NOTE TO FACILITATOR: This is an educational slide.
Your Brand Promise is the promise you're making to your customers that both really matters to them and makes you different from your competitors.
NOTE TO FACILITATOR: This is an educational slide.
Your Brand Promise will help you win more of the Right Customers by helping you focus on HOW you sell your WHAT to your WHO.
How to Determine Your Brand Promise:
Identify your WHO: Your Core Customer and their Needs (not wants)
Identify your WHAT: Determine what is your unique or uncommon offering to your Core Customer
Identify your HOW: How becomes the persuasive strategy that will convince the core customer to buy the firm's uncommon offering vs. all competitive offerings. This sells WHAT to WHO.
NOTE TO FACILITATOR: This is an educational slide.
This is what a great Brand Promise can do for your company.
NOTE TO FACILITATOR: This is an educational slide.
These are the steps this slide deck will walk through to help you determine your Brand Promise.
NOTE TO FACILITATOR: This is a discussion slide.
Before we jump into the specifics of your Core Customer, let’s narrow the scope a little and first clarify your Sandbox (market).
Clarity around your Sandbox should answer the question “what market will you dominate over the next 3-5 years?”
The sandbox should be large enough to support your 3-5 year revenue and market share goals, but concise enough to give you direction and focus.
It’s not necessarily to limit where you will sell, only to clarify where you want to focus your resources.
And again, this is not a forever decision, just over the next 3-5 years.
The key questions for discussion here are:
#1 Where will you sell?
#2 What will you sell?
#3 Distribution Channel?
Document your thoughts here in Rhythm: https://rhythm.rhythmsystems.com/#BrandPromisePlace:;tab=1;seg=2
NOTE TO FACILITATOR: This is an education slide.
In his book The Inside Advantage, Bob Bloom has created a simple and repeatable four step process to help determine your Core Customer. The process helps you clarify Who? (is your core customer) What? (you are selling) How? (you position and sell it), and the Imaginative Acts? (that differentiate you and make you successful). The end result is a simple and compelling one page statement encompassing these four items.
To make sure your Who is clear, you must be able to describe your customer as a living, breathing person. A person you can get to know, develop a relationship with, form a mental picture of. You don’t sell your product or service to a demographic, you sell it to a real person. Your WHO describes the customer most likely to buy your product or service in the quantity required for optimal profit! Your WHO is the customer you can’t live without.
To get to your WHO, you should be able to describe your Core Customer in 20 words or less.
NOTE TO FACILITATOR: This is an educational slide.
There are four key things to consider about your Core Customer.
#1 Your Core Customer will purchase your product at the optimal price point and quantity to generate profit.
#2 Your WHO is a real person, with wants, needs and fears – they are not a lifeless profile on paper – they are alive and are just like you and me – AND they have specific reasons, emotions and interests in your product.
#3 You should focus significant resources on attracting and talking to your WHO so that your message is clear and compelling.
#4 Your Core Customer has an online identity that can be appealed to through social and digital media.
NOTE TO FACILITATOR: This is an example slide.
This example of the Core Customer for a start up fitness center comes from p. 190 of The Inside Advantage.
More Examples of Core Customer:
An affluent local male or female status seeker who is looking for a fashion statement
An individual, or family, or community that is underserved in terms of human needs or resources
A financial professional who provides advice and solutions to clients who want or need to be better informed about insurance
NOTE TO FACILITATOR: This is an example slide.
A few years ago, Nestle hired Bob Bloom to help them create a breakaway strategy for the juice category. Bob took them through the WHO, WHAT, HOW and Imaginative Acts process, resulting in the realization that their Core Customer was NOT the child wanting to drink Juice – it was the 25-45 year old, middle class, stay at home mom who wants to ensure that her children have a nutritious juice drink at snack time or in their school lunch.
In addition, they found that their WHO was relatively web savvy and would go online to find out nutrition information, ask questions, and wanted to provide comments about their children’s habits. As a result, Nestle launched the Juicy Juice 100% Juice product and an interactive online website that catered to the mother’s online preferences. The Inside Advantage Strategy vaulted Juicy Juice into the number one brand position in its category, and generated sales in excess of $400 Million a year.
NOTE TO FACILITATOR: This is an example slide.
This is our Core Customer for Rhythm.
NOTE TO FACILITATOR: This is a discussion slide.
Use the questions on the slide to have a discussion. Take notes on a flipchart or white board and look for patterns. Remember to think about your customer as a person, even if you are in a B to B industry (there is always a person who makes the decision whether to buy your product or service or not.)
Another way to run this discussion is to think about the customers who haven’t worked out:
Who has been hard to work with?
Who does your team not enjoy?
Do you have customers that consume too much of your team’s time and energy that just aren’t worth it for some reason?
After some discussion time, you should be able to write a description of the individual who represents your Core Customer using 20 words or less
You can document your Core Customer definition here in Rhythm: https://rhythm.rhythmsystems.com/#BrandPromisePlace:;tab=1;seg=0
The next step is to use this Core Customer definition to help you determine the right Brand Promise.
NOTE TO FACILITATOR: This is a discussion slide.
