Your brand is simultaneously the most important, AND the least important thing about your business.

Brands are weird. 

Brands are fluffy. 

Brands are everywhere.

And brands affect our decision making every single day.

But the weirdest part of all, is that if you asked 100 people “what is a brand”, you’d get 100 different answers, so. 

What actually is a brand?

At Be Found, we say that we’ll grow your brand online. 

I thought it best to explain some of the rationale behind the slogan, seen as the word ‘brand’ means different things to different people, 

Your brand is your business.

In many cases, you can swap the word ‘brand’ for the word ‘business’. “We grow your brand online”, could just as easily be “we grow your business online”. And let’s keep it simple for now.

What does a growing business look like? How do you measure a business’s success? You already know the answer.

It’s sales. 

Always has been, always will be. 

The balance sheet will never lie. Never ever. 

Cold, hard numbers terrify most marketers, but not us. We exist to grow your top-line revenue. 

And when you think about it, doesn’t ALL marketing activity exist to grow your top line revenue figure? Sure, your new colours and shapes might not be influencing sales directly, but revenue will (or certainly should!) grow as a knock on effect.

The fluffier marketers amongst us might seek to “grow brand awareness” or to “improve the perception of the brand amongst X demographic”. That’s all well and good – worthy, in fact – I’m not knocking it. It’s important. 

But those sorts of goals, if achieved, will then lead to higher revenue. Let’s cut out the middleman and chase some sales.

Success = sales, especially in ecommerce. If you don’t like the ruthlessness, you’re in the wrong game. 

Is that okay? Good. 

It’s a shame that branding isn’t that simple.

People Buy On Emotion, and Justify With Logic.

If you’re cool with playing the sales game, that’s step one. 

Step two then is studying why people buy. 

We like a bit of consumer psychology at BFBC. ‘People buy on emotion, and justify with logic’, is my personal favourite maxim. Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in 2002 for his book ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’, which explains it best, let me have a go here now:

You have two brains.

You have a fast-acting, emotional brain.

And a slower acting, logical and rational brain. 

When making a decision, you have to get the go ahead from both your fast brain and your slow brain. 

The fast acting brain does it’s best work subconsciously. It’s the part of your brain that is constantly scanning your surroundings for danger. It’s your evolved survival mechanism.

The fast brain is intuitive and emotional, the slow brain is deliberate and logical. The fast brain could help you to solve 2+2=?, but you need a pen and paper to solve 17×24=?.

Your fast brain is automatic and impulsive, and your slow brain conscious and considerate. This is why you’ll eat a whole tub of ice cream in front of the TV, whilst simultaneously feeling guilty and telling yourself to stop. 

The fast brain makes you buy on emotion, and the slow brain is what makes you justify with logic.  When selling, you must appeal to the fast brain FIRST, before you get a chance to chat with the rational brain. 

This is where brands come in.

Brands are emotional.

The best brands get an automatic pass from the fast, emotion-based part of your brain. They get to talk to the rational, decision-justifying part immediately. 

You see a Nike Logo on a trainer, or an Apple on a Laptop, and you automatically know that you’re looking at some of the best products around – no need to even think about it. 

There is a pre-existing, already built-in desirability for these products.

Desirability is a very important concept that doesn’t get enough air-time. Think about it this way:

When you come into contact with a brand that you’ve never seen before, you’re wary. It could be a load of crap, right? How do you know it’s worth the money? 

Yet, at the same time you’re considering buying a MacBook and don’t scoff at the price even once. 

This wariness is your survival instinct kicking in. 

“This is new, I need to be careful with this”.

You have your brand when you know that your customers are familiar with your business. When the pre-built desirability comes interlaced with your name and your logo. The brands we trust are the ones we’ve been exposed to the most.

How though, do we get to that point?

It feels so far away… And if it doesn’t, it should. You are not Apple. You are not Nike. You’ve got a lot of work to do! 

Internal vs External Brand. 

Just like you have two brains, you’ve also got two brands.

You, the business owner, have direct control over one. For the other, you have to cross your fingers and toes and hope that it lands the way you want.

I’m talking about your internal and your external brand. 

Internal Brand

Your internal brand is you. The company. It’s what you set out to establish. When you sit back in your chair and think “why am I here?”.

