Can your brand pass this four-second test?

You meet someone at a party or a networking event, and pull out your business card.

They land on your web site.

Or, they pull up to your store or your office for the very first time.

At that point of first contact, each of those people makes a series of snap judgments about you:

• How smart are you?
• Do you have any money?
• Can I trust you?
• Do I like you?

All based on no information.

Just what we see in front of us: your business card and your web site. (And maybe, whatever they think they've heard about you, from wherever or whoever.)

Now, imagine them telling their friends.

When people see something they like, they tell the family that night at dinner – maybe thieir close friends..

But let them find one thing off, and they'll have their whole circle talking for weeks. Maybe spreading false impressions to hundreds of people. Or hundreds of thousands. And now, with social media?

I'm pretty sure that's NOT how you wanted to get on Facebook and Twitter.

That's the problem with having your game off.

If it's lousy music in your location, or something wrong with the decoration, it's not that you tried to save money with your interior.

If it's branding that doesn't represent who you really are, it's not that people think you hired a lousy creative firm. Or your neighbor's niece.

All they think is that your product isn't for them.

And your branding is taking business away from your brand.

Your brand is more than your branding. It's your reputation, good or bad.

So how is your brand these days?

Is it helping bring in a steady stream of profitable business, from people who are easy to work with and recognize you as the expert you are?

Are your phone and email full of interested prospects who want to know more about what you do, while your web site gets more traffic every week?

If you have a physical location, are people stopping by to see what's new – and looking to get in to see you?

Or . . .

Are you having trouble getting noticed in the market?

Are you spending more and more on marketing, but nobody seems to know your company name?

Does your web site show visitors landing on your home page and then leaving immediately, never to return? Especially when you know there's a healthy market for what you're selling?

The problem might be your brand.

It might be how people see you: how you do on that four-second test – based on the material you put out into the world, and what it says about

• who you are,
• what you do and
• who you choose to do business with.

Find out the truth –
and discover what to do about it.

With a Comprehensive Branding Audit, you'll see if and where your branding has been getting in your way, and how to fix it forever.

• What audience are you attracting now? Is it the one you intend? Does it meet your pricing and work with you on your terms?
• Who is your current competition? (There's more than you think.) How do they go to market? Do they charge more, or less, than you? What audience do they attract?
• What does your audience expect to see and hear when they think of your industry? How can you build a relationship with them that can lead to a sale?

In a fully illustrated, full-color report that's packed with screenshots of your materials and your competition's, plus helpful tips on how to improve specific features of your materials, you'll get more than a dozen ideas on how you can take your brand farther immediately, some at almost no cost, to capture customers you might be losing now.

And, over the longer term:

• Attract the most profitable audience you can reach . . .
• Convert them into customers, at first,
• and then into cultists . . .
• Who buy everything you sell . . .
• Breathlessly anticipate your every word to them. . .
• Spread your message to their friends and colleagues . . .

And create an entire way of life around your company, your products and your identity.

They won't even think about buying from the competition.

Not now . . . not for years to come.

Because when you've built the right brand, your competition won't even matter.

Start now.

All the best,

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What does a branding consultant do?

Here's my fantasy answer: I turn tiny little businesses into giant companies, and we all get really, really rich.

More realistically: I help businesses turn pro.

Or, since you're already a pro in your field, think of it as super-pro.

At that magic moment when it's time to get it together and look the part of a business that's one or two sizes up from where you are now – or whatever size you want to be, you get in touch with me.

We put together the materials that will attract the kinds of people you want to be doing business with.

Both online and offline, working together:

• Your website. The cornerstone of your brand. Just about everyone (there are exceptions) who considers doing business with you will visit your site before they contact you in any other way.
  
  (Most of the exceptions will have someone else – an employee or a relative – check you out online and give them an assessment.)
• Your business card.
• Your primary sales materials – product literature, sales presentation, maybe a video you or your reps go through with a prospect.
• Your physical location, packaging or vehicles.
• Online elements that didn't exist a few years ago: Twitter pages, email templates, blog layouts, Facebook integration.

When all these pieces are done and deployed, everything your customers see and hear will carry a consistent look and feel and tone.

You'll start to feel what it's like to step into the next phase of your company's development:

• Customers and prospects, and your industry, will see you differently.
• Everything from getting apointments to closing deals will get easier for you and your team.
• (We've even heard of retailers getting fewer returns!)

But more important, you'll be able to maintain your price points more easily . . . offer higher-value product and service bundles . . . hold and expand your margins as you build a bigger and more loyal customer base.

Then we work on ways to get that brand in front of your audience.

Decent identity and branding work is an investment.

You get that investment back in two ways:

• By generating new revenue with the right kinds of marketing campaigns.
• By using the power of your brand to help you make the case for your current pricing and support higher-value offerings in the future - thus building and expanding your margins for the life of your company.

Sales materials to seal the deals that turn prospects into customers.

So the brand experience stays consistent from beginning to, well, beginning -

As a few interested prospects become a group of satisfied customers . . .

Even programs to make sure your brand delivers what customers are expecting.

The fastest way to kill a brand is to do great marketing for a bad product.

But the best way to turn a defecting customer into a devoted cultist is to catch a problem in time and fix it with some fanfare. Not a lot - just enough to let that customer know you'd do just about anything to make his/her experience right.

Plus, for long-term growth, nothing beats a culture of cultists . . . all talking about your products and services in terms you taught them to use . . . judging your competition - such as it is - by standards you set . . . using criteria you taught them to value.

That's the power of a brand that's working for you.

Now. More about working with a branding broad . . .

If you've never worked with a communications firm before, here's a little about what to expect and how things work.

I had a client once who had never worked with a real communications firm before . . . just a series of production artists and illustrators.

I learned from mutual friends that he'd been expecting a questionnaire that asked him what colors and imagery to use . . . he was rather alarmed that all it asked about were his business and communications objectives.

Now, certalnly, if there are colors and styles of photograpy or illustration you detest, or that you love,we want to respect that.

But when any of us works with a communications firm, presumably we're doing it for business reasons. And the primary aesthetic considerations are going to be: What colors, images, sounds and terms do the people who use your products and services expect to see and hear?

So it's not going to be about our judgment in these areas. It's going to be about two things:

• How much do we need to look like we belong to the industry –
  yet
  
• How can we still look and sound completely different from anyone else in the industry?

How can the people who want what you have - know that you're for them?

We have a system for figuring out the right balance beween what they expect and how to be different.

 

Mary Baum
Owner/ Chief Branding Consultant