Okay, not really, but I got your attention, didn’t I?

What you want to do instead is give away little bits of the store. In a way that feels natural, or at least not too crazily UN-natural. For example, let’s say you own a boat store. You decide you want to brand some items for sale—or perhaps as giveaways when your favorite customers (they’re all your favorites, right?) buy that $50,000 boat. Perhaps come up with a clever saying (or let us) to promote your brand on cool tee-shirts that all your customers will wear…really inexpensive advertising! (Imagine the per-impression cost of that tee-shirt as your customer or employee wears it every weekend.)

Additionally, you could sell branded coolers (or give them to your employees as gifts), coozies, or floating buoy key chains, or waterproof ID holders. Get where I’m going with this? All branded, all connected to your core business. And the possibilities are endless.

Okay, I labeled this your “personal” brand statement, but the truth is, it’s really about A brand, ANY brand. So you’ve spent a couple of days with “we believe” statements. You’ve probably got quite a list by now. Working with my paint company analogy, this list might look like:

• We believe people’s lives should be filled with color.
• We believe everyone deserves to be surrounded by beauty.
• We believe everyone should get a fair price.

Etc. Now, a quick look at my very short list tells me that appearance ranks high on my list. (Which perhaps brings up the interesting question of why my advertising focuses on price….hmmm….But back to the brand statement…) So I focus on that aspect: beauty, color, appearance…how do I treat those vis a vis the customers….oh, I LOVE helping people create attractive home settings. (Note: if this exercise brings up any adjunct business ideas to expand on, just make a note and keep on track. Your goal is to create a brand statement that may or may not include those other things—for example, just writing this, not even for a real business, my brain is working on ways to include a home decorating station—perhaps just magazines…you see where I’m going with this?)

So we get this far and perhaps we land on the statement: We believe that everyone’s life should be filled with color. A little imprecise, perhaps, but we know what we mean. And that leaves room for expanding the brand promise into more interior decorating as time goes by.


How? The brand story

To get to the nitty gritty of the brand story, you’ve got more questions to ask; namely how? In what ways do you fulfill your brand promise?

• We have the most complete range of paint colors in town
• We have the most unusual range of paint colors
• We keep a complete supply of decorating magazines where customers can purchase them

Someone who owns a real paint store will probably add a dozen more. You may not distill these into one statement as you did the brand statement, but you’ll know why you do the thing you do through them. Refine them as much as possible, though—get the extra or imprecise statements out of there, and see if you can get down to three or fewer.


This puts you on a real path toward clarifying your story, and will start you thinking about things like advertising and store design (if appropriate) in a whole new way.

Simply put, your brand is your promise to your customer. Or, to put it another way, it's the story you're telling about your promise.

Your brand promise is your “what we do and how we do it” statement to potential and actual customers. It’s the “what and how we deliver.”

And sometimes it’s crazy difficult to put down on paper and carry through—in my years at ABC, I saw frequently how tempting it can be to sort of over promise, to want to be all things to all people, and how hard it is to say “no” (even for very good reasons), especially when the CEO (or another upper-level person) wants you to do something different.

So it helps to have a document you can refer to that starts with: our brand is.....

And to define the brand, it can be helpful to start here...

What gets you excited?

Begin by thinking of your brand: what gets you excited about your business? For example, let’s say you own a paint company because everyone needs paint so it’s a good, secure business. But what made you choose paint instead of, say, real estate (the stuff you put the paint on)? Well...real estate involves tests and besides, you like the thought of beautifully painted houses….ah, that’s where your brand statement begins. You start by asking not only what gets you excited, but what gets your customers excited (i.e. why should THEY be as passionate as you are about paint…somewhere in that intersection of you and them is where you’re going to find your sweet spot.). You can start these statements with “we believe”….we believe that color is the most important element in houses, we believe that bedrooms should be soothing….that sort of thing (I am making this up as I go along, so don’t quote me.)

If you’ve never gone through this exercise, it can be both eye-opening and confusing—you might discover you’ve gotten completely off track in your marketing. On the other hand, you might discover just a couple of tweaks will get you humming along quite nicely…and you might even discover a whole new reason to be in business—and a whole new way to approach what you’ve been doing.



Later this week…more on digging out your personal brand statement.
 

Purpose. Passion. Vision. These ideas and more are imperative to any 'start up' company or entrepreneur I am sure. "...without vision people will perish..." {proverbs 29:18} and so will your company. 

The article {linked above} talks about having a purpose. I know my purpose began out of a {perceived} need small businesses had for good graphic design at reasonable rates. I also knew I wanted to give back to the community with my time and talent as well as a desire to be home and available to my family. A personal purpose and a purpose that would benefit the community.

Passion just keeps me going and one of the reasons we moved the office back home. I was burned out from the growth of the business. I had lost the balance and I had lost the passion of the purpose.

So, perhaps the vision changes over time? Visions grow into more, change as the times change and evolve as the business evolves. The purpose may change also as the needs of the family changes or as the business world changes. Change is something we have to be open to - the one inevitable in life.

But passion - the passion and love of what you get up every single day to live and love and do. This must remain. And living today must happen. Tomorrow will always be there waiting on you. But today....

~Blessings