Dropping Some Branding Knowledge | Resound Creative Blog

Without a structured approach, strategic planning fails to touch the ground. Here are the three ways a well-structured brand strategy workshop — and importantly, the deliverables — give you everything you need to turn your vision into an organized, almost-tangible set of tasks.

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Strategic planning is great, but what happens when everyone leaves the planning meeting? The excitement is gone and the work needs to start.

Explanation:

It’s a bummer when people show up not really understanding the meeting topic and then are expected to be involved. They soon lose interest, failing to contribute and take ownership. Especially when their comments are off-target. But a good workshop offers an explanation, creating consensus, accountability, and confidence.

Without agreement among leaders, nothing downstream can be done with any confidence. And without the ability to examine ideas and communicate them — test them against goals, running them through the gauntlet of several points of view from your team and ours — it can be difficult to a) feel like you’re in agreement and b) actually be in agreement, even if you think you are.

The solution:

Deliverables:

How do we do it? Without getting into detail, let’s just say we use Sharpies, Post-its, a slideshow, whiteboards, worksheets and a lot of hard work and engagement on the part of the participants. And there’s no reason you can’t do the same for content strategy, brand strategy or even product development.

Without agreement and involvement, leaders can’t be held accountable. They can go their own way, letting someone else make the decision. And if it doesn’t work out, they can parachute in and accuse the other person of failing.

And this doesn’t just happen in big, evil corporations full of self-serving executives. It’s also practical. Remember, everyone’s trying to do a good job, and when you’re busy, you can’t do everything. So if some bright-eyed marketing director sends you an email with brand values, colors and a logo, you have to decide, “Is this really worth a bunch of my time and energy?”

But a brand workshop invites everyone to collaborate, in real-time. It’s a chance to make decisions for the company and to engage with colleagues. It brings all of the leaders on the same page. And if they don’t engage, everyone in the workshop knows it. But if they do decide to engage, bringing their unique point of view to the table, you now have consensus, on which you can build accountability.

Now that the leaders have participated in the day-long workshop and have had the chance to disagree and test ideas, Resound turns their decisions into a description of their company. We clean out all of the noise and focus on what we heard the company say as a whole. And if we stick closely to what we heard in the workshop, delivering a report that accurately reflects what was said, there’s now accountability for the whole organization to move as one.

In other words, when we deliver the final deliverables, they’re written in black and white, with the permission of the team.

Deliverables for Resound’s workshops typically include a clearly written and thorough set of values, personality traits, and brand story.

And this brings unity to the leadership team.

Perhaps where most plans fail is in how those plans get interpreted for the doers — those people who aren’t on the management team, but end up being asked to do the tasks.

The delegation could be incomplete because the manager doesn’t know what the front-line worker doesn’t know. Sometimes the manager forgets why he was asked to get the task done. Delegation can also fail to convince if the doers are not able to see the “why” behind what they’re being asked to do.

Maybe they just don’t understand that the management is behind the work, in favor of it and in support of it.

For the rubber to meet the road, you need deliverables that reflect the workshop and bring it down to ground level. For Resound’s brand strategy workshops, this is a set of visual and verbal guidelines that front-line designers and writers can use to create brand executions that reflect the brand’s values, personality traits, and brand story in an accurate way.

And when these things are well-done, they help everyone — both inside and outside of the brand — to know what the brand is all about. And you know you’ve reached success when the writers and designers are so consistent that people can even know what the brand would and wouldn’t say.

Brand workshops are a great example of strategic planning that makes the rubber meet the road. It wrangles disparate leadership goals and ideas into a list of values, personality traits and brand story. It delivers them in a way that encourages accountability since it’s clear and concise. And it empowers creatives by giving them well-documented guidance for how to create what they’re creating.

All this works together to move your brand forward with confidence in a shared vision and express it to the world without friction or confusion.

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If you’re looking for more brand strategy thinking just like this, consider signing up for our newsletter, or joining in on our next Brand Roundtablewhere we’ll be discussing creating compelling content and building remarkable brands with an intimate group of brand leaders and marketers like yourself.

We talk a lot about how the world needs brands as they are at Resound. Meaning – a company should be itself – have its own unique and true identity – and not try to be something it is not.

This comes from our fundamental belief that – just as individual human beings are intrinsically remarkable – so are the organizations that human beings come together and create. And if you want to find out more about this belief and how we see it play out in branding and marketing, you’ll definitely want to grab a copy of our upcoming book, You Are Remarkable: How To Unlock Your Authentic Brand To Attract Loyal Customers.

This is all really important because if you’re not working to understand your organization’s unique identity – get to its real essence – you can quickly find yourself branding the wrong way. This can lead to many unintended issues that will hamper your marketing and communications and ultimately your organization’s growth.

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We like to call this lack of depth in finding an organization’s identity “Accidental Branding.”

Accidental branding happens when you base your brand on something currently useful or interesting, instead of doing the hard work to deeply understand your company’s unique identity. It might reflect some aspects of the company here and now but it doesn’t really get to the heart – or essence – of the brand and will certainly not stand the test of time.

Accidental branding can happen for a variety of reasons – and some of them may even seem excusable. Maybe there’s a rush to get it done to meet some arbitrary deadline, or because those involved in the process have little stake in the outcome, or maybe because no one wants to think super deeply about the organization’s ultimate purpose. No matter the reason, accidental branding will leave your brand without depth or a lasting purpose.

There are four things they’ll mistake for their true identity:

Now don’t get me wrong: these things are important to your brand as you craft your brand story. But it is a big mistake to confuse any of these by themselves as the essence of your brand. Why? Because these things are all temporary: they will all change (and quickly!) This will create tension between the new state of the company and your branding. And that means you’re back to rebranding…again. Which leads to confusion with customers, staff, and vendors, and a weakening of your brand’s value.

