Disclaimer:          Organic Business Strategies is dedicated to helping businesses with issues that face them every day.  But we work on the premise that our customers want to grow and develop in an organic way.  This means that they want to embrace the characteristics of honorable businesses, the basics of customer service, honesty, loyalty, and hard work.

I started this post with this disclaimer because if you are to build your brand and build it with pride, it is our feeling that you can only do it by embracing these principles.  You can tell people whatever you want, but they will develop their own opinion of you and if the two don’t match – you lose.

Now with this said, let’s start to build your brand.  I think the first thing you need to do is to identify who you want to be.  Do you want to be the best, the most economical, the most caring, the most helpful, the most convenient or the most friendly?  What are the adjectives that best describe what you want your customers to think of when they see your name?

I assume that each of you have developed some sort of mission statement, if not on paper at least in your mind.  An aside:  You really should put it down on paper.  Your “brand“ is really just a shortened version of your mission statement, one or two words that describe who you are to the public.

So, do you have your list?  Ok, now you need to do some soul searching and determine whether you are delivering on what you have listed.  If not, what are you going to do to fix the discrepancy?

If you feel confident that you are doing your best then it is time to define what these items mean.  For example:  if you say that you are the “most helpful”, then you can also say “we have many representatives available to help you” or “if I don’t know the answer, I will find it for you”; or if you say that you are the “most economical”, then you can say “lowest prices every day” (Wal-Mart), or “ask us about our daily specials”.

The point of this exercise is to bring focus to; who you are vs. who you say you are.  The words on your list may never be spoken in your ads.  But instead, are to be lived and demonstrated to your customers on a daily basis.

Next time we will try to explore ways that you can demonstrate your values, your brand, on a daily basis.  In the mean time, write down that mission statement, develop your list of adjectives that you want to project and think about how you want to be perceived by the community.

Photo by Concrete Forms