28/09/2016 By Anna Lundberg 1 Comment

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

It’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.

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

24/08/2016 By Anna Lundberg Leave a Comment

Troubleshooting Your Startup: How to Diagnose a Failing Business

The entrepreneurial journey is a famously emotional one, a rollercoaster of excitement and disillusionment. With your blood, sweat and tears going into your business, and with a real belief that you really do have an amazing business idea, it can be especially difficult to face a world in which the sales just aren’t coming in as you had expected.

“What am I doing wrong?! Why isn’t it working?”

The trouble is that there is no magic solution. There’s no answer you can get from an expert that will solve all of your problems, no tactic that will have the sales flooding it. Maybe your business is never going to work, and maybe you’re really close to breaking through and you just need to make a few tweaks. Maybe it’s a problem at the strategy level, or maybe it’s in the execution.

Rather than giving up and scrapping the whole thing, though, you need to be asking yourself targeted questions in order to narrow down what might be the problem, or problems, that you’re faced with.

Here are some of the areas and questions you can ask yourself when troubleshooting your startup business:

1. Is it the product?

A natural first place is to start with is your product. Is the benefit clear, and does your audience understand it? Do they care? Does the product meet the market need that exists? Is the value proposition sufficiently attractive? Does the quality match the price? Are you clearly differentiated from your competitors’ products? It’s possible that a few tweaks are all it takes to turn the product into the success that you’ve been dreaming of. Worst case, you’ll have to re-think the whole proposition.

2. Is it the brand?

No we’re not just talking about the logo here, a brand is really a promise to the customer as to what they can expect from your products and services. Do you have a compelling vision or message for your business? Are you consistent in how you’re communicating what you stand for? Is there a match between your pricing and positioning (for example, you’re purporting to be a luxury player with premium pricing) and the quality and tone of voice (continuing with the same example, you’re using a mass approach that is disconnected to that aspirational pricing)? Without a strong brand, you’re just a commodity, and you’re most likely playing a losing game.

3. Is it the market?

It’s tempting to blame your business failure on the market but sometimes it really is true. Maybe you’re just too early with your idea and the market isn’t ready? (Google tried and failed to launch what was effectively an Uber service, Google Ride Finder, 2005-2009.) On the other hand, maybe you’re too late, and the market is already flooded with competitors, the barriers to entry are too high and it’s impossible for you to stand out? Are you sure that the problem you’re solving is a sufficient pain point? Is the market big enough to be a viable business? Maybe you’re trying to sell to everyone, and you don’t even have a clear market? An appealing market will be one that has a large number of potential users, ideally growing, and it’s relatively easy for you to acquire those users. Without any pre-existing demand you’re going to have start by convincing them that they want or need you in the first place.

4. Is it the business model?

Following on from the previous point, do you have a scalable way to acquire customers, bearing in mind that the cost of acquisition mustn’t exceed the lifetime value of that customer? Have you come up against unexpectedly high start-up costs that are preventing you from becoming profitable? Are the financials not working, were your projections just too optimistic? Did you assume that your product was just so amazing that it would sell itself? Many startups fail simply because they run out of money so if you’re facing cash-flow issues you’ll need deal with this sooner rather than later.

5. Is it the marketing?

Are you using the right channels to reach your customers? Are you creating relevant content? Is your message consistent and one that will resonate with your customers? Are you making effective choices or are you trying to do everything and be everything to everyone? Are you putting enough budget behind your activities, or are you spreading yourself too thin? Your marketing is often the most obvious area to explore but it’s worth reviewing the fundamentals before playing around with the marketing plan. There’s no point in increasing the budget if your branding or the product itself is off!

6. Is it you?

*Ouch*, this probably isn’t something that you’ll want to admit and hopefully it’s not the case; but it’s possible that the problem is in fact located with the founder. Are you sure that you have the skills and experience needed to make this business a success? Are you being consistent in your efforts or is your strategy all over the place? Are you fully committed, doing everything you can to get it off the ground (or are you dabbling, half-heartedly, alongside other projects)? What about the rest of the team? (When Zappos had to make lay-offs in the early days of their business, they actually found that productivity remained at the same level, as the people who left were the non-believers who weren’t delivering the biggest results.)

If you’d like help with troubleshooting your startup business together with an expert, get in touch on Clarity to book a call! Contact me on Clarity >>

10/08/2016 By crocuscomms Leave a Comment

How to validate your business idea (and avoid wasting your time and money)

Being an entrepreneur and running your own business is becoming ever more popular, and for good reason – it brings with it a lot of freedom and independence, as well as opportunities to express your creativity and to have flexible working hours; while people are feeling increasingly unfulfilled and far from secure in their full-time jobs. But how do you come up with a business idea? And how do you validate your idea so that you know it’s going to make you money?

