What do you think of when you hear the word “brand?” For many people, it’s a symbol, slogan, or some other type of graphic logo. But Brand is more about how our customers and prospects feel about our business, products, and services. This is why building our reputation is so important – because it impacts everything from sales volume to the ability to increase prices.

So what does this have to do with branding? Branding has everything to do with positioning ourselves in the marketplace as something that will generate customer satisfaction instead of frustration. That means developing an identity for your company that communicates both who you are and what you offer without having someone else tell them first!

A brand is a shortcut for decision-making. There are a few things we should put on the table and keep in mind as it relates to decision-making.

People make decisions: even if you are B2B..even if you do government low bid or contract work…at some point people still make decisions.

Feelings matter: decisions are made primarily on how we feel about a brand and how a brand makes us feel about ourselves

You can’t control time: people buy when they are ready, therefore your brand must be there in front of them and feel right whenever they are ready

Conserve calories: people are designed to conserve mental calories, it is what has kept us alive since the beginning and having a strong brand makes it easy for people to choose us

The good news is, you have control over your brand: you can decide how to position and portray yourself.

Therefore you can strategically decide how your best customers are going to feel about you and how you are going to make them feel. Thereby letting your Brand be a shortcut to help customers make decisions, this impacts…

• Your Growth
• Your Sales
• Your Profits
• Your Position in Market
• Your Expenses

and so much more

So how do we quantify this thing we call “Brand” because let’s be honest it can be hard to look at your business as a Brand and determine how well you are performing if you have never done so before.

How do we know how our Brand is performing?

Better Brand = Better Margin

To quantify this just one of the models we apply is the Three Lines of Business.

This model is a simple way to look at your business in terms of how it looks from the outside. It helps you determine what are perceptions of your brand, how is it positioned, and what margin you should be able to capture. It is a powerful tool to make strategic decisions about where you want to be in the market and the eyes of your customers and what you will need to do to get there.

Understanding this will help you focus on where you should be spending time when building or improving your brand. This allows us to identify ways that we can impact our Brand.

The Three Lines of Business are shown here but imagine they are sliders and can be moved up and down.

Margin lives in between Cost to Produce and Price.

Based on many factors impacting a company and the market it is in a strategic decision can be made about how they want to apply this model to their business and execute.

The Wal-Mart, Dell, and Costco models look more like this:

The models for companies like Tiffany, Rolex, and Ferrari models look more like this:

You can see that they have made very different strategic decisions based on applying this model and quantifying the things that can be difficult to quantify. This is just one model of many that are applied to businesses and their markets when we do Brand Strategy works to help stakeholders make better decisions and execute on those decisions to grow their business in the best way for them and their customers.

Growing your business can be tough, but it’s not impossible. Like most things in life, you need a strategy to make sure that the decisions you are making are leading you in the right direction. A brand strategy is one way to help ensure that every decision made on behalf of your company aligns with its unique hurdles and opportunities for growth. 

There are limitless ways to grow a business but finding the best way for your company requires quantifying the intangible and making strategic decisions. Your brand is how you influence those decisions, so it needs to be intentional for it to work.

If you’re ready to make an impact with your brand strategy, we’ve got something special waiting for you at StoryBuilt Marketing and Consulting! Schedule a Brand Strategy Consult interview where we can discuss what may be holding back your growth and help brainstorm strategies that will take things up a notch. Maybe you will even be a candidate for one of our limited quarterly strategy slots. Schedule one today and see if we’re a fit–you won’t regret meeting with us!