When someone is asked to introduce themselves in front of a group of people, they usually describe themselves based on their current stage of life. They might share where they went to school. They may also share where they currently work, their current role and where they live, whether they have kids (and how many, and what ages), and maybe a few things that they like to do for fun. Introducing themselves in this way allows other people to draw conclusions about their current motives, desires, and goals. We can take an educated guess about how somebody will respond when we know their current situation.

You know your true motivations, what really drives you, how difficult it is to summarize yourself in a few words. And you also know how your current life circumstances don’t really capture the whole of who you are. Maybe you even resent it a little bit when marketers try to sell to you based on your demographics. Just because you make a lot of money doesn’t mean you like luxury watches. Just because you gave birth to a child doesn’t mean you want “mom” products. You know who you really are.

When you are introducing your business to a potential client or vendor, you may try to communicate the basics of where you are currently. You might share your location, size, industry, the product or service you’re currently most focused on, your 3-5 year goals, and the strategy you currently have to achieve them. That’s helpful information. But you also know that none of it really gets at who you are as an organization. None of it says why you exist where you are, why you have those goals, or why you’ve adopted that strategy. Your identity as a business isn’t your current size. It is the non-negotiable core that will still be there in the coming years, even if you move locations, grow or shrink in size, and have entirely new goals.

In spite of this, businesses are continually tempted to brand themselves based on “where they are currently.” They develop definitions of who they are in terms of things that will quickly change. Maybe their current desire is to grow into the largest in the state, so they define themselves in terms of growth or size. Their current goal is to double sales to retired persons, so they define themselves in terms of serving retirees. Their current tactic is encouraging referrals, so they define themselves as a referral-based business.

We all know that when an individual defines themselves in terms of their current goals, the inevitable result is disappointment. If they fail to achieve the goal, they are devastated, because their whole identity is wrapped up in their own failure. They become angry, listless, or disoriented. Yet if they achieve the goal and win the prize, then after a brief euphoria they feel emptiness because there is nothing left for them to do. They become just as disoriented as if they had failed because they wrapped their sense of self up in a temporary goal.

The same is true of a business or organization when it defines itself in terms of a goal. Whether it succeeds or fails at its goal, the organization itself is still going to have to be there the next day. Does meeting or failing at its goal obliterate its identity and sense of purpose? Do its employees end up feeling lost and aimless?

Goals, desires, and tactics all change. Your brand should reflect the aspect of your identity which doesn’t change. This identity can roll with the ups and downs of your organization’s whole lifespan.

Everybody knows how important it is to differentiate your company from its closest competition. One of the most valuable results of branding is that it immediately differentiates you from the competition. But while your brand should make you stand out, what stands out about you isn’t necessarily your brand.

How you identify somebody is not the same as their identity. If someone was trying to find you at baggage claim in a busy airport, quickly glancing around the crowd, they might look for people of your height, your hair color, the kind of clothing you typically wear, or the way you usually walk. The way somebody quickly differentiates you has to do with how you appear, but little to do with who you are. Someone can make fashion choices to try to outwardly express their identity or to deliberately choose a hairstyle that will make them stand out, but few people are so superficial as to mistake the image they see in the mirror for themselves.

Similarly, while the visual and verbal expression of your brand should quickly differentiate you from your competition – and it should certainly express and reflect your organization’s core identity – the relationship doesn’t hold in reverse.

Maybe people recognize you as the “friendly” engineering firm, or as the “smart” realtors, or as the “punctual” accountants. People describe you in this way because they’ve encountered some underlying truth about your identity and what you value. You seem “friendly” because your brand values relationships; or you seem “smart” because your brand values knowledge; you seem “punctual” because your brand values responsibility. Your identity, however, lies in the values, not in the differentiators. Who you are is what differentiates you; your differentiators are not your identity.

Companies that identify themselves with their differentiators inevitably have to rebrand. What differentiates you today won’t make you different tomorrow. You won’t still be the “friendly” engineers when a new competitor arises who beats you in the friendliness category. You can no longer define yourself as the “biggest” or “most award-winning” dealership when another dealership grows larger or wins more awards. If somebody else can copy it or beat you in it, then it’s not your authentic identity.

Often it is when the competition changes and makes the old “differentiator” outdated that an organization has to face itself in the mirror for the first time and consider who it is and why it exists. What is its purpose and what does it value? Those aren’t questions you can answer based on a quick glance around the crowd. You have to look into your organization’s heart and soul.

Okay, those are the first two ways you can get your branding wrong…accidentally. We’ll unpack the other two in a future post. (And if you don’t want to miss it, get signed up to our branding newsletter called Re:Brand.) But I want to leave you with these final thoughts on the ultimate reason so many companies (accidentally) get their branding wrong:

Ultimately, the mistake of accidental branding comes from confusing what is important with what is essential. Your goals, tactics, leadership, history, and differentiators from the competition are all vitally important components to understand when running a business or developing a marketing plan for it. However, being important doesn’t make them the essence of the business.

The essence of a business is that unchanging core, without which it simply would not be the same business. We believe you can and should find that core. The world truly needs you as you are.

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Catch part 2 here, and if you’re looking for more brand strategy thinking just like this, consider signing up for our newsletter. Consider joining in on our next Brand Roundtable Chat where we’ll be discussing creating compelling content and building remarkable brands with an intimate group of brand leaders and marketers like yourself.

The abundance of interesting articles makes it tough to cut through the clutter and get your message into the hearts and minds of your audience. But newspapers have it figured out — and they have for a long time. They’re famous for delivering information quickly, speaking to the lowest common denominator of people: the skimmers. The good news is that you don’t have to write for every reading style. Because if you can get the skimmers, you can get everyone. Let’s talk about how to organize your info like a newspaper.

