Was It As Good For You As It Was For Me? An Epic Lesson In Building Your Brand

Hi, I’m Marlee from MarleeWard.com helping you become a self-employed superstar.

Today, I want to talk to you about a very important part of your marketing, and that is the development of your brand.

And I’m going to do that by sharing this really neat experience that I had that I think will give you a few tips on how you can make your brand truly powerful, memorable, and sharable.

So, what exactly is a brand?

I like to think of a brand as the reason a customer chooses your product or service based on their varied experiences with your business.

This definition of a brand is largely based on the marketing visionary, Seth Godin’s definition of a brand, which I’ve linked to below this video.

So, last month I had the pleasure of attending BlogWorld, Los Angeles, and I had the good fortune of getting to fly on Virgin America. I had no idea what to expect flying Virgin America, but I knew as soon as I was dropped off at the check-in counter that I was in for something completely different.

Once I entered the doors of the airport and actually got to the check in station, it was as though I had been transported to like a swanky European night club. And this theme continued as I boarded the airplane, which featured black leather seats, individual flat screens in front of every seat, saucy flight attendants that really brought a carefree mood to the boarding experience, which as you know, on most airlines is a complete nightmare.

Now, I’m not one to be easily impressed, but I have to tell you I was absolutely amazed by this experience, because it was so unlike any other flying experience I had. So, once I got into my seat I noticed that the front pocket had two cup holders in front, and it was clear to me that this pocket had been designed with the customer experience in mind, because as you can see by this image, there are cup holders built in to this front pocket…amazing.

Then they started to present their safety presentation, and I don’t know about you, but I haven’t watched a TSA safety presentation in years. But instead of watching some polished stock video or some very monotonous flight attendant standing in the middle of the aisle, they presented a cartoon style snarky video that was absolutely hilarious. And like I said, I haven’t listened to a safety video for years, but I watched this one and I’ve included a link for you below.

But here’s the cherry on the ice cream. Once they had finished their in-flight drink service, I quickly drank my ginger ale, and I noticed that there was some imprinted lettering on the bottom of the cup. And to my shock, this is what I found. “Was it as refreshing for you as it was for me?” I literally laughed out loud in my seat, because it was just one more area where they had given incredible detail to what their experience was about.

The Self-Employed’s Guide to Brand Building

So, based on this experience, I’ve come up with a process that I think is going to help my self-employed peeps build an incredibly powerful brand for themselves.

1. Write out your entire customer experience. Write out your entire customer experience from the moment that the prospect finds you all the way until they’ve received what they paid for.
2. Identify your promise. Identify the promise that you want to make to your customer throughout this process. So, your promise can be made up of a number of things, or it can focus on just one thing, but in all likelihood, your brand is going to be as diverse as you are. So, there will probably me multiple promises in there. The Virgin America example is a great standard for seeing how this can work, because there were so many promises that were made. that kind of tied into a bigger promise, which was that you were going to have an enjoyable fight experience.
3. Weave your promise into your process. Now you’re going to look for ways to build that promise into your experience. So, let’s say that one of the promises that you want to make as a freelancer (maybe you’re a graphic designer) is to be sure that your customers feel like you are really developing a design for them that matches exactly what they are trying to achieve.So you want to make sure that in every step that you have with this customer, you are meeting that promise. And some ways that you may be able to do this is by having a very in-depth questionnaire that asks them all the questions that will be necessary for you to get a good solid concept on the kind of design you need to create.Perhaps that could be followed up with a phone consultation where you cover the things in that questionnaire to make sure that you have more clarity. And then, you might want to offer three complimentary revisions that are included in your design project, so that you can tweak the design to make sure that you’re really meeting those specifications.That means you’re meeting your promise at every single step.
4. Match your promise and your design elements. Match your promise to the creative aspects of your business. So, this is where the logo, color scheme, and design really do come into play. Make sure that those things that you select truly reflect whatever promise it is. So, if your promise involves something like Virgin America, where they’re playful and fun, they did a really good job of picking the neon purple and the red, because those colors really invoke high energy, and they make something feel playful rather than a standard royal blue and white like many of the other airlines.
5. Keep your promise consistently. Five, which is your last step, is to make sure that you execute on that promise over and over and over again. If you make a promise to deliver high quality products and services in an efficient manner, then make sure you’re doing that over and over and over again, because it’s in consistency with your promise that you truly build the brand equity you need for your brand to carry you through your business long term.

So, there’s a process for creating a powerful brand. I hope that you’ll take some time to jot down those steps, and maybe when you’re doing some business planning for 2012 you can make sure that you incorporate those things into the plans that you have for yourself in the future.

As always, I hope that you found this video useful and helpful. And if so make sure that you click that “Like” button below, or if you got some insights you can share them in the “Comments” section below. And don’t forget to subscribe to this channel.

Thank you so much for watching this video. I love having the opportunity to kick it with you, and I look forward to talking to you again very soon.