Go deep for a while. You need to know, on an emotional level, why your customers will care for you and your products, something aside from your prices and your delivery rates.

External Brand

Your external brand is the important one. The external brand is what your customers actually think about you. 

When people say “I’m building a brand”, they mean their external brand. 

The external brand is the one that needs work. You could sit there and create an internal brand right now. It means NOTHING, until it means something in the minds of your customers. 

How to create an external brand.

Are you ready for this one? I don’t think you’ll be surprised. 

YOU HAVE TO SELL. 

And if you aren’t selling:

You’re not getting your products into the hands, hearts and minds of your customer. You’re not giving them the chance to forge an opinion or a feeling about your business. Or about your brand. 

You create your external brand through more sales.

But it’s not just the sale itself. 

It’s how you talk to your customers throughout the process. How did you make them feel? Do you look after them? Would they go through it again? Was it fun? Would they tell their friends about it? Did you make their lives better?

When they come into contact with your brand again – when they see your business name and logo –  will they feel good about it?

Or have you left a bad taste in their mouth. First impressions matter!

Should you discount?

New business owners say things like:

“I don’t want to discount because it will damage my brand”. 

When they don’t have a brand. 

The brand they’re scared about damaging is their internal brand. Their external brand doesn’t even exist yet. 

I’ll say this a bit louder for the people at the back – the only way to start forming the external brand, is to get your products into the hands of your customers. Let them form their feelings and opinions based on the experience you give them.

When you’re a new business, trying to sell, you’re doing so with zero brand recognition. People aren’t familiar with you. And there are so many more recognisable, safer choices our there. So what are you to do?

Change your Offer Architecture. 

People are always looking for deals. 

Before they buy from you, they are asking  themselves. “is this a good price?”. Or maybe you’re offering next day delivery, that they can’t get anywhere else for your market!

If you don’t have an external brand yet, you can sell via the best offer. Speak to the rational brain, not the emotional one. 

Compelling offer architecture isn’t solely about price. But if your prices are too high, your customers are going elsewhere. 

That means your competitors will grow, and you won’t.

All because you didn’t want to damage your brand. Your non-existent, external brand. Oh dear. 

Yes, Apple, Tiffany and Hermes don’t do discounts – I appreciate that, but they also spend MILLIONS on their marketing, and can afford to inject a pre-existing desirability into their products. 

You are not Apple. 

In order to thrive, you have to survive. 

By now, I hope you’re realising that we play a sales game at BFBC. 

But before all you brand warriors come hunting for me with your fluffy marketing spears, let me get it right.

I’m not knocking the importance of brand, at all.

In fact, it’s credibly important. 

You have to earn the right to consider brand. Survive, before you thrive.

The big businesses, the massive ones, are all huge brands too. They all have clear external brands, which are closely aligned to their internal brands. 

But deciding to build your brand before you’ve built your business is running before you can walk. Again, survive (by selling!), and then thrive!

How to thrive?

You create your external brand one positive customer interaction at a time. It’s a slow, horrible, arduous process. 

But if you’re selling well, or you’re competing on price, or you’re creating something that people want to buy, you’ll get there. 

All things being equal, it’s a safer decision to buy from a trusted brand. So the aim should always be to become one.  

If you keep your head down and sell, a beautiful thing will happen. One day you’ll look up, and realise that you have forged your external brand. 

People will come to shop with you, simply because it’s you. And they won’t need any other reason. 

You’ve become familiar through repetition. You’ve earned trust. You’ve become desirable. And that’s the dream.

If you came for a definition of “branding”

I like this one from Robert Jones:

Shaping what the product or organization says and does, in order to change how people think, feel, and act, in a way that creates commercial (and sometimes also social) value.

Your internal brand is ‘what your organisation says and does’. 

But the only real way to ‘change how people think, feel and act’ towards your brand is by making some sales. And ‘how people think, feel and act’ towards your brand is your external brand. 

A sculptor can only stand and stare at a slab of marble for so long, eventually he has to swing the hammer, and just hope that his statue turns out how he wants. 

In the same way, there is only so long you can sit back, and think about your brand. Eventually, you have to get out there and create it. And to create it, you have to sell. 

Take action. Swing the hammer. Sell. 

And if you feel like you’re nervous about taking your first swing, that’s where we come in. We’ll help you sculpt your brand in our own way.