.

A good example is Amazon: “Our vision is to be the Earth’s most customer-centric company.” If you’ve ever contacted their customer service, or seen some of the fun conversations that have gone viral (most recently, Thor speaking to Odin – Google it if you haven’t seen it), you’ll know that they are doing all they can to live up to this mission.

Another one is Nike: “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world. *If you have a body, you are an athlete.”

Having a purpose is becoming ever more important as Millennials and younger generations favour an emotional connection with a brand, and a degree of social responsibility, as they make their purchase decisions. Your brand purpose will also determine the overall direction of your company, it will guide your decision making, and it will shape your strategy going forward.

2. What qualities do you want customers to associate with your brand?

What does your brand stand for? What are the key messages that you want to communicate about your brand?

Established brands are likely to have very clear attributes associated with them:

  • If I say Volvo, you’ll probably think safety.
  • If I say Apple, you’ll say something like design or innovation.
  • If I say Disney? Imagination, magic, family…

What are the words you want people to use to describe your brand? Note that these should be broader concepts, not products. If Apple stood for computers, they would never have been able to successfully expand into mp3 players and phones; nor would they have inspired such fierce brand loyalty.

In order to get these qualities firmly associated with your brand, they’ll need to be distinctive versus your competitors, relevant to your customers, and credible based on what your brand actually does. Once that’s established, everything you do will need to support and reinforce those qualities.

3. What benefits does your brand provide?

Your benefits are how the products or services you provide will actually help your customers.

The first type to consider are the functional benefits. This is not just a list of the functionalities of your products, however. As an example, Steve Jobs first sold the iPod as “an amazing little device that holds 1,000 songs… and it goes right in my pocket” – highlighting what the product could do for you in real-life terms, rather than simply giving you the technical specifications, “with a 5 GB hard drive”.

The second type are the emotional benefits. When I worked on marketing perfume, these were pretty much the only benefits we had to communicate about – beyond simply ‘smelling good’, a perfume is all about the story, an emotional insight that involves feeling sexy or confident, for example.

Looking at those benefits that you’ve identified, make sure you distinguish between those that are the same as your competitors’ benefits – ‘points of parity’ – and those that are different, or better – ‘points of difference’.

4. How will you bring your brand to life?

This is where the logo comes in and you probably have that already, as it’s something that most people do right away. Think beyond the logo, however: Do you have a tag line? What are your brand colours? Typography, fonts? Imagery? Music? Pricing?

What’s your brand personality? What tone of voice will you use [see also Shut Up and Let the Brand Speak: Finding Your Tone of Voice]?

In order to build a consistent brand identity, you’ll need to be consistent in terms of these executional elements. Think of the Nike swoosh; the red you associate with Coca-Cola (and which they recently made more prominent in the re-design of their different product lines); the distinctive shape of the Pringles can, instantly recognisable; Red Bull’s “gives you wings” tagline…

Now this doesn’t mean that you have to keep each and every aspect of the branding the same for all eternity; your brand can and should evolve over time (although be prepared to face your customers’ wrath if you make too drastic a change!). When you have a new business, however, and you want to build a brand, you’d do well to be very consistent as you try to construct an identity – an authentic one – in the minds of your customers over time.

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10 Steps To Creating A Killer LinkedIn Profile

Blank pagesLast week we talked about building your personal brand, and in the professional world we said that nothing beats LinkedIn. There are over 400 millions users with 2 new members joining every second (Source).

In a way it’s like an online CV, but with greater possibilities to tell your story. It’s worth spending some time on this, even if you’re not looking for a job right now: you can get your profile in order so that it’s all set up for when you really need it. In fact, this is not even really about getting a job, it’s about making connections and having conversations.

As you work on optimising your profile, always consider the bigger picture; think about what you’re aiming for rather than what you’re doing today. For example, if you’re looking to change direction in your career, maybe move into a different industry or a different type of role, then try to highlight the aspects of your profile that fit this new direction. Identify key transferrable skills that will be important in that new role, and emphasise the most relevant responsibilities and achievements.

Oh, and if you don’t want all your connections, including your current employer, being told about these changes that you’re making to your profile, then make sure you set the privacy settings to not notify your network!

