When you’re running a business or taking high-level decisions for one, the most important thing you can do is understand the value of the assets you have available. It’s these assets you can use to solve problems and pursue opportunities so you have to know what you have at your fingertips.
The list might include the money your business has in the bank, and its capacity to obtain funding and credit; the products on the shelf and in the warehouse, its capacity to make or obtain more; the skills of its employees, be they customer-facing or employed in research, HR or executive-level skills; even the contacts you have in the business community are an asset you could make use of. None of these are your most valuable asset though, the one that’s intrinsic to your business, and that can be built or undermined with every decision you make. Your most important asset, your most irreplaceable resource is your brand, and it’s important to understand how and why it’s so vital if you’re going to make use of it effectively.
Building a Brand
Your brand is made up of every interaction a customer has with your business – a pooled, consensus identity that’s assigned to the company and that people can then relate to, similar to how they would with a person. It’s this brand, this identity, that tells people that your business is right for them.
You can build your brand by focusing on consistency and customer interactions – your brand values need to be expressed every time a customer interacts with your business, from seeing an advert to buying a product to browsing your website. If you’re trying to build a reputation for being a responsible, caring brand you need to make sure that isn’t being contradicted by some part of the customer experience – delivery and courier partners often let down retail businesses here.
Tracking Your Brand
It’s important to keep track of what customers think of your brand, so you can lean into the qualities they most strongly associate with your business. Running a brand tracker survey over time doesn’t just give you a snapshot of what the market thinks of your business, it lets you see, almost in real-time, how customers respond to different decisions you make. This means you can judge how each marketing campaign, new product or sale affects your brand strength, and optimise your decision making process for a strong, consistent brand!
