Building Brand Value
Brand Value is a function of Customer Loyalty. Loyalty speaks to the strength of the Relationship. Relationships exist only when there is a degree of Trust. Therefore, Brand Value is directly tied to the level of Trust your organization can build.
Customers are not the exclusive focus for building Brand Value. Suppliers, shareholders, employees, and business partners are integral in the process. For instance, you may succeed to build trust with customers for a period of time, but if you lose sight of your employees and experience turnover, the trust may be short-lived.
Building Trust Relationships
Trust is earned, not given. It happens when our expectations are met, and increases over time if expectations are met continuously.
Meeting expectations consists of two distinct steps:
- Setting Expectations (Promising)
- Meeting Expectations
If you don’t set expectations up front, let there be no doubt that your customer will make up their own. If you give your customer conflicting information (a promise from Sales that differs from what Customer Service agrees with) then you have failed to set consistent expectations.
Again, an expectation that has not been properly set is, to your customer, a Promise they imagine – and hold you accountable to. At the core of brand building, therefore, is the art of making and keeping Promises.
Making and Keeping Promises
To build Brand Value, businesses must choose the right Promises, and execute them flawlessly.
By systematically choosing Strategic Promises, organizations can gain extraordinary alignment within the organization, and focus on only those initiatives that build Brand Strength. Perhaps more importantly, initiatives that are not consistent with objectives can be dropped, driving substantial savings. Immediately!
Based on our experience, Brand Value is maximized when business strategy seeks to make and keep Promises that are:
- Important to the Customer
- Profitable to Keep
- Differentiated from Competitors
- Reliably Delivered
It is impossible to build brand with a market-only focus. Your brand goes much deeper than logos, design, marketing, and sales presentations. It’s a statement about what your organization stands for. It is strategically important, and it must be backed up by operational excellence. Unless and until all areas of your business are systematically aligned, your brand is only as valuable as your current references and referrals. Businesses with strong brands command higher valuations, and the costs of revenue generation are favorable.
Strategic Alliance
We happen to have a strategic business relationship with one of the pre-eminent thought leaders in the area of Customer Experience, Loyalty, and Promises. TLG has partnered with Customer Experiences, Inc. (CEI) to apply their Promises Made = Promises Kept™ methodology for building loyal customers, employees, business partners, and other constituents.
Greg Lins, TLG’s Founder and President, worked closely with Blaine Millet, Co-Founder of Customer Experiences, Inc. to develop the methodology and apply it in several client engagements. Their working relationship dates back to the 90’s, when they teamed up at Andersen to provide clients with strategic planning and related services to several companies in the Seattle area.
TLG is uniquely positioned to bring clients some leading-edge services in this area. Once the strategy has been established, TLG can lead or manage all aspects of execution.
Serving Seattle, Bellevue, Kirkland, Renton, Redmond, Issaquah, Kent, Auburn, Bothell, Mountlake Terrace, Lynnwood, Edmonds, Woodinville, Everett, Tacoma, Puyallup, Sumner, Fife, Olympia, and Bremerton.
