The business owner can’t afford to forget about branding

Editor’s note: Michelle Stockman is an independent consultant with her company, Fort Smith-based Msaada Group. Stockman earned a bachelor’s degree from Loyola University-Chicago in communications and fine arts, and earned a master’s in entrepreneurship from Western Carolina University. Her thoughts on business success appear each week on The City Wire.

Ask a marketing or brand development expert how to build brands and one common answer you’re likely to get again and again is a single word — storytelling.

According to John Williams with StartupNation blog “the visual representation of your company, including your logo design, is essential for building a successful brand. However, the experiences that your customers have with your brand can also translate into powerful marketing messages. Those customer stories establish an emotional connection with your brand, demonstrate how your brand helps people and adds value to their lives, and have a significant effect on how the broader audience perceives your brand.”

Cameron Clement with C3Brandworks in Fort Smith notes: “Brand definition is a matter of guiding the experience the customer has with your product. If that experience is based on the truth of your brand, you have a real opportunity to create a loyalist.”

That loyalist will turn around and become a part of your brand through their word-of-mouth marketing. Clement also says “branding is a gateway to customer loyalty and an invitation to a consumer relationship. It must be acted on and fiercely maintained as a product that is well branded and managed will always have a greater perceived value to your customers and investors over the ones that are not branded.”

Likewise John Williams notes fout key ways that customer stories can also support and build brands:
• People believe customer stories and recommendations. Research shows that people trust strangers’ opinions online more than they trust companies when it comes to gathering information about brands, products, and services. Let your customer stories build that trust for your brand.

• People love to share their stories, so encourage happy customers to share their stories. Just ask your customers if they’d allow you to tell their stories on your website, blog, Facebook page, and so on. Include a photo of the customer, their real name, and if possible, a link to their own website to validate the legitimacy of the story. Always ask permission to use a customer story first!

• Customer stories are memorable, and they are remembered more easily than an ad or brochure. Remember, your customer stories should sound like stories, not marketing messages or a boring report. Make them have personality just like your customers and your brand!

• Customer stories can differentiate you from your competitors. Any chance you have to communicate your brand differentiators through your customers’ own words is one you should jump on.

Creating a brand is establishing the consumer and market languages that define your product and is a matter of embodying what makes your product desirable in a unique way to stand out against the competition.

Involving loyal customers in confirming the brand’s truth through their experiences within their stories is an excellent tool that only costs you the truth in what your company delivers to the customer.

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