Don't take this personal, but if you have this problem I offer a great way to fix it towards the bottom.
You spent a ton on your website graphic design, and your brand looks awesome to you. However, your company doesnt look particularly appealing to your visitors.
Your about us webpage sounds as if youre a one man show, the last post on Twitter is from last year, the last Facebook post is 4 months old, and your last blog post is two months old. Most of your published content is mediocre at best. You have no reviews about your products, and when I called your customer service I got someone who was not inline with your brand. You might have a fantastic looking website, but it is not consistent with all of your social media properties. You do not have a consistent voice in your brand, and as a result, you fail to deliver on your commitment to your customers.
Does this sound like you, or maybe you are in a worse situation because you dont even have a brand, commitment, voice or look and feel that you once imagined you would have.
Most businesses have a branding problem. If you feel that your ideas are not working out for you, your employees are not performing the way you want them to, and your customers are getting different quality of service from all the different people within your company then you have a gigantic PROBLEM. You end up overworking every week because you cannot count on your employees. Your brand has a giant HOLE in it because all the ideas are in your head and not on paper.
What you feel about your brand and your company is NOT what your employees feel, and it is certainly not what your customers feel. It is all inside you, and it is trapped in dogma. You will never going to sleep at night feeling relaxed and confident about your business until you get it all out on paper and share it with your employees and customers.
If you need help with your branding, try eMyth and go through the first two courses. I promise you that it will change your life.
BRAND AFFECTS EVERYTHING
Whether your customer interaction is via email, phone or social media, you want to make sure that your customers and your employees do not have any doubts about what your business is actually about.
Your brand should be a roadmap to how the customer will feel after interacting with you. Lets say you sell auto accessories, and you hire 10 customer service staffs members. If you have no branding, that means each staff member will act the way they feel is right. For example, lets say a customer is upset because he got a damaged part, how would you handle the situation, and how would your 10 staff members handle it.
You might say, well it is crucial to keep the customers happy while the next guy will say we have to follow the policy, so I dont get in trouble regardless if the customer is happy or not, and the next five guys will just blow the customer off. How you would handle your customers need to be transitioned to all of your staff, so they have a framework. If you will say, regardless of what happens, the customer has to hang up the phone and be happier than before he called you, then you dont need to write 1000 page documents about all the scenarios. Each staff member can use their charm and talents to accomplish the end goal.
THIS IS WHAT I WOULD CALL BRANDING IN ACTION.
After reading this email, you should start thinking about your business brand, and how you want to interact with current and potential customers. You need to start thinking about how you want your business to appear to the rest of the world. This is the mental picture you want to inject in peoples minds every time they come across your company. This image should be consistent with your website, blog, and social media accounts so that customers and employees can easily relate to it.
Secondly, if you want to build your business brand, you need to execute your brand commitment. You need to make a promise that immediately puts your business in the spotlight. Customers expect a satisfactory experience from you, and you need to deliver it. For example, you can improve the customer service of your company, or promote company reviews. However, you also need to make sure that your employees participate in the branding process, so that they know what they are supposed to deliver to customers. They might need training on customer service, but unless you start branding your business, there is no chance of improving performance.
Once you have decided on the promise you will make to your customers, you need to promote your business brand on social media, and on every other channel that allows interaction. You need to brush up your blog to make sure that it has jaw dropping content that people would bookmark instantly. This content needs to communicate your brand commitment to customers, and enforce the voice of your company.
HOW WE APPLIED BRANDING TO SOCIAL MEDIA
I wanted to launch a Social Media campaign for Shopping Cart Elite, but I personally had no time. As a systems company, I also knew that I cant just hire an inexperienced worker to become a leader, and have her lead the social media campaign. I had to create a system from scratch and experiment with it.
Around this time, I was introduced to eMyth, and realized that I needed to take the voice of the brand that was in my head, and put it on paper, so the new social media manager can relate to it.
The branding document for Shopping Cart Elite is 4 pages long, however, here is the summary of the document (keep in mind we are in the middle of re-branding which will be completed by 1/1/14):
Brand commitment is: Shopping Cart Elite will solve our clients everyday labor intensive, sleep depriving daily grind for their online business in 7 days or less by hiring the right people that can deliver consistent WOW results.
Voice: eCommerce Scholar for growing online businesses
Look and Feel: You can finally (You can finally enjoy a vacation because SCE runs your business)
Unique Value Proposition: Automate Everything in 30 Days
Once we got the branding down, it was time to get everyone to embrace it.
A husband was at a romantic dinner with his wife, when the wife asks the husband Honey, why dont you ever say I love you anymore. After a few seconds, the husband replies, But honey, I told you I love you when we got married, and I even gave you my vows.
Just like a wife would expect her husband to say I love you daily, this is how often you should be repeat your brand to your team to make sure they never forget it.
Now I know you have a problem with social media, and I am not here to remind you and moan about it. I always suggest answers to these problems.
I made a video for our client on how to implement the social media system, you can watch the tutorial and see what I did. This took 7 months to build and 3 months to experiment and fine tune. It is now complete, and it works. Besides the video, there is also tools, formulas and supporting courses to go with it.
After you watch the video, and you want to take action. First you will need to go through eMyth branding because there is no way you can implement this without a brand in place.
Then you can reach out to us to see how Shopping Cart Elite can help your business. During the call, you are welcome to request the social media system from the representative you speak to, and they will have it handy to email it to you.
I call it this the bait value proposition. I will give you our companys confidential tested system that took months to build, in exchange for less than an hour of your time to show you what else we can do for your company. I think it is a fair deal.
BUSINESS VALUE
Its fun to imagine how much your business is worth. It's not as much fun when you find out that for all the energy you poured into it, a business broker or potential buyer can't see the value you can, or thinks your number is unrealistic. The worst thing is when it turns out as is most often the case, that your business isn't sellable at all.
No one will want your business if it doesnt have a brand, or software that can support it. A Shopping Cart that wastes your time on redundant tasks instead of automating them will look very unattractive to a buyer. A shopping cart that is unable to organize your team by using software tools like an integrated support desk with CRM will FAIL your business.
Shopping Cart Elite is an eCommerce solution which will empower your brand by removing the daily grind from your life, and creating an automated system with every feature you need to connect with your customers. We have built our software from the ground up to support your brand.
So if you want to mark your spot in the minds of your customers, you need to get things on paper and communicate them to your employees. Then you need a system like Shopping Cart Elite to support those ideas by organizing the workflows and systems to make them happen.
Fill out the form below and start branding your business today.