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Identifying Your Brand Pillars
Brand pillars are the characteristics that set your company apart from competitors. So, you want to sum up your outlook on the issues that matter most to your customers and where it naturally fits, emphasizing those ideas in the content of your products. These can be issues that your customers feel are essential convenience, on-time delivery, Reliability, innovation, etc. Of course, you have not to be limited to merely one thing, but no more than three is recommended. More than that would cause: -
- It becomes difficult for your customers to remember
- Reduces your focus.
Why did you establish your business?
Several start-ups are formed because the founders see a much-advanced way to improve the quality of a product. This advancement will be significant to their customers, a completely new product, or a way to enhance customers' experiences greatly.
A list of possible reasons is as numerous as there are businesses. The point is you established your company for a purpose. Know what that will be. Able to say it with simplicity and with clarity. If you are effective at this, you may be able to say it to become the anchor for the narrative you express about your company's formation.
Observe this from the customer's standpoint once you have this clearly described and phrased to be confident in saying it. Then, present it as a solution to a problem they have in their business that you solve, or another benefit. Examples could include:
Reason for Starting
Need for an online system
Invent Better ways
Having Reliability that can be improved
Benefit for the Customer
This is a huge reason whereby cost is lowered
To Collaborate with customers regularly,
to improve their business
This would lower operating costs for customers
Establishing the company should gather stories that you tell to make deeper connections with your clients. It's all about getting the maximum from every effort and expenditure to help your marketing and sales by developing your brand pillars. This allows sales by providing a story they can tell in selling situations. These stories can create blog posts, too.
Very importantly, you can use the brand pillars as a guiding rail for your branding works. When you write or composing something for your viewers to see, be sure- where it matches naturally- when making the point in one way or another about a brand pillar. Well performed if you have a couple and can mention them easily that fits within the framework of your blog, social post, news article, podcast, or video. Think about the possibility of making your brand pillars a tagline with your logo.
How do you see your business?
Recognizing those characteristics that you want to communicate
to customers can often be successfully shared by describing your industry and seeing things differently. But, unfortunately, having worked for businesses that never attempted to differentiate them selves or even call out those things that they bring together in terms of a customer experience.
As an example, there are resellers of separate manufacturers' products in the information technology business, typically with some specialization inputting complex systems together, so they work well for the customer. It was beneficial to tell prospective customers that we had great depth and experience in something relevant to their interests as a seller. Better still would be connecting an example or story of similar success to a different point of view on the IT reseller business. Something like, "As we think a reseller must assist you not only to purchase equipment and software but to support and maintain it, we developed or used tools to document the relationship of the relevant systems and the features of each component. We omit the output with
you to incorporate it as you need in other systems and get better help results from the several manufacturers if you need to work with them on something. We also conduct twice-annual updates of these outputs, if you like, at no additional charge."
It is easy for an IT reseller who emphasizes the customer experience after the sale to say that one of its brand pillars is customer care after the sale' and specifies with concrete evidence. However, this pillar could come from one of the influences when starting the business in the first instance, or something clients have mentioned, or even a planned initiative. Irrespective of the source, know that you should consider the reasons for starting your business as an excellent basis for possible brand pillars.
Another business having worked with was started on innovation that the wife of one of the founders required. It appears the scientific instrument business at the time was somewhat featureless. By observing the actual effort to innovate, innovation became one of its brand pillars in its branding approaches.
So, looking at your business, and consider asking your customers their opinion. Paying close attention to generalizations and what changes they want to see, especially new insights that you can develop as a central theme.
Why do you do things differently?
This is a closure with the customers. Every time you make a point about what makes your business different, it emphasizes the point in saying why you do things the way you do. You can point to studies for proof and an experience for your business and other customers why your business can resonate genuinely with potential customers. After you say what you perceive differently, it helps importantly to tell them why you do things differently.
Having this support raises the bar for competitors.
Competitor representatives, in most cases, will not be able to differentiate their employers with a convincing statement of how their business understands things and why. They will not determine their employers and connect with prospects by clarifying why they do things the way they do. You will.