So with that in mind, here are 10 steps to creating a killer LinkedIn profile:

1. Get a professional picture

Please don’t leave the default LinkedIn silhouette, it’s really a barrier when you send a connection request or when someone wants to engage with you. People with profile pictures are 14 times more likely to be viewed (Source)! Likewise, don’t use that selfie from your last night out, or a full-body picture of you doing a 360 on your snowboard, and don’t include your wife, your kids, your dog and your goldfish. This is not about spending lots of money on a professional photo shoot, although getting a professional to take photos is not a bad idea. The bare minimum is that the photo is not blurry and actually looks like you; after that, it’s a case of communicating who you are in a professional way. Oh, and smile! The format on LinkedIn is square so think of this as well when you’re choosing and uploading your picture.

2. Create a custom headline

The headline that appears under your name is possibly the most important element of your profile, and is the only thing that someone will see, along with your name and picture, when you appear in search results. LinkedIn will automatically just choose your latest job title and company but this may not be the most effective use of the space. Consider using keywords instead, or try some version of this formula: WHAT you do, for WHOM, and HOW; and, if you can, add some evidence to back it up. This approach is also helpful if you are unemployed, as you are drawing your attention to your skills and your value (instead of putting “unemployed” or “seeking new opportunities”).

Here are some real-life examples, each of them ranking in the top ten among my own connections:

  • Profit Specialist – Helping Business Coaches, Consultants & Accountants to ATTRACT, WIN & RETAIN more profitable clients
  • Early Stage Investor | Purity, Health & Wellness | Consumer IOT | Hardware Startups| Connected Devices | Smart Appliances
  • Thought Leader | Innovator | Entrepreneur | Company Founder | Professional Speaker | Digital Startup Mentor
  • Global Relationship Builder | Mobile App Expert | 8 k+ Connection | Director – Algoworks | ex CTO | ex Founder | Angel

Try to avoid the realm of the cheesy – phrases like “social media ninja”, “digital guru” or “change maker” have lost all meaning and these are not the words that people are using to search for you. Note also that there is a 120-character limit.

3. Craft your story in the summary

This is where you can really showcase who you are and what you do, weaving your knowledge and experience into a cohesive story. Think about who you’re talking to, what key messages you want them to get from reading this, and perhaps a next step you want them to take; add your email address if you want them to get in touch. The summary should be written in first person (“I work with…”), and it’s your opportunity to tell us who you are and to pique our interest so that we look at the rest of your profile. Highlight your key achievements and if necessary explain any gaps or things that might not otherwise make sense. When it comes to including keywords, here and throughout the profile, think carefully about what people would search for if they were looking for someone like you. Have a bit of a search yourself and see what people with similar backgrounds are putting in their profiles.

4. Add descriptions for each of your previous positions

First of all, include all your previous jobs. Then, you have space to write about each of your previous roles, so don’t leave it blank with just the title and company listed. No need to write an essay, but do try to provide more context, what exactly your job entailed, and what you concretely did. Focus on your results and key achievements, which are much more powerful than simply listing your tasks; but of course don’t share confidential financial information from your past employers. As with the summary, you can bring each position to life by including video, images, presentations, and so on that will showcase your work.

5. Bolster your profile with recommendations

Ask your previous employers and peers to write a short recommendation for your past roles. Maybe don’t do it for your current job, or at least wait until you’ve left (a reason for staying on good terms with your past bosses). These recommendations are much more impactful than the endorsements of your skills (see #7), which are very general and often come from people you’ve never even worked with. Depending on your relationship with the person making the recommendation, you may also mention the areas that you’d love for them to include – perhaps your results on project x, your leadership on event y, or your collaboration skills as demonstrated in z situation.

6. Complete the additional sections

LinkedIn allows you to add other relevant sections so use this opportunity if you can. Add awards that you’ve won for your work, showcase projects and presentations, include any certifications that are important for your industry or role. You can also add other information such as organisations of which you’re a member, any volunteering activity that you do, causes you care about, and opportunities you’re looking for.