First off, let’s give newspapers the credit they deserve: they model a great information hierarchy. And we can use this, especially for our busy B2B customers. We create messaging that will get to the point quickly. Not because everyone absorbs information in that way, but because if you can get skimmers, you can get other readers.

Apply this to your email newsletters, website, and social, and you’ll watch your substance come to the front.

Clear headlines summarize the whole article. There’s no guessing and no click-bait – exactly what skimmers love. So how do you do it?

Say it straight (then, if you can, say it “great”). Tell the whole truth really quickly, without trying to be clever. If you just landed a contract with a big company, and you want to tell people about it, consider: “Blimey Construction Wins $50 Million Bid to Build Cardinals’ Stadium.”

Then, once you’ve said it straight a few times, add a superlative like “killer,” “best,” “top,” or give a number. Tell people exactly what you’re going to tell them to do. For instance, let’s say you want to talk about how to set up a manufacturing line for ice cream, but you want it to sound interesting, and not like a manual.

Mistakes to avoid: Whatever you do, create tension with the headline. The first example above might sound happy and optimistic, but the second one sounds more interesting. Everyone wants tension. Tension organizes a story and makes you want to know more until your questions are answered. Make sure you build a little tension in the headline by telling them what they can get — or even lose — from the info in the article.

Remember, you can’t make people interested if the topic isn’t relevant. But for those for whom it’s relevant, make the topic feel so clear and organized that they can’t help but click.

A clear opening paragraph/summary — the first or second paragraph in any news story — expands on the headline, giving slightly more detail on each aspect of the headline. Like an upside-down pyramid, a clear opening paragraph (working with a clear headline), puts the bulk of the information at the top, not the bottom. It lets people know if they’re wasting their time or not.

Example from the Wall Street Journal:

Headline: Grand Jury Subpoenas Sent to John Bolton’s Publisher and Agent

Nut Graph (first paragraph): Federal prosecutors issued grand jury subpoenas to former national security adviser John Bolton’s publisher and literary agent on Monday, according to people familiar with the matter, launching a criminal investigation into whether Mr. Bolton mishandled classified information.

Notice that the nut graph expands on information contained in the headline.

How it can work for you: In any article you write, you want people to absorb the information. Write the problem first, because that’s what most people relate to, then talk about how you’ll solve it with your article. Give them everything you can right up front by summarizing.

Mistakes to avoid: Remember that newspaper articles are written to fit into a newspaper. They put the good stuff up top in the article, but leave the details toward the end. Why? Because the editor might cut the end to jam in another article on the page, or might make the article “continued on page D8.” This is where you’re different. Since you can publish your whole article, blog post, or whatever in full (plus, you want people to read your call-to-action), try to avoid answering all the questions you raised before the end. Make sure even the skimmers have a reason to read to the bottom.

Writing in the active voice forces you to use more and stronger verbs than adjectives and adverbs (modifiers). This makes the piece more active and interesting, “showing,” rather than “telling” the reader what you’re claiming.

Here’s where some examples will help:

Passive: Resound is great! They were the best to work with. Resound has indispensable knowledge and unprecedented ability to build a website for us. Once Resound was done, the website got rave reviews from our customers and employees alike. Working with Resound was a dream since the communication was always great and we were never in-the-dark.

Active: They didn’t just give us a pretty logo, they really looked inside our firm to understand our clients, our team, and our reputation in the community. Working with Resound on the firm rebrand was a great experience. They made the whole process (from brand audit to launch) run very smoothly. Their team is creative and professional. I am very excited with the final product we received from Resound.”

I highlighted the passive words in the first example and the stronger verbs in the second. The passive words, sometimes called “to be” verbs, tend to weaken the sentence. By finding those weak verbs, you can look for a better sentence structure. For example:

As we talked about before, “Say it straight, then say it great.” So take a two-step process to writing, starting with your crappy first draft. Allow yourself to use all kinds of crappy language and imprecise writing in order to get what you want down on paper. Sure, it’s crappy, but it needs to get down on paper as the first draft. Then, a day later, you go through it and cut stuff that doesn’t seem to add to the message and make the first paragraphs, headings, and summaries — and the important stuff — super clear, direct, and punchy. And you’ll be able to because you’ve written about it and are now so much more familiar with the topic.

So what mistakes come with this process? Obsessively self-editing and also trying to edit when you’re still inspired by the topic. Let’s break these down briefly.

These rules are like cheats; anyone can use them. Follow these two rules, and you’ll activate your copy and become a better writer than some who are naturally more talented than you.

The skimmers are the toughest people to engage. But often they’re the most valuable. Plus, the same article structure that makes it easy for skimmers also helps the regular reader who has a little more time. In other words, if you write clear headlines, give the main point up-front, and use an active voice, you’ll find that your articles attract more of the right readers and really engage them with a well-organized and active message.

And even though you might not write the next great American novel, you can console yourself with the engagement and leadership you build within the industry through your clear writing.

If you’re looking for more practical tips like these, consider signing up for our newsletter, or joining in on our next Brand Roundtable Chat where we’ll be discussing creating compelling content and building remarkable brands with a small group of leaders and marketers like yourself! Glean from our years of experience running our Phoenix area creative branding agency. We look forward to seeing you there!

Decision modes affect communication. The method and mood people bring into decision making affect their reasons for buying and how they need information delivered. This brings huge implications to the area of business-to-business sales and marketing. If you can figure out how to connect better with your customers on the basis of their need, delivering the truth in the way they need to hear it — not just based on their personality, but also their capacity/role when they hear it — you win.