The danger with starting with the premise that you want to launch a business is that you’re explicitly trying to come up with startup ideas, rather than trying to meet a need that exists in the market. The risk here is that you create something that no one wants! On top, you may think your idea is revolutionary and bound to take off as a huge success but you really don’t know that until it’s proven in the market. Just look at Dragon’s Den (or Shark Tank in the US) – the millionaire investors will always favour the businesses that already have documented sales over an idea that may sound appealing but hasn’t yet been tested.

So how can you go about validating your business idea?

1. Consider your own skills, interests and experience

Whatever idea you decide on, you’re going to be working incredibly hard to get it off the ground and so it’s critical that you really care about what you’re doing. If you can find an area that taps into your core values and interests, and even better where you already have both the skills and the experience, you’re going to be that much more likely to succeed. So I would always start by asking yourself: What are you passionate about? Where do your unique strengths lie? How will you be different to the competitors who are already out there? What experience can you leverage that will give you a competitive edge? The idea may be great in theory, but are you the right person to bring it to life?

2. Ask your customers what they want

The easiest way to test your idea beyond your own brainstorming bubble is to talk to potential customers and clients. There is a caveat here, however. Did you ever hear that famous quote from Henry Ford: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses”? Apparently he never actually said it (shame! it’s such a great quote…) but the message is just as valid: people often don’t know what they want.

So when you talk to people in order to check the appeal of your idea, try to focus more on the problems that they may be facing, rather than on the solution they envisage. Whether you do a survey on the phone or in writing, you’ll want to ask questions like:

What’s the biggest problem you’re facing?
How much of a problem is it, on a scale of 1 to 10?
Would you be willing to pay for a solution to this problem? If so, how much?

That last question is crucial: after all, people ultimately need to buy your product or service in order for your business to successful!

3. Ask the experts what they think

Ideally you’ve chosen an idea that sits within your area of expertise, so that you have the skills and experience to know that it’s a strong idea, to know how best to execute it, and to be able to properly implement it. Sometimes, though, you may come up with a fantastic idea in an area that you’re not so familiar with. A bit of naïve optimism may help to dream big and potentially change an industry (think Uber, Airbnb, etc.) – but more likely you’ll be operating within an existing playing field and it helps to know the rules. Talk to experts who can tell you the challenges they’re facing in the industry, what are the restrictions and limitations, what’s the feasibility of the solution that you’re proposing. This can save you from working for months on an idea that will never work in practice.

4. Test it in the real world

The second implication of the Henry Ford quote, I think, is that there’s only so much you can validate an idea with consumers in a theoretical sense. That warm and fuzzy feeling that you get when everyone you ask says “wow that’s a great idea!” is all very well, but the real test comes when you actually have something real to market. Research is very important, especially understanding the pain points of your target customer, but you need to avoid analysis paralysis and get ready to launch something into the market as soon as possible so that you can learn and ‘pivot’ if necessary – before you’ve invested too much time and money in the wrong idea.

So once you feel you have a strong idea, get it live as soon as you can. Push out your solution, even if it’s not 100% there, and get some potential customers to pilot it. They can give you real user feedback to allow you to optimise the solution as you go, and they can also give you testimonials and referrals to help you as you start to advertise and grow the business. In fact, you don’t even need to have a product available to do this! You can simply put up a landing page, run some Google or Facebook ads, and see what kind of response you get. You’re never going to be able to choose “the best idea” based purely on the theory (and, in fact, there is no such thing, as it’s really all in the execution).

5. Choose to crowd-fund it

One way to really put an idea to the test, finding out how much support there is for a product and then leveraging that support to actually sell the product, is to use a crowd-funding platform. If you go with this option, you’ll only actually start production if you have a successful campaign, i.e. if you get a sufficient number of backers, making the risk low in terms of initial investment. That being said, this isn’t the panacea that you may be hoping for. Running a successful crowd-funding campaign will require a huge amount of effort from you and your team, creating videos and publishing updates, reaching out to influencers, and making sure that you launch with a big bang in those crucial first days of the campaign. There’s no point in launching a half-hearted campaign and simply hoping for the best, as you’re not going to validate the idea or and you’re definitely not going to build a successful business out of it.

20/07/2016 By crocuscomms Leave a Comment

How do you set an objective for your marketing efforts?