Now that you have a clear image of who your core customer is, ask the question: “what is it these customers truly need”
We emphasize need versus want here, because while they’re usually pretty clear about what they want, they may not even completely understand for themselves what it is they need. But if you can figure that out for them, offer it in a unique or at least uncommon way, you’ll be able to add true value.
As you facilitate this discussion, make notes on a flipchart or document the needs of your Core Customer here in Rhythm: https://rhythm.rhythmsystems.com/#BrandPromisePlace:;tab=1;seg=0
Your Brand Promise is the key factor that sets you apart from all your competitors, and when you get it right, it will bring the right customers to you.
NOTE TO FACILITATOR: This is an exercise slide. Use the questions on the slide to lead a discussion.
Here’s a way to start this discussion:
Look at your Strengths and Core competencies (these may be documented in Rhythm: https://rhythm.rhythmsystems.com/#LongTermStrategyPlace:;seg=2;tab=1).
q. What are you doing that works right now? Or has worked in the past?
q: Think about the times when you were able to achieve customer delight
q: Think about when you were able to WOW the customer
Again, as you are having this discussion, jot down ideas somewhere for the team to see and refer back to (either on a flipchart or whiteboard or in Rhythm).
NOTE TO FACILITATOR: This is an example slide.
Excerpt from p. 190 of The Inside Advantage.:“WHO: An adult man or woman who wants and can afford an exceptional personal training experience
WHAT: Consistent progress toward complete personal well-being, planned and monitored by expert trainers and nutritionists
HOW: Provide a system of measurement and expert advice that assures progress toward an individual’s evolving health and fitness goals”
NOTE TO FACILITATOR: This is an Example Slide.
From Verne Harnish’s Brand Promise Article: http://university.rhythmsystems.com/images/Resources/BrandPromise.pdf
“FedEx’s latest brand promise, “peace of mind” raises the stakes. The measurable deliverable is the customer’s ability to know where his or her package is at all times. FedEx figured this out several years ago, and quietly spent a billion dollars a year making sure that customers big and small had the necessary terminals installed to handle this new tracking capability. They handed out disks containing the necessary software like so many AOL freebies. Now the brand promise is being sold via the marketing slogan, ‘Relax, It’s FedEx.’”
For more examples of Brand Promise, see the book The Inside Advantage or check out our blog: http://www.rhythmsystems.com/blog/brand-promise-examples-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly
NOTE TO FACILITATOR: This is an exercise slide.
Now bring it all together. Consider all of the discussions you’ve had and notes you’ve made related to the previous slides. Brainstorm several ideas – what could you promise to customers that would solve their problem and get them to say yes to you. Have the team continue to discuss until there is concensus around the main theme or idea. You may need to revisit the idea several times before it crystalizes and becomes completely clear.
Strive for something simple and easy to understand.
Don’t worry about “wordsmithing” it – the marketing team can work on that later – for now it is just important for you as a team to really understand what it is.
Once you have a Brand Promise to work with, document it here in Rhythm: https://rhythm.rhythmsystems.com/#BrandPromisePlace:;tab=1;seg=0
You can use the Comments tab here to continue sharing ideas and insights to tweak and refine your Brand Promise as you put it to the test.
NOTE TO FACILITATOR: This is an educational slide.
Typical pitfalls:
Overly complex promise - multi-faceted - seems very intelligent yet confusing
Too generic - not specific
Tablestakes – doesn’t make you unique
NOTE TO FACILITATOR: This is an activity/discussion slide.
Use the questions on the slide to lead a discussion to test your brand promise.
NOTE TO FACILITATOR: This is an education slide.
Now that you have tested your Brand Promise, the next step is to create a system and process for delivering on that promise.
The brand promise is not only about marketing, it is also about being able to deliver what you are promising:
What are the right key activities?
How are you measuring whether or not you are delivering? (KPIs)
Use Rhythm to set up KPIs and Priorities that Focus and Align your team to consistently deliver your Brand Promise in a way that attracts new customers and delights the ones you love. Discuss those priorities and KPIs at your weekly meetings. When you struggle to deliver on your promise, discuss what adjustments you need to make in your execution in order to get back on track to success.
When you are ready to work on your Brand Promise Guarantee, go to Rhythm University for help. (http://university.rhythmsystems.com/index.php/think/determine-my-brand-promise)
You can document the key activities, KPIs, and Guarantee in Rhythm (https://rhythm.rhythmsystems.com/#BrandPromisePlace:;tab=1;seg=0), or use the tool available in Rhythm University: http://university.rhythmsystems.com/images/Resources/BrandPromiseToolED.pdf
NOTE TO FACILITATOR:
Put your Brand Promise in a think rhythm for a few months to collect the data to fine tune and tweak it based on whether you are getting the desired results.
NOTE TO FACILITATOR: Working on your long term strategy is a journey rather than an event. Determining and using your Brand Promise is an iterative process. If you or your team falls into the Red or Yellow or just haven’t been able to get to SuperGreen on your Brand Promise, you can get in a Think Rhythm to continue working on it.
Contact your consultant if you need help determining or finding the best ways to use your Brand Promise to help you grow with purpose.