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What are “decision modes?” Decision modes reflect personality styles represented in buying behavior. Think about going to the store and browsing. Now think about going to the store to buy something specific you need for a timeline-driven project you’re working on. Even though you’re the same person in both situations, you display two different kinds of buying behavior. In a business-to-business capacity, that’s just magnified.

The problem is that most B2B messages fail to make this distinction or make it without realizing what’s really going on. They either speak to themselves (whoever the owner is) or go too attribute-driven (no-nonsense, brass-tacks, impersonal, and sometimes braggy to seem confident).

Marketing has 2 main parts: media and message. And they both have to work.

B2B buyers are buying for two reasons: what you can do for their company and what you can do for them. Do you ever wonder why B2B websites sound so stuffy and boring, bragging about themselves and telling you what you’ll get? It’s because they need to be logical.

Not because all business people are logical, but because, in the end, business people need to look like they’re making responsible business decisions. They want to trust that you’re going to make them look good if they choose you or even just recommend you.

So how do you get there with your message? Sorting out how to speak to different people in their roles at work can seem difficult, but if you understand a few basic things about how people think in their roles at their company, things could become much simpler, much more quickly.

Think about all the people you’ll need to satisfy.

Think of it as a business version of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Start by checking the above boxes. Make sure your website has testimonials, for example. Make sure you have work samples, showing that you’ve done this type of thing before. Let your site show that you’re focused and speak intelligently on all your outward-facing communication.

Obviously, your website doesn’t show details about how you operate, but a well-organized and well-functioning site that has the basic boxes checked will get you past the first hurdle.

This corresponds to Maslow’s “physiological” and “safety” requirements. They need to know they’re safe with you. So if you’re super-clever, great. But that might not be what comes out on your website. Don’t let your desire to be clever overshadow your dependability. Dependability and professionalism is safety in B2B.

Hey, we’re a branding agency, so of course we care about the rest of Maslow’s pyramid. In fact, we think everyone should be offering reliability and structure with their special, secret sauce that sets them apart from their industry. But we have to get the basics right so that you’ll have a chance to meet them and build relationships, bringing them to a higher level of connection.

B2C can be a pretty quick sale. And even a higher-ticket sale can involve less rigor than a comparable B2B purchase.

So think about how to give them more over time. Many companies create a cascading set of information that gives people more detail until they’re ready to talk to a live person. This could be a website that delivers information simply but offers the customer more depth as they interact. It’s not too overwhelming, but also not too simple. It offers to solve business problems, and also offers enough technical information to demonstrate competency.

This way if the buying process goes long, they haven’t exhausted all of your resources. They’re still a little curious.

This is a bit like the last one. But let’s drive the point home. If your client is in a technical field, to make your B2B prospect feel good about doing business with you, show the following:

At Resound, we’re all a little bit into physics, technology, economics, and the principles that make up those industries and industries like them. This makes it much easier to pick up on the technical aspects of building, engineering, and even finance.

Understanding these principles of B2B marketing will help you create a general plan that will help you build communication to speak to the person who’s buying, no matter what he or she is like in everyday personal buying decisions. B2B brings out the responsible, data-driven shopper in us who wants to cover all the bases and avoid making provably bad decisions on behalf of the company.

If you’re looking for more practical tips like these, consider signing up for our newsletter, registering for our next free video class, or subscribing to our book launch mailing list which will have tons of exclusive insights from our upcoming book.

Comparisons help contrast two things, bringing out differences and showing how each is special. Why does this matter for businesses? Without bringing out the differences between you and your competition, your understanding of the difference will be mushy. And it’s hard to explain to others an idea that is mushy in your own mind. The mushiness comes from two places: your inability to call things what they are, and your lack of information. In other words, you will struggle to differentiate your brand from your competition. This process helps you deal with both: we focus only on the information you can know, and we analyze it in a way that forces us to make decisions and distinctions.

Here’s how we’ll do it.

First, organize what you know. Don’t let lack of information stop you: You don’t have inside info, so look at the outside:

After collecting this information, turn to your own business. Write down the following:

For a more complete treatment of the SWOT, check out this article.

Here’s where you really draw distinctions. Write down why you think this other company is a threat. What is it good at that makes it competitive to you? How do you compare favorably? How do they nullify your strengths by being better in that area? This last one is huge because it requires honesty. You have to admit that this other company is better than you at something you think you’re good at. Worry about how you’ll overcome them some other day. Today is a day for honesty.

A good example: Let’s say you listed customer service as a strength, but another company has a better reputation for customer service. Be honest and realize that you can’t compete on that alone.

Now, come up with all the strengths you have remaining, after you’ve eliminated some. Is there something you listed, like the ability to deliver reliably, that your competition has trouble with? Maybe that’s your big difference.

Also, before we leave customer service off the table, let’s also think about what we mean by customer service. Your competition may have great scores in an area like that. But if you can deliver unique value, you might be able to cut them off.

For instance, let’s say they lean on great customer service scores in surveys and they plaster it all over in their advertising. But even with that, you know they have wait times. And you don’t. This could be an easy way to differentiate your brand. So if customer service is so valuable to your market, you could advertise zero hold times, offering a more-specific and believable promise.

Be careful though. If they own customer service, it can be tricky to win it from them. Make sure it’s worth the investment.

Let’s review: Comparative advantage is the measure in B2B, not absolute advantage. There’s a difference.

A great example: let’s say Michael Jordan is the fastest typist in the world. Agnes Jones is the second-fastest typist. So Michael Jordan should be a typist, right? Wrong.

Even though MJ has an absolute advantage in typing, he made so much money playing basketball, it makes no sense for him to switch to typing. In other words, his opportunity cost is too high.

