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Find Your Competitive Edge
August 04, 2011
Your brand strategy should be focused on the answer to a simple question: Why do our customers choose to do business with us?
The second question is: Why do they stay with us?
In a land of free choice customers have many alternatives—meaning every enterprise has considerable competition. After a career in the branding business, I’m always surprised most organizations don’t really know why they have been chosen by customers. Think about your business. What do your repeat customers really think about your products and service?
Finding the answers to these questions has been the starting point of the brand development process for Martin Partners since we started thirteen years ago. There is an art to phrasing the questions so that the answers we get are true and not influenced by the questions themselves. Over those years we have perfected the process, learned by doing, and simplified. Now we find the core strategic promise with minimum fuss and bother. Rapid and pervasive communication capability via the internet has helped bring down the cost of this phase one of the process, which we call Discovery.
Our recent brand development work for colleges demonstrates how fascinating it is that a competitive edge can differ so much for similar organizations:
- A liberal arts college with strong religious roots was found to appeal strongly to those who desire close-knit relationships where classmates like and interact with each other providing an almost home-away-from-home environment; and each member of the faculty and administration takes a personal interest in the success of each student.
- Another coed liberal arts college found a difference centered upon interaction between professors and students in the pursuit of answers—a real and important factor found to be very important to those who seek greater proficiency and knowledge through healthy and respectful give-and-take.
- A community college innovates with a changing curriculum that could remain in tune with the needs of prospective-area employers, making it, in effect, the “opportunity” college.
- Finally, a single-sex college had become famous with faculty, alumni, and guidance counselors for its honor system and it emphasis on graduating well-educated students with a strong sense of honor and human values.
Each college now projects its own distinctive value proposition to motivate prospective students, their parents, and counselors.
In phase two of the Branding Process, Martin Partners translates findings like these into a Brand Position and a Brand Brief. The Brand Proposition is presented to all employees so they can do their part in delivering on the promise. The Brand Brief guides the creation of external promotion including the overall theme and a variety of client tactical marketing initiatives. These often range from web sites, to landing pages and social media messages, to ads and capability brochures, graphic standards and brandmarks, videos and speeches. Copy points uncovered in phase one are used in rank-order for their persuasive importance to various target groups.
If you would like to find and define your competitive edge and use it to expand your customer base, we invite you to call 804-200-8442 or send an electronic inquiry to .
David N. Martin is founder of The Martin Agency, last year ranked first nationally in the advertising industry. He is the author of Romancing the Brand and Be the Brand and since starting Martin Partners has helped dozens of companies and non-profits define and develop a competitive edge.
