As business owners we have all heard the term know, like, trust in reference to creating good working relationships with potential and ongoing clients. It’s easy to see where these principles apply in face to face networking, but how can you build on this useful tool with your online and written content?
Brand is a term that we hear a lot as business owners. Marketing experts regularly tell us how important brand building is. As a writer I focus on the way language impacts your ability to attract paying clients. So in this context, the term brand relates to the perception created through the use of language.
Do you know what your brand stands for and how you make your ideal clients feel? Founder of Intuit and expert marketeer Scott Cook insists that it’s no longer as simple as telling people how they should feel. It is what they are telling each other that matters. In other words – show them what you do and why, and they will tell you – and each other – how that makes them feel. That is where the real truth about your brand lies.
A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is – it is what consumers tell each other it is.
Scott Cook
It’s easy to adopt the scatter gun approach in the early days. This works for some, many successful business owners attend a number of different networking groups on a regular basis. But with some groups requiring a large joining fee and regular monthly payments this can be an expensive marketing plan. I quickly made the decision to join one group where I could invest my time in attending meetings and getting to know other members. This involved a lot of initial research to make sure that my final decision was the correct one, but once I had identified the right group for me I made a clear commitment. I still accept invitations to visit others as a guest and drop in and out of smaller, social networking groups. But I never let these get in the way of my ‘Alpha’ choice. Attending just one main group means that I can stay focused, build strong working relationships and it doesn’t eat into my time for client work.
Early in my work as a freelance writer I was lucky enough to be introduced to Simon Sinek and his incredible TED talk – How Great Leaders Inspire Action. Everything that Simon advocates looks at the importance of starting from a place of passion – then using the reason why you are in business as a driving factor in building your brand.
the aim is not to do business with everyone who needs the thing you have; but to do business with everyone who believes what you believe.
So do you understand the passion that drives you in your business journey? Are you using this to develop engaging and inspiring narratives in your marketing plan?