Agnes, on the other hand, may have no skill that’s as valuable as typing, and, therefore, has a comparative advantage in typing, even if MJ is faster.

The same thing applies to business. In finding out on what grounds to compete with competition…

“To find people’s comparative advantages, do not compare their absolute advantages. Compare their opportunity costs.” -Lauren F. Landsburg

What kinds of things can you offer that only you can be the best at? If someone’s better at that than you, and they compete with you, find another thing to be competitive at.

Now you know your values, brand personality, and the skills that make you compare well with your competition. Develop processes that magnify those strengths. Create communication that sells the customer’s benefit from your strengths. Create brand messaging that magnifies them.

Build around your values, personality, and actual abilities, and you’ll find a long-term platform to grow on and that will never fail you. In other words, you’ll uncover the way to differentiate your brand from even your strongest competition.

If you’re wanting to dive deeper, consider signing up for our upcoming Brand Roundtable Chats. Our goal with these conversations is to dig into your brand issues and connect you with like-minded peers in the marketing and business space. Our CEO Mike Jones serves as the facilitator in these conversations, drawing on years of experience operating a creative branding agency in the Phoenix area. If you’re working on improving your branding chops, you won’t want to miss these hour-long discussions.

Competition. What comes to mind? An epic struggle between two teams on a sports field? Candidates vying for an open position at a fast-growing, exciting tech company? Perhaps something more biblical, say, David vs Goliath?

For most of us leading and building B2B brands, the first thing that comes to mind is the other companies vying for our customers and clients.

The competition is ‘the other guys’ and we often know something about them. We may even have seen them at an event, met them, we may be friends with them, and quite possibly used to work for them.

And in my experience running a creative branding agency in Phoenix, as we work with, advise, and help build remarkable B2B brands, the activities of the competition (especially of the marketing variety) are something my clients care very much about. They follow their press releases, size up their booth at the tradeshow, and maybe even set up a friendly meeting with their counterpart in the other firm, and both attempt a little competitive-but-friendly game of digging for dirt.

Researching what competition is up to always seems to sound like a good idea. Stay ahead of the curve. Keep up with the Joneses. Get a leg up. Don’t get left behind.

And I certainly don’t disagree. In fact, I think there’s an incredibly crucial place in your B2B brand strategy for competitive analysis. But that said, I think many brands misplace the energy spent on keeping tabs on their competition. So let’s talk about that for a minute.

Think about the remarkable brands in your industry — or really in any industry. Maybe consider a Nike, Apple, Amazon, or Coca-cola. Think for a moment about Southwest Airlines or Chick-fil-A or Barry-Wehmiller.

Now answer the question, “Do these companies focus more on their own brands or their competitors’ brands?” I’m pretty sure the answer is the former: they are far, far more focused on their own brand than what their competition is doing. Chick-fil-A doesn’t primarily train its staff by showing them what McDonald’s does and then saying ‘do the opposite’. They teach them how to act the Chick-fil-A way first and foremost. They create their own culture, not just ‘someone else’s but different’.

The opposite of these brands’ strategy (when it comes to the competition) is ‘outside-in’ branding. That’s when you’re far more worried about what everyone else is doing than what your brand is doing. Your brand is less about what’s really true about your organization and more about how to position it amongst or against the competition.

I do think there’s value in making sure you’re looking around to see what everyone else is doing (just like a runner in the lead has to take quick stock of the pack every now and again). And we’ll get to some approaches for doing that right later in this article. But I think there’s a lot of temptation for brands to focus way too much on the competition, causing them to lose sight of their own authentic (and compelling) identity.

The real fundamental issue with ‘Outside-In’ branding: you are forever a follower. Your brand never leads. It can’t. It’s created from either the negative space between your competitors or from some herd-mentality (or some mutated amalgamation of the two). Here are some specific issues that arise for ‘outside-in’ brands:

So if we’re not going to use an ‘outside-in’ strategy, what should we do?

These (and all other remarkable brands) are built from the inside out. They are focused on their own identity first and foremost: core values, personality, behaviors, and communication. They know that remarkable brands are leaders, not followers. These brands don’t get caught watching all the other players all the time. They keep the eye on the ball and get to where it will be before everyone else.

There are some incredible benefits from this ‘inside-out’ brand strategy:

So we’re going to build a remarkable, ‘inside-out ‘ brand. We won’t get caught following the competition. We’re going to have a vision, be out in front, and really lead. Is there no place then for competitive analysis? Should we even care at all what they’re doing?

Yes, we absolutely should care about the competition. But we have to frame our analysis correctly:

We research the competition, not to instigate, but to validate our branding efforts. Competitive research is great. It’s a fantastic tool but it has to be applied at the right point and with the right focus to help us build a remarkable, ‘inside-out’ brand. It has to serve the work we’ve already done to find our authentic identity. We don’t create an identity out of our competitive research. We validate that it truly is different and unique.

So here are four critical ways to use your competitive research right in building your remarkable brand.

You’ve put in the time and effort to identify and define your brand values, personality, story, and perhaps even started to build key assets like a logo, name, tagline, and colors. But if you never do any competitive research, you’ll likely find yourself creating things that may look a lot like a competitor’s brand. You certainly don’t want to make a certain shade of red your primary brand color when a direct competitor is using one that is nearly identical!

There should be one consistent thought as you research your competition. “Is what we’re creating truly unique?” Let’s not get caught down the road building a brand that doesn’t truly showcase our unique identity. Competitive research is a great tool to protect against this.

What terms do you find consistently across your competitors’ messaging? Which visuals keep popping up? What overall experience are customers getting from your competitors’ combined efforts?

