Andrew
Entrepreneurship Matters
Dr Kudzanai Vere
ACCORDING to a Nielson survey, 59 percent of customers choose to buy new products from brands that are familiar to them.
This means a brand is the biggest and strongest asset that a company can have. It is imperative to build a brand, and not just a business.
A brand is something that we cannot all touch but the good thing is that it can be discovered, designed and developed.
When we think of a brand, our minds rest on logos, corporate colour and some branded signage that talks about our company.
However, a brand goes beyond all this.
A brand is the experience you accord your customers as you interface with them on a daily basis.
Every customer’s touchpoint is a brand-building moment that you must not mess up. The overall perception of your business by the client is your brand.
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, had this to say about a brand: “Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.”
It stands true that your brand is your repetition. The way you handle your employees, deal with customers and other stakeholders speaks heavily into the makeup of your brand.
How things are done within your organisation (corporate culture) has a bearing on your brand. As such, the organisation must be very conscious of the culture it is gradually or quickly building.
Brand-building process
Building a brand requires a strategy. It should be an intentional and gradual process. A strong brand is not built in a day. Brand building entails generating awareness of your brand using unique strategies and campaigns in order to create a lasting image in the market.
Basically, there are three levels of branding, which are: brand strategy, brand identity and brand marketing.
Brand strategy
Brand strategy outlines how you are going to compete in the market that you are entering, spelling out to your target customers how different, trustworthy, memorable and appealing your business is.
The strategy conveys your reason for existence as an organisation and your promises to the target market, which is how you are going to solve their socio-economic challenges.
We all know businesses, the world over, exist to solve some socio-economic challenges people are facing.
This is the first step when you want to create a brand – the brand strategy. It is the blueprint (plan) for the organisation, which shows how you want the world to see you as a business.
You cannot successfully build a house without a plan. Every plan has minimum requirements. That is why our building plans go through some rigorous scrutiny at the local authorities before they are certified as correct.
A plan is foundational to a building. It is very important as it shows how the building is structured on paper before it is brought into being.
A comprehensive and effective brand strategy must have the following components:
Purpose development
Market or audience development
Competitor research
Brand voice and personality
A story (message) behind the brand
Most businesses overlook this stage of brand strategy and jump into marketing and implementation. That is why we now have weaker brands than before. A brand strategy is foundational in building a strong and lasting brand.
Brand identity
The next stage is building the brand identity for your new organisation or just refreshing the existing one depending on your level.
You should come up with a unique creation, obviously in terms of your name, corporate colours and logo.
This part calls for some creativity and innovation for the brand must speak into your purpose. Brand identity should be an iterative process. You have seen quite a number of organisations rebranding in Zimbabwe.
ZB Bank did so recently, and CBZ a while ago. The rebranding is supported by some new philosophy and, at times, technological innovations, all in the name of improving brand awareness.
On brand identity, the most important thing is the unique experience and perception of the market about your service provision and offerings.
In our context, you know how people feel and comment when we talk of brands such as Econet, Chicken Inn, Delta and Nandos.
Brand marketing
Brand marketing means exposing the brand to the market through strategic communication. This is a process of communicating the products and services to the intended beneficiaries. Brand amplification in this age can also be best done through the utilisation of digital channels.
Successful companies use their websites, search engine optimisation and content marketing, social media, email marketing and paid advertisements. Collectively, these marketing channels are useful in exposing your brand to its target market.
In my first book “Becoming a person of impact: The Six Pack Approach”, I talk about networking as the fourth pack.
Whatever solutions you have as an organisation, they are meant to benefit the masses.
If you keep them to yourself, then it defies the whole business essence. You need to connect and network extensively using various forms, making your brand known at every touchpoint.
You must speak it almost everywhere, dream it and do it to be known in the market.
Conclusion
All successfully established brands followed a strategic and intentional route to stardom.
The three steps highlighted above are critical in discovering and establishing a brand.
The writer, Dr Kudzanai Vere, is an entrepreneur, serial award-winning transformational speaker in the areas of entrepreneurship, business development, leadership development and organisation development. He is the CEO of the Institute Of Entrepreneurs Zimbabwe. He can be contacted on +263719592232, email [email protected]
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