Why you should never forget who owns your brand.

"You don't own your brand, your customers do" is a respected truth in the world of marketing. And as a startup with an unknown brand, it’s even more relevant.??

Ignoring it can be a costly early mistake to make.

In the process, we regularly fall into the trap of thinking we've taken control of our brand by creating a logo. Don't get me wrong the logo is super important but as expert logo designer Sagi Haviv put it “a logo is the period at the end of a sentence, not the sentence itself.”

So while you might own the logo and a vision for what you want the brand to stand for, the actual view of the brand is owned by the customer. They control the message. Forgetting that how a customer views you, believes what you stand for, understands the value you bring to their lives (work or personal) - all the stuff that truly defines your brand and ultimately your company - can be a risky mistake.?

The lack of clarity around the unique value you bring that separates you from your competition, that solves a specific pain that your customers are desperate to be solved, is often flagged as one of the main reasons companies fail.

Let me say that again because it's super important. Not knowing or correctly articulating what makes you special from the customer's point of view in a language your customers can understand can kill your business. By not working out your USP and aligning a clear brand position to enhance to tell your novel story, you are not telling your audience who you are and why they should care. The impact? Doing or not doing this work can be the difference between your company surviving and thriving and one that slips out of view without anyone noticing.

It's the customer that counts, not the feature.

I can hear you saying, but of course! However, believe it or not, most companies are not keeping this in mind, not even large corporates when they bring out new products. Did you know that 90% of product launches fail! Yep, 90% and a lot of those failures will be because they made assumptions about the customer and the UVP. If they struggle with tons of resources it's understandable that it can be challenging to keep it in mind when you're a smaller company and even more challenging to do it right.

We're often so excited to be at a point where we can tell people about our solution or technology that many of us completely forget the customer in the rust to generate revenue. Let's face it; we've all seen or been a teeny weeny bit of a co-conspirator in the excitement of being in love with the solution. We then fall straight into the trap of making up a customer profile of someone who doesn't exist in real life and then talking at them about how cool our new feature or new technology is.?

I'm not going to shout out who, but I recently landed on a startup website challenging an existing retail vertical. They had obviously spent time and budget on a logo and working out packaging with an agency that looked fab. The problem was that it was so unclear why anyone should spend their time and money with them versus just doing what they've always done that it took me 10 minutes or so to figure out their proposition (and I stayed because I have a sadistic need to figure it out!). If your customer or visitor can't figure you out within 3 seconds, you've lost them. And yes, they had customers, but most likely they will be classed as innovators or even possibly early-adopters who are usually those so fanatical about a cause they will overlook a weak positioning. Still, there are not that many of them and they are not the folks who will grow your business. Innovators, for example, only make up 2.5% of your market on average. So, by all means, leverage the heck out of those early customers for insight and refine your UVP but don't make the mistake of not doing that work and assuming it will be okay.?

It's about real people.

The customer who will buy from you is a real person with limited bandwidth and budget who is more concerned about their problem and how they will solve it than how cool you are or even your latest feature. Ultimately you're asking them to divert attention from their current lives, kids, football game, priority list, annoying boss to pay attention and fall into crush, love, lust with you over any other solution or service. But companies who haven't done the work or forgotten the famous adage of who owns the brand often find themselves in that depressing situation of asking, "why are they not running to us? we're just the best new thing since sliced bread?" Usually responding with firing the sales guy, screaming at marketing, questioning the logo, i.e. trying to fix the impact of the problem without fixing the problem.

The problem is that the customer owns your brand and if they can't figure out why you and fast and believe that it's a game-changer to a problem they can't solve any other way better or faster within seconds and buy into your brand position at the same time, I hate to tell you this, but you're going to hit a wall.?