While it may not be prudent to simply pick up these terms and images and use them yourself (again, you are trying to build a unique brand, aren’t you?), but they do give you clues into the things that your customers are seeing in the industry. You can better get inside their head and even link these ‘industry terms’ or even buzzwords with your own unique, clear and compelling terms.

And let’s be honest: many brands use buzzwords, not because customers understand them, but because it makes them feel like they’re projecting expertise. The reality is far different though: customers are often more confused and frustrated than they are helped by these terms. If you’ve done your homework and know which terms are common, what a fantastic opportunity to bring your authentic brand to bear on explaining the concepts of your work in terms that are far clearer and helpful.

If you never know what your competitors are saying and doing, it’s hard to answer the question from a customer, “Well, what makes you any better than them?” Use your competitive research to better arm your marketing communications and sales messaging for that moment in the customer’s journey when they’re ready to make a decision to stop caring about your competitors and really focus on you.

Competitive research can be a fantastic source of new tactics. Watch how competitors use their websites, social media, and other assets. See which channels they’re choosing to invest in. Observe which customer segments they’re focusing on now. These can all be great sources of new tactical ideas for your own marketing and sales efforts.

The key: differentiate tactics from a strategy. There is a slippery slope here to wholesale copy a competitor’s approach and when you do you’ll find yourself adopting their strategy as well. The problem? Their strategy is predicated on their own strengths and weaknesses, their own brand identity. And yours is different. Yours is unique to you (as no two organizations are the same). And a wholesale strategy copy will backfire quickly as you can’t claim the same identity with the exact same strengths.

So use competitive research to source tactics and then apply your own unique strategy lens to them. Make them yours. Don’t wholesale copy their website, chase their audience segment, or adopt their messaging. Instead, use them as inspiration to further strengthen your own unique brand identity.

Competitive research, done right, is an incredibly powerful tool to validate your brand identity. I highly recommend employing it to strengthen your own efforts and build a brand that is truly remarkable.

If you’re looking for some help with your competitive research we have a free competitor analysis tool that might be a good place to start. And if you want to go deeper sign up for our newsletter, join our next Brand Roundtable Chat, or even give me a call. I’d love to help you any way I can.

If you’ve got a B2B brand – selling your products and services to other businesses – then you know that there are some very unique challenges to marketing your business-to-business brand. A lot of the branding lessons out there are great – and some certainly translate to B2B. But most of those lessons are built on business-to-consumer marketing. These lessons often fail to connect to the B2B world.

I’ve learned a few lessons for B2B brands working with business leaders building and growing remarkable B2B brands leading our creative branding agency. And I want to share some of these lessons today and hopefully help you grow your B2B brand.

Here are three unique challenges to marketing a B2B brand and some ways you can overcome them:

Unlike many B2C brands, the first meaningful interaction a potential customer has with a B2B brand is with a person. Many B2C brands can get all the way from the first ad or marketing message to the first purchase transaction without the customer ever interacting with a human representative of the brand.

Consider how you buy a new drink. You might see an ad on TV and then maybe some sponsored social posts about the product. Then while at the store (or online), you see the product and its packaging, get curious, and put it in your cart to purchase. Even if you deal with a cashier or salesperson, they don’t directly represent the manufacturer. In fact, they probably don’t have any specialized training from the manufacturer to tell you anything more than what’s on the packaging or the Amazon product page. (Having worked retail sales at a big-box electronics store in college, I can tell you the training I got on digital cameras definitely was less than half of the info you can find on a standard Amazon product page these days.)

Now let’s consider a B2B brand – perhaps a manufacturer of industrial machines. It’s highly likely you’re not seeing ads on TV, YouTube or social media for the product. It’s just too narrow a market of potential buyers. Instead, you might discover the brand through a tradeshow, conference, industry publication or direct marketing. You’ll likely have a conversation with a brand rep pretty early in the purchasing process. Perhaps even right there at the tradeshow. And you certainly are going to have even more conversations in the research and final sale phases.

B2B marketing requires a much tighter integration of messaging and the people who directly represent the brand. We’ll take a look at some of the reasons for that later in this article. But the core of those reasons is that B2B marketing involves more human interaction than in the B2C world. These human-to-human interactions happen much earlier in the marketing and sales process than B2C and are much more crucial to the customer experience prior to any kind of transaction.

The relationship with the customer becomes difficult to build if the messaging between ads, marketing collateral, platforms, and the people on the ground is off at all. Trust is threatened and it requires a lot of work for a sales or account rep to catch up. The brand and the people have to all be singing the same song. They should sing with their own personal voice and have the ability to flex to the specific needs of their customers. But all need to be singing the same familiar song.

This is why brand assets like taglines, a Brand Story, and visual guidelines are so, so critical. Without these (and some solid training of how to use and integrate them) representatives of the brand are left without a clear understanding of the story the customer has already been told in other marketing. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard from sales reps who are so frustrated with the marketing of their own brand because the story they’re telling customers is so different from what they’ve been told on the website, in an ad, or piece of collateral.

Getting everything AND everyone working together, singing the same song is so critical to building a remarkable B2B brand.

Yes, you can certainly find outlier B2C brands that also have this challenge – think automotive brands selling cars to married couples. But even then the complexity of decision-making in the marketing and sales process is nothing at all like B2B brands. Many of the B2B brands I work with have as many as 5-6 decision-makers to communicate with.

Consider an ERP software brand. Their customers are manufacturers and large service providers who need a system to tie all of their operations together and give them detailed reporting on nearly every aspect of the business so they can track and improve performance. This system is going to be used daily by production, HR, finance, sales, and even marketing. It’s highly likely that the CEO, COO, and CFO will have a big stake in the final decision to purchase this particular software product. Certainly, the CIO also has a big stake in the game (and will likely be responsible for rolling it out and maintaining it). But it’s unlikely any of these people will be the ones doing initial research on different ERP products, initial demos, or even specking out all the needs. There will be at least another small handful of people involved.

