I thought I’d take a moment to talk about branding from a different perspective. That is “experiential” branding. Branding must be more than just making sure your clients recognize your logo or tag line. A brand should make a bold statement or take a stand. We must create an emotional association with our brand. This could be a feeling of success, happiness, or relief which our clients experience when they own or use our product or service. This can be a direct experience or an indirect experience.
Direct Experience
An example of a direct experience would be a brand which is created when someone eats at a restaurant or takes a test drive in an automobile. Their “experience” directly influences how they feel about the product or service. This is why many marketers communicate their brand in the form of samples or in trying to deliver at least part of the solution to clients or prospects before they even make the decision to buy. It allows the client to lower their risk in changing vendors by “experiencing” your product or service without making a major investment of time or money. For example, software companies often do this with trial programs. Consumer products such as cleaning solutions, magazines and even snack foods do this by sending free sample in the mail which will hopefully communicate a positive brand experience. But imagine if gardeners did this by landscaping one small corner of an office complex or if real estate brokerages and agents did this when showing at open houses. What could be the results?
Indirect Experience
On the other hand “indirect experience” is much harder to convey in the form of branding. By it’s sheer nature it requires the client or prospect to make an investment. In many cases it requires that they purchase the product or service in order to experience the brand. For example, Budweiser sponsors sporting events to encourage viewers to associate Budweiser products with the fun and excitement of the sport. Companies also create slogans (“American Express: Don’t Leave Home Without It,” or “Built Ford Tough”) and use them everywhere. TV commercials, magazine ads, and billboards are all indirect messaging. But this form of branding needs repeated exposure – conventional advertising wisdom says that a message isn’t effective until the customer has received it at least 10 times. This can be too costly a method of branding particularly for the smaller business. In order to make this type of branding more effective we must focus on narrowing our marketplace.
Obviously direct experience branding is far more powerful and cost effective than indirect experience branding. Certainly a combination of tactics is most critical. In short I would encourage every marketer to think about ways that they can create a positive branding message both in the direct experience the customer has in engaging with their product or service or indirectly, the message they receive through the company’s marketing and advertising.
For more information on how to do this in your own business, check out our program on branding in the 21st Century. You can see more information on this program by going to:http://www.sbanetwork.org/attract/branding.asp
Also I have written many free articles on branding. Here are links to a few:http://www.sbanetwork.org/articles/articles_view.asp?id=53http://www.sbanetwork.org/articles/articles_view.asp?id=202http://www.sbanetwork.org/articles/articles_view.asp?id=248http://www.sbanetwork.org/articles/articles_view.asp?id=249
I hope that this “Business Update” has been helpful in assisting you to improve the performance of your organization. For more information on how the Small Business Advisory Network assists companies in improving their performance, please feel free to contact us at 310-320-8190 or email mark@markdeo.com.
Have a great week!