Building a brand that matters is like building the pyramids of Egypt– large precision cut stones are quarried and placed one by one, layer by layer, over years, into the experience customers have doing business with you.
Creating a brand (making things that identify and distinguish your business from another) has never been easier, while building a brand (your reputation) has never been more difficult.
The esteem of the customers you serve and your success is pretty much uncorrelated to the creation of your brand identity. Customers don’t care much about your logo, colors and trade dress, marketing, or your latest product/service features. Customers care about achieving their desired outcomes.
The goal of brand building is to be the “one and only” choice customers can’t live without. The value of your brand and growth of your business depends on customers achieving their desired outcome.
Building a brand (reputation) takes a lot of time and treasure. Brand building is about the quality of your very presence in the marketplace. In building your brand, the precision cut stones are your actions and behaviors placed one by one, layer by layer into the total experience customers have doing business with you. This is reflected in the relevance and quality your products and services, your people, your culture and your overall contribution to your industry and community.
From the beginning of human commerce, this is how business success works–happy, satisfied, fulfilled, thriving customers.
In our social-media-attention-deprived-digital age, it might be fashionable to believe customers fundamentally behave differently than how they have behaved for thousands of years. But it's not so. As it has always been, customers want more use value received than they paid in cash value. Nothing new here.
When your business /brand delivers more perceived use value (desired outcomes) to customers than they pay you in cash value, your price and your competitors become irrelevant. Only then will you be on your way to being a one and only brand that endures.
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