So who does this ERP software brand target with their marketing? The tough answer is probably: all of them. Of course, each of these people will enter into the decision-making process at different points, and not all have the final say. But all of them will play critical roles in either making or informing the final decision. And if just one key person isn’t on board with the decision, the sale could fall through.

For B2B brands, marketing to an entire account is tough. It requires a lot of research, strategy, and different messages and types of assets to key on the particular needs, pain points, and context of each person involved from the customer’s side. It’s certainly complex and requires a different approach than most B2C brands.

One of the most important tools for B2B brands in dealing with this complexity is clear and well-researched buyer personas for each of these decision-making roles in a prospective customer’s business. Identifying their unique contexts, pain points, and goals will deliver huge dividends when creating messaging and going to market. You’ll know how to speak to each of them in a way that resonates with their particular needs AND you’ll be able to identify the right assets to create to get their attention.

Compared to a lot of B2C brands’ marketing and sales cycles, B2B brands’ can feel like an eternity. Weeks, months, and even years are the measuring scale for B2B brands as compared to days or even hours for some B2C brands.

There are a ton of factors that play into the length of marketing and sales cycles for any brand, but for some of the same reasons we’ve already mentioned (like the relationship-first approach and a high number of decision-makers) as well as others (like the budgets, length of the contract, and even complexity of contracts) most B2B brands experience long marketing and sales cycles.

Most B2B products and services just can’t be bought on a whim or negotiated in a single stop at an office. They require multiple people, product demos, various proposals, and contract negotiations, and likely some kind of legal review. And that’s not counting any of the marketing cycles prior to any kind of ‘sales process’.

I remember working with a product brand that was looking to get out of selling directly through retailers and instead sell bulk to distributors. They were transitioning from B2C marketing and sales processes into thinking more B2B. One of the more surprising discoveries: the relationship-building process with the big distributors could take YEARS.

While at a tradeshow they got to talking with one distributor rep about how they could get the attention of more distributors – especially the bigger ones in their industry. This rep’s answer: make sure you show up at this tradeshow at least 5 years in a row. Many distributors would watch brands year-over-year at the tradeshow to see if a brand would keep coming back, grow their booth size, and basically prove they were growing. Only after several years of seeing this would some of the big distributors even approach the brand to consider a deal. (And I thought our sales cycles were long for branding projects. Sheesh!)

So how do you overcome these long relationship-building cycles? Clear storytelling, from the get-go. Be clear about who you’re uniquely positioned to help. Know how your product or service solves their unique pains. And clearly demonstrate how it makes their lives better. Bonus points if you can do that with different kinds of media (articles, ads, ebooks, videos, podcasts) targeted at the different roles of decision-makers involved in the process. Best-case: focus on one or two roles that are the most critical to the sale. And it’s not always the CEO role. It could be the CFO or CIO. But there’s nearly always one or two that if you can really get them bought into your brand and your solution, through a good relationship, all the others will be infinitely easier.

As you can see (and probably already know) B2B marketing is vastly different from B2C. A lot of the surface level is similar, for sure. There are ads and content and websites and logos and messaging. But the nuances are what make all the difference. And if you treat them the same, you’ll find your marketing is that much harder and inefficient.

Get a kickstart for your B2B marketing planning with our FREE Relationship Marketing Worksheet. It will help you strategize your messaging, buyer personas, and campaigns.

And if you want to dig deeper on this topic and connect with some like-minded marketers and business leaders, sign up for our new Brand Roundtable Chats. These are limited-capacity, deep-dive sessions to dig into the brand-building issues and challenges in our various businesses. I’d love to see you at one soon!

Note: Here's the worksheet we use. Download our brand story worksheet for free..

Everyone wants to feel good about the story they tell about themselves — one that will give you a script and make you feel great about what you do and one that you'll be proud to share (instead of nervous). Whether it's an elevator pitch, a job description, text for a proposal, a slideshow, a conversation or the footer of your website here's how to build a brand story that will make sense for you and your brand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56CIVU_i3h0

Great brand stories do actual work. They give your hearer focus. If you can do that, you can take them down a path. And if your path makes sense, you might even use that valuable attention you got (read: earned) from them to offer your solution.

A brand story, like any story, needs tension. So usually there's some kind of problem that exists for your customer or client. The story needs characters and those characters have to make sense to the hearer. And it needs a solution that involves you.

Before we get to the steps, let's make sure we understand the characters. As I mentioned, if the reader doesn’t care about the characters, the plot is irrelevant. To illustrate, have you ever watched a TV show or romantic comedy with a couple that you just know should be together? Maybe they’re alone or with someone who mistreats them, and now they have a chance at love. She’s funny and innocent. He’s clever and heroic. They need each other. "No, you don’t understand: they NEED to be together!"

So you keep watching as chemistry builds. Then the inevitable happens and something goes wrong. A previous lie emerges. Someone gets in the way. A misunderstanding threatens all their future happiness.

And you care.

It’s a fictional couple. Actors. And you know it. But you care anyway. In fact, if you paid for that movie, you actually paid to care about fake people!

That’s tension and it involves you in the story. It’s what you want.

But if you don’t care about the characters — maybe she’s just kinda immature and he’s still a good guy — you’re likely to think he deserves better. Or they’re just uninteresting or unlikeable. In that case, you just don’t really care if they’re together.

So make sure they care about the characters. For a deeper dive, check out this article on why we care about characters.