7. Get your skills in order

Even just listing your skills makes your profile 13 times more likely to be viewed (Source).The endorsement system on LinkedIn can be a little random, however, and you may end up with an incomplete and misleading picture of your skill set. Identify the skills that you want to feature prominently on your profile and add these if they are missing. Ask colleagues to endorse you to move these higher up in the ranking (or move them up yourself, and you’ll soon be getting endorsements for these new skills too). Clean up existing skills e.g. there’s probably no point in having nine endorsements for “global marketing” and three for “international marketing”. You can’t merge these unfortunately so consider deleting the less important ones. Note that you can list up to 50 skills but only 10 will be featured prominently.

8. Connect with people

LinkedIn is a place where you can be a little less restrictive in terms of the people you connect with – unlike, say, Facebook, where you probably want to keep it to people you actually know. The whole point of LinkedIn is connecting with people, so be open to accepting requests from strangers when their profile looks interesting and relevant. If you’re the one sending the request, PLEASE write a personalised message to briefly explain why you are connecting.

Joining groups for professionals in your field or industry is also a great way to stay in touch with the latest trends, make new connections and create future opportunities. Choose a few that look interesting and engage with them regularly – you’ll find that some groups are pretty quiet but if there’s a healthy discussion going on then you’ll get the most benefit out of the group.

9. Create valuable content

We talked about this already last week in our article on 7 First Steps To Establishing Your Personal Brand Online: don’t just create your profile and leave it there. Start engaging with other people’s content – “like” articles that your connections are posting, comment on them when you have something to add to the discussion. Share articles that you think will be interesting for your peers. As you get more comfortable, you can start to create original content too: publish articles via LinkedIn Pulse and these posts will appear at the top of your profile. Your articles will demonstrate your expertise in your field, reach a larger audience as they get shared among your connections and beyond, and make your profile rank higher as well.

10. Keep it updated

It goes without saying (or at least it should) that you’ll need to update your profile to keep it relevant and fresh. There’s nothing worse than a profile that clearly hasn’t been touched in three years.

Knowing what to write when you’re in actual fact unemployed is always going to be tricky, but lying about still being employed is not the answer. If you left a company last November, it shouldn’t still be listed as your current role today. You shouldn’t be sitting around waiting for that new opportunity to land in your lap anyway, so if you’re keeping yourself busy volunteering, doing some consulting or freelance work, or perhaps studying, then make sure you include this. 42% of hiring managers surveyed by LinkedIn viewed volunteer experience as equivalent to work experience (Source). Note that you can actually move many of the sections around, so you can bring the relevant sections higher up to highlight these.

So those are our 10 steps to creating a killer LinkedIn profile. Follow these and you’re more likely to be found by potential clients and employers, you’ll look professional and convincing when they do find you, and new opportunities are much more likely to come your way.

You might want to consider the one-month free trial of LinkedIn Premium, which promises additional features including a bigger profile photo and a larger search result listing. Even if you don’t continue with it longer term, the trial gives you access to information about professionals like you along with recommendations on keywords to put in your summary, key skills, and groups to join.

While we’re at it, you can customise your public profile URL as well so that it becomes www.linkedin.com/in/yourname. This looks more professional when you’re sharing it with your connections or if you include it in a job application. You can find the instructions in the LinkedIn help centre.

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7 First Steps To Establishing Your Personal Brand Online

Establishing your personal brand onlineIt’s all very well to market your business and your product – but what about marketing yourself? It may feel “icky” to think of yourself as a brand, and to promote yourself as such, but there are many benefits to doing so.

Establishing your own personal brand online allows you to tell your own story as you want it to be told; to establish yourself as a thought leader (a little bit icky again?) in your industry; to create something bigger than the business and the product; and to produce real value for your followers. It can be a critical component of your business ecosystem when you’re an entrepreneur but also when you’re applying to a job, and recruiters are likely to look you up online and see what they can find. Rather than wait until you’re looking for a new job, get a head start today – so that when you need it, it’s already there.

Here are 7 first steps to get you started in establishing your personal brand online:

1. Define your story

Before telling your story, you’ll need to work out what that story will be. Try asking yourself these questions:

  • What are your core values?
  • What are your personal strengths and skills?
  • What do you want to be known for?
  • What are your unique personality traits?
  • What will make you stand out versus your competition?

Choose the key elements from your answers to these questions and craft a short paragraph that you can use as a basis for all your communication online.

To get really crisp and concise about what it is you do, you can try the following “elevator pitch” formula: What do you do? For whom? For what purpose? E.g. I do x for people who y so that they z.

2. Audit your online presence

Now that you have the story you want to tell, let’s take a look at what story you’re actually telling today. Start by Googling yourself and see what appears first. Is it your personal Facebook profile? Click on the image tab: which photos of you are listed here and are they the ones you want to come first? You can set up Google alerts to monitor new mentions going forward.

Next, go through your various profiles and platforms and see what story you’re telling there. Note down any areas that need updating. If you have lots of inappropriate photos on Facebook then visit your privacy settings and make sure that all photos and posts are restricted to your friends.

3. Review (or create!) your LinkedIn profile

There are so many different social networks out there but for the professional world the main one you want to worry about is LinkedIn. We could write a whole post just on optimising your LinkedIn profile but here are some quick tips:

  • Get a professional photo
  • Customise your headline
  • Write a clear summary
  • Describe each of your past and current positions
  • Get recommendations from past employers
  • Add your key skills

4. Claim your other social media profiles

They say Twitter is dying but for those of us who use it the benefits can be huge, including staying on top of the latest news but also publishing our blog posts and, importantly, connecting with our peers and with potential clients in our field. When selecting the right social network(s), you need to think about who you are, what your business is, and who your clients are. For example, there’s no point in setting up an Instagram account if you hate taking photos and don’t like sharing aspects of your lifestyle publicly. Likewise there’s no point in getting into Periscope and Snapchat if your target audience isn’t on there.

You may also want to claim your handle (your name) on new networks to make sure that you protect your own brand and prevent other people from using it, even if you aren’t yet active on there.

5. Create a personal website

A LinkedIn profile, along with other social networks, can be a great start but if you want to get serious about building your brand online you really need a website. It doesn’t have to be fancy, it can be just a couple of pages with a short bio, your CV, and your contact details and links to your social network profiles. You can create something quite nice just on Tumblr or you can try something like WordPress, Wix, or Squarespace. Get a custom domain name (www.johnsmith.com rather than www.johnsmith.wordpress.com) and get someone to proofread all the copy for you, especially if you’re not a native English speaker (that goes for all online platforms, in fact).

6. Use a professional email address

Please, please, PLEASE don’t use a Hotmail address for professional contacts. It’s embarrassing. Really. Gmail is the standard these days so at minimum you should get something like johnsmith@gmail.com. It’s even better if you can secure your own domain name. You’ll get this automatically if you have your own website, e.g. john@johnsmith.com or why not workwithjane@janejones.com. Eventually you can even add other email addresses to reflect the size of your business, for example, you can have media@johnsmith.com, careers@johnsmith.com, and so on.

7. Produce valuable content

It’s nice to have a presence on different networks but if you stop there no one’s actually going to know that you exist. Start by commenting on, and sharing, other people’s content; but then you need to be creating and publishing valuable content for your peers to read and engage with. It’s completely up to you which format you choose here. If you enjoy writing then adding a blog to your personal website could be a good idea; this will also get you appearing higher in search rankings. If you’re more of a verbal person, why not try podcasting or vlogging? The medium will also determine which platform you choose, for example, YouTube might be interesting for video, or maybe Periscope. Whichever format and platform you choose, be purposeful: each blog post you write, each tweet you send, is adding another piece to the puzzle that is your personal brand so make sure you’re building something cohesive and effective.

A note on business cards

Do we still need business cards in today’s online world? It’s always so exciting to order beautiful business cards and letterheads but think about when and how you’ll actually use them. If you plan to go to a lot of events and networking is an important part of making contacts in your business, then it may not be a bad idea to have something tangible to hand out to people. If so, you should include your name, a meaningful job title that tells people what you do, and key contact information such as your website (and/or LinkedIn profile), email and Twitter handle. Don’t spend a load of money on fancy cards that your contacts are simply going to throw in the bin – unless your business is a creative one and having an “out-of-the-box” card could be part of getting clients.

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