When we’re launching a brand or a product, it’s easy to jump straight to the execution of the marketing campaign and its tactics. We think of a contest idea for Instagram, or start planning budget for Facebook ads, or maybe we start creating some great video content for YouTube, or an email blast. There’s an important step missing here, though, that’s absolutely crucial: setting an objective.

Without an objective, we’re working in the dark. We can’t possibly choose the right tools for that objective if we don’t know what it is, and we certainly won’t be able to measure its success after the campaign has finished as we won’t have anything to measure against. Setting a clear objective will allow you to focus your time and money when faced with choices between different activities and platforms, and will ensure that you can assess your results against that original objective. If you’re working with an agency, this will also help you to hold them accountable (make sure you set the objectives together).

Ultimately, of course, what most businesses want is sales. That may or may not be the primary objective of a particular campaign, however. Let’s say you’re just launching a new brand – nobody’s heard of you, you haven’t established any credibility or built any trust – in which case asking people to buy from you right away is a very big leap.

Here are some different objectives that you may want to consider:

1. Building awareness

In the example above, when you’re launching a new brand – or a product, for that matter – then your objective is likely to be primarily one of building awareness that your brand, or product, even exists. This means getting to where your potential customer is receptive to your message and introducing them to who you are and the benefits that you offer. With an awareness objective especially, you’ll want to make sure you are targeting a specific audience and market so that your money works hard for you and so that you don’t spread yourself too thin.

KPIs (Key Performance Indicators): advertising impressions, number of new website visitors, social mentions

2. Generating leads

A lot of marketing advice for small businesses is about generating leads, often in the form of gathering the email addresses of prospective clients. This allows you to communicate with these prospects and build a relationship with them, continuing the conversation after the first contact, demonstrating additional value and, eventually, asking for that sale. The simplest way to get these leads is with an opt-in form on your website, offering helpful content such as a checklist, an ebook, a video course, etc. in return for the customer’s details. Of course these shouldn’t just be any leads but rather qualified leads, i.e. prospects who you will be able to serve with your products and services.

KPIs: conversion rate on your opt-in forms, number of opt-ins, size of email list

3. Increasing engagement

When we first started to use Facebook pages, managers were focused on simply getting more likes on the page; since then we’ve realised that those likes don’t mean anything if your followers are not engaging with your content. You can add further value and nurture relationships with your leads and followers by investing in content creation to entertain or inspire those prospects and so build your brand reputation. Education may also be a specific objective here, i.e. educating the prospect on the value of your products or services to bring them closer to a purchase decision. You might create content that compares your product to its competitors, or write “how-to” articles that add value beyond just talking about the product benefits.

KPIs: time spent on your website, bounce rate, pages viewed per session, video views, comments, shares

4. Driving sales

Driving sales may be the ultimate goal of everything you do, but even this goal can be broken down: Are you looking to drive volume (number of sales) or $ value? Do you want to drive acquisition of new customers, increase the average order value or basket size, or drive repeat purchases among existing customers? Which objective you choose will depend on the nature of your industry and your product, and will clearly drive different tactical choices: you might increase the basket size by offering complimentary products or up-selling at checkout; or you might drive repeat purchases by maintaining regular communication with past customers and perhaps sharing exclusive offers or discounts.

KPIs: number and value of total sales, average order value or baset size, repeat purchases

5. Building loyalty and advocacy

Of course, your work doesn’t end with the sale; once the sale is completed, there’s still a question of providing quality customer service, creating loyalty and driving advocacy to maintain and build your brand. What does your returns and repairs policy look like? How can you add value to a customer after the purchase? How can you encourage customers to leave positive reviews or testimonials, and to recommend you to their friends? In today’s world of online and social this post-purchase stage is absolutely crucial and you’re missing a big opportunity, or even damaging your brand, by neglecting it.

KPIs: customer retention rates, ratings and reviews, Net Promoter Score

Whatever you choose to focus on, you’ll want to get as specific as you can, quantifying the objective and setting a deadline where possible, alongside other more qualitative measures. For example, “Increase the number of visitors to the site from 10,000 to 50,000 in the next year”, “Increase the average order value to £50 per customer by the end of October”.

If you want to discuss how to set specific objectives on your business, get in touch via Clarity: Anna Lundberg, Branding & marketing strategy expert – Creating and Growing Your Brand & Winning in Social Media – Clarity.

08/06/2016 By crocuscomms 1 Comment

How to Build a Brand for Your Business

When 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.

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.