Who are the characters in your brand story, you might ask? In a RomCom, they’re a would-be couple. But in a brand story, it’s a different kind of story. It’s about a hero, the hero’s journey and you (the guide).

In this story, your hero is your customer and you are the guide, whether you're selling a product or service that helps them build or do something.

Now that your characters are set, let’s talk about the story arc.

Now that you have characters, you need tension, which usually takes the form of an obstacle between where your hero is and where he or she needs to be.

You have to state the problem, capturing their problem in a way that makes sense to them. You want them to understand that you see the problem, putting you on the same side of the table as them.

If you can do this, you’ve conquered much of the sales process. So state the problem the way they would care about it.

Bonus: make it brutally true and clear. This is sometimes called “agitation.” It works by making sure your client continually sees the value. Usually, it describes the suckiness of their situation.

Remind them why the problem is important. Don’t sanitize it. Let it be severe.

Think about a time when you've watched a movie where the hero gets the living hell beat out of him by the bad guy. He just gets destroyed. And just when you think it’s over, it gets worse. Pretty soon, you’re at the point where you’re wondering how he’s even gonna survive. But the closer he comes to death — the more it looks like he could never come back from this — the more you’re into it. And yet, you know it’s possible because it’s that kind of movie.

And now you just have to see how he comes back.

So now you have a character you care about, and you’ve given the story tension and a goal (the implied goal of the comeback).

Great storytellers don’t let up. They have no mercy. Because the farther you fall, the better the comeback.

So your hero’s beaten to a pulp. Now what? How does your arrival change the hero's perspective? How do you change how the hero sees things?

Remember, it’s important that you don’t solve the problem here. You only provide the inspiration — the hint at the actual solution.

As the guide, you don’t change the hero situation (yet), you simply change his point of view. Think of Yoda and Luke, Gandalf and Frodo. Think about any time in the story where a hero was given counsel and hope.

And the guide is invested. Yoda knows Luke has to go out and do it, but he wants Luke to win. He doesn’t just give him a slideshow presentation on the force, wish him good luck and go back to eating swamp food.

No, a great guide — and a great brand — give the hero a feeling of hope and a feeling of your support. You’re behind them, and you matter, so “maybe I can be successful.”

Gandalf was kind of awesome. Yoda was kind of awesome. Obi-Wan was kind of awesome. There are so many guides who’ve gone before us. They've paid their dues. They bring a confidence that gives confidence to this young, developing hero.

And so the hero's perspective shifts when you show up and create that confidence.

So we've talked about your arrival and how you've changed the hero's perspective, so now let's talk about how your hero came out victorious.

For inspiration, think of ways you or your product helps real people. How have you seen this play out in the past? Remember that they’re the ones who overcome. But how did you contribute to their ability to overcome? How did you instill confidence and a small amount of ability?

You have a small role, but you do have a role.

Now we define the bad ending. Why? Because it gives you more backstory to draw from, even if you never mention it to people.

This is what happens when the hero doesn't overcome.

You wrote the good ending a minute ago. The one where they take your help. But what if they don't? What if they don't get your change of mindset which you would otherwise have instilled in them, if they didn't use the product or service, then what happens?

And you can’t just say “they stay the same.” Things get worse if they’re not getting better. So be real with them. Tell them the worst that can happen.

Sure, they ultimately go out of business. But you want to enrich the story and say why they went out of business or how they failed. What was the path? This alternate ending should create tension in your heart and motivate you to help.

Finally, you have all the facts aligned. The information is all there. Now, it's a matter of putting it together, compressing some parts, expanding others, and making it your own. But just remember that a brand story is about how you help your client or customer win; it's a story that's about them. And that's why it's compelling. It's a story where your customer is the main character with the problem, and you are the one helping them out of the problem. You create the tension, and you let your story do the work.

This is how you create consistency in the communication of your brand throughout your organization.

Download the worksheet and get yourself and your team on the same script.

Your brand story touches off a story in the mind of your audience that involves them and sets you apart as the only one they’ll trust to solve their problem. But if that’s true, why are so many stories lacking empathy, focus, values and seriousness? Today, we’ll talk about these things as well as 4 areas your brand story will come up big.

Too many people are caught by surprise without any kind of brand story. Ask them what they do, and they give you a weird and confusing story about what they do with almost no indication of why they do it.

We wrote a post that goes over the creation of a brand story. But before you get started, let’s talk about why you’d want it and how you’ll use it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhqIFa-2HAQ

Great brand stories do actual, real work. They give your hearer focus. If you can do that, you can take them down a path. And if your path makes sense, you might even use that valuable attention you got (read: earned) from them to offer your solution.

A brand story, like any story, needs tension. So usually there’s some kind of problem that exists for your customer or client. The story needs characters and those characters have to make sense to the hearer. And it needs a solution that involves you.

This is how you create consistency in the communication of your brand throughout your organization.

People who lack confidence fail to impress. But it’s really a matter of trust than anything else. Because if you fail to impress, people may still like you. They may even feel sorry for you. But since everyone’s dealing with their own issues, when they need someone to help, they’re looking for someone strong, reliable, focused and dependable.

Your brand story, if delivered confidently, shows others they can trust you. It impresses them with the commitment you show toward good values and a real, actual plan to help others, not because you’re out for cash, but because it’s a way you can make money and help people based on your values.

The funny thing is, when you’re the kind of leader, in the kind of brand, whose values reside not in the opinions of others, but in the fact that you live according to your values, it at the same time doesn’t matter as much what they think, and, on the other hand, makes them more inclined to trust you. This opens the door for more opportunities for you to serve others.

Not because you need them, but because you live out a commitment to help.

Your clarity of goal — your ability to know what you do, how you do it, and how it helps others — captures the imaginations of other people, sometimes even reminding them of why they first started their