Even if you do not know what holes you might poke in competitors' products, methods, or people, this is a human-level factor to do, first, by making a relationship with your prospects by being honest with them about your approach. Listen carefully for responses. You can learn a lot about genuine and perceived differences, and which means impressive to your customers. But in the end, be enthusiastically working on using the outcome of this planning and listening to voice why you do things the way you do it. Confidently, there will be a brand pillar or two there, or at least you will learn which you should emphasize.
Are you teaching?
In these current times, obtaining the correct information is not hard for nearly all subjects. What is it you possibly do when you want to be familiar with something? You most likely do an online search. Depending on the search term you enter, you will probably check page links and websites, blog posts, summary cards that can often precisely demonstrate what you were looking for, links to videos, news articles, and academic research. You are going to see advertisements for related products and services, too. Swift answers are not challenging for most questions any longer.
Still, people are people and have a scarcity of time. They may not have the background to pick the best answer from an ocean of search results. They may not know to see a longer-term advantage you are delivering.
One brand pillar that can create a difference is to become your customers' teacher, mentor, Sherpa, guru, and counselor. Suppose you are inclined to help people talk through related considerations. In that case, this may be something that can become a big difference-maker in your business and set you apart from your competitors. Suppose your customers are often frustrated because no one takes an additional 10 minutes to speak with them about their problems and goals. In that case, you may be in a stronger position to win additional sales by helping them think through choices and knowledge sharing. Give this a try, and watch for the results, depending on the nature of your relationship with your customers. This technique may be something to add to your overall selling. If you have a sales representative, see what they think about this. It may be advantageous to regularly conduct product and competitive training to help guide customers, too.
What is the final result?
Finally, I would suggest that you look at what it is; in the end, you are supporting your customers' achievement. Again, you can get double duty from this attempt. Look at what is happening at a human level when your customers work with you. Do they gain in any personal way?
How about assisting them with tasks they would normally expect to do, particularly if your competitors still require them to do it or them? Do they see, personally, a financial benefit by improving a metric or two your company can improve? Key metrics measures many managers at your customers. Improvements in those metrics may require an incentive payout to them. Identifying if this is likely the situation at the accounts you work with. If you have the correct relationship, you may be able to request and recognize it for sure. If this is the case, think about formulating a written guarantee of a critical development you can deliver. Guaranteed consequences might turn out to be the brand pillar that is right for you.
Think about how your customers will profit from time savings, convenience, higher quality, changes in their final product, drop in labor costs, decrease in shipping, etc. Then, when your customers buy from you, what do they get in terms of business and personal gains? Try putting these in separate categories and see if you can arrange these down into themes.
These are points that help you prepare for sales calls, too. By talking to customers, you already have by telling them what you are trying to do and requesting their support. Mostly they will happily take some time to support you. Depending on the level of information in this area, you may want to prepare the conversation by providing a topic, asking if they agree, and asking for an example.
This is a very individual effort. It needs to be unique because you want to tell customers, as briefly as possible, and with proper proof when selling, what their experience will be when they buy from you. This is also very personal because the result will help you tell your story, explaining your brand, guiding your messaging in any copy you write or marketing benefit you may hire, and prepare for sales calls.
Discovering your brand pillars is not tricky, and you already likely have several points you can whittle down to a shortlist of the difference makers. Take some time to think about this crucial factor in your business. This will save you time, expenses and benefit you win more sales. There are no right or wrong answers but be sure whatever you think is worthy of resonating with your customers. The topmost ones will call out the unique capabilities your competitors cannot match, particularly if you can formulate them up with stories that tell people these are an important reason they should buy from you.
Which of These Seven Pillars Do You Have in Your Business
- Content Details Pillar 01 - Reputation
- The Pillar of Reputation
- The Pillar of Relationship
- The Pillar of Originality
- The Pillar of Integrity
- The Pillar of Profitability
- The Pillar of Mobility
- The Pillar of Visibility
What are the six pillars of business?
1: Marketing When it comes to marketing,
you need automated lead generation
2: Sales
3: Operations
4: Finances
5: Customer Delivery
6: Mindset
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