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by Gerald Wilson, SCORE Mentor
When I was a kid, my parents got their insurance from Stanley Dickinson. They might not have even known what company they were insured with. But they knew Stanley. Everyone in Petoskey knew Stanley. And if Stanley told my parents what company was best, that was good enough for them.
Relationships are still a vital part of success in business, especially small and local businesses. Anyone running a business would be wise to look for opportunities to build personal relationships to both attract and retain customers. But over time, another kind of relationship has grown in prominence - the relationship your customer has with your brand. Here, the relationship is less directly personal, and also a bit harder to define. But it is more scalable, and in a world where fewer and fewer people live in the town in which they grew up, and where fewer and fewer people have a relationship like my parents did with Stanley Dickinson, brand has become a surrogate for personal relationships.
Defining the concept of ‘brand’ can be elusive. I’ve rarely heard two people agree on what the word means. To some, brand and a company’s tag line or slogan are one and the same. So, Nike’s brand would be ‘Just Do It’, and Allstate’s brand might be ‘Like a Good Neighbor’. In other cases, I’ve heard brand equated with mission statements. I’ve seen business leaders equate ‘brand’ with a logo.
None of these quite hit the mark for me.
In my view, ‘brand’ is not something a company gets to define. Sure, it can have a big influence, but the true definer of brand is a company’s customer. Brand isn’t what a company says it is; it is what the customer says it is.
I define ‘brand’ as the emotional relationship people have with a product or company. To illustrate my point, let’s take a look at one of the world’s strongest brands, Apple. Apple customers, myself included, have a relationship, even an emotional relationship, with their iPhone or their iPad or their MacBook or their Apple Watch (I’ve got all four of those!).
Is this because of Apple’s slogan or tagline or mission statement or logo? Perhaps, in part, but I think it is something more. Literally, ‘More’.
I think the strongest brands not only master the ‘table stakes’, but also the ‘more’. For Apple, table stakes are the foundation, but no matter how good, they are not the brand. To be even in the game, you have to have a quality product. You have to have good code or batteries or touch screens or whatever. But then, you need to have ‘more’. Something the customer wants even if they don’t know they want it and sometimes even if they can’t put their finger on it. In Apple’s case, they’ve made internal integration between devices and between hardware and software such a (relatively) seamless experience, that the products insinuate themselves into the users’ daily life in a way that the only way they will give up their gadget is for it to be pried out of their cold dead hands.
This leads to what I call, the Brand Equation:
Table Stakes + More = Brand
The ‘table stakes’ are the basic skills or tools or services that are required to even play in the game. Every business has table stakes they need to satisfy. The ‘more’ is how they go beyond table stakes in a way that is valued by the customer and identifiable to the company or business. The ‘brand’ is the result; and represents the emotional relationship the customer has with the product or company. Not the relationship with a person, like Stanley Dickenson, but with something less definable. But it is still, first and foremost, a relationship. And while perhaps not as strong, a brand can be much more scalable than a personal relationship.
So, if you are running a business and want to build customer loyalty, my advice is to focus on relationships. This includes direct personal relationships as Stanley Dickinson did, but also with the relationship you build between your customers and your brand. Like any relationship, this requires not only that you cover the table stakes for whatever your business is, but also that you offer something more, and in a way in which your customers can emotionally connect.
Remember that SCORE is also here to help. Our SCORE mentors are happy to aid small businesses in helping them succeed.
SCORE is a nonprofit association dedicated to helping small businesses get off the ground, grow and achieve their goals through education and mentorship. We have been doing this for more than 50 years. SCORE is associated with the Small Business Administration (SBA) and has 11,000 volunteers nationwide. SCORE.org has some wonderful resources available to everyone.
Tip of the Mitt SCORE is partnered with the Petoskey Regional Chamber of Commerce and mentors there on Tuesday and Thursday from 9 a.m. to noon. We mentor in pairs and if the scheduled times don’t work for you, we will schedule a meeting outside of those hours at various locations such as the library in Petoskey, the library in Boyne City and various coffee shops. To make an appointment with SCORE in Petoskey, just call (231) 347-4150.
