Maria Ross is a branding expert and author of Branding Basics for Small Business. She recently took a few minutes to discuss branding basics and how to create a brand.
Bryan Haines: What are the most common branding mistakes?
Maria Ross: Two of the most common are trying to “boil the customer ocean” and speaking in terms of features, not benefits.
“Everyone” or even “Women” is not a market. There are too many different needs and buying levers to address. You need to think of your ideal customer and ensure all your marketing, programs, and products speak directly to them. A 26 year old single graphic designer living in L.A. is a very different woman from a 38 year-old housewife with four kids living in Des Moines. Create a character sketch of the ideal (not average) customer you see walking through your door. Be specific:
- How old are they?
- Where do they live?
- What do they do for a living?
- What groups do they belong to?
- What keeps them up at night?
- What are they passionate about?
- What websites/info sources do they visit?
Try to get as creative as possible. For me, I have a specific type of person and company in mind that I want to attract. In many cases, there are companies who are not for me, and I don’t waste time trying to make my brand appeal to them. When you create an ideal customer profile, you have sharp focus and you can now speak to a real person, not a generic composite that doesn’t exist in real life. This ensures your brand becomes much more connective and relevant.
Secondly, many small business owners tend to talk about features: what they do, sell, provide, offer, etc. It’s all about you – but customers don’t care about what you do, they care about they get from your company. How do you make their lives easier, their jobs better, their families safer? You have to lead with benefits – from the customer point of view – to paint a picture and hook them and then explain the how and why. When you start talking about things the customer “gets” rather than what “you do” you know you’ve landed on benefits!
Bryan Haines: Should branding be outsourced, or done in-house?
Maria Ross: Depends on what aspect of branding you’re talking about. Companies can certainly engage in building their own brand strategies upfront, but I find most are too busy, don’t carve out the time when they are fighting fires every day or can’t get past internal politics to make a wise decision. So they hire a consultant like me to just get it done and guide the conversation, ask the right questions, bring expert recommendations and build consensus. It’s much more efficient.
If you’re talking about creating the visual branding or crafting the corporate messages after the brand strategy is baked, that depends as well. Often, with the right brand strategy, an internal design team or writer could really make it work, but many companies don’t have those capabilities in house so they hire vendors or agencies. I have even worked with some companies who have these positions in house, but the objectivity of an outside firm helps them create an unbiased view and then the internal team can just take it and run with it. When you’re too close to your own products and services, often you can’t see what a customer might see because you live, eat and breathe this stuff every day and think it’s obvious. The biggest a-ha moments my clients have had have been when I saw something from the outside-in, but they completely overlooked it and said, “Oh, yeah, I can see why people might think that about us based on what we’re saying. We never thought it was being perceived that way!”
Bryan Haines: Most businesses feel overwhelmed, when looking at branding. How do you suggest that they get started?
Maria Ross: Before you spend a dime (or a minute) on design, marketing brochures, your trade-show booth, social media campaigns or website development, you absolutely have to start with crafting the brand strategy first. My book gives people the ten key questions to ask when creating a brand strategy. First, look at internal strengths, mission and benefits. Then do an audit of your existing brand and assess what it says about you and if you’re communicating all the right things. After that , you can audit your competition. What are people saying, what are the messages potential customers are getting? How can you position yourself and stand out within that mix? What is your company personality? And of course, flesh out your ideal audience in as much detail as possible.
Once you craft the brand position and strategy, it gets much easier to figure out how to convey that visually through design, as well as verbally through copy-writing, signage, ads, etc. And you can apply it consistently across all you do. Too often, companies start with tactics first and then wonder why they’re having so much trouble. I call this committing “random acts of marketing!” When the brand strategy is firmly in place first, it saves so much time, money and headache later on!
Bryan Haines: What did you learn from writing this book?
Maria Ross: The book is based on my years of marketing experience on both the client and agency sides – so I’ve walked in my clients’ shoes and know what their lives are like. It is modeled on the client work I currently do, as well as workshops I’ve taught. I’ve learned a lot since publishing the book, because I hear from small business all over the world – from $100,000 businesses to $200 million dollar businesses – that the steps outlined in the book are incredible helpful to them. I think we all take for granted that everyone knows what we know. What I realized is that there is so much confusion in the business world over terms like marketing, PR, branding, advertising, etc. – they are all used interchangeably and oftentimes, incorrectly! That means business owners are then making the wrong investments and expecting unrealistic outcomes. My goal with the book was to help them navigate that maze a bit better and think through the right questions so that good products and services don’t have to die on the vine, but can really shine! Once you open people’s eyes, it’s hard for them to close them again – and that means they will make smarter, more efficient, more productive marketing investments that will gain them huge returns.
Bryan Haines: What are you reading now? And what's next for you?
Maria Ross: I’m usually always reading a business book or novel at the same time! Right now, I’m reading Let’s Talk About Kevin which is a fascinating fictional tale about a mother whose son committed mass murder and her journey of redemption and healing. In business, I recently read Switch by Chip Heath and loved it. It’s about how to spark change in your organization, country or cause no matter what level of power you hold within it. It’s a fascinating study of how you can create great change from small, bounded efforts by appealing to both the rational and emotional sides of the brain – just like good branding does!
I’m also working on my second book, a memoir, due out February 2, 2012 called Rebooting My Brain and it’s the story of how I made a miraculous comeback from a near-fatal brain aneurysm. My business is all about helping companies tell stories, and I thought this inspirational, candid and often funny journey was a story worth telling!
Maria Ross is a branding expert and author of Branding Basics for Small Business. She recently took a few minutes to discuss branding basics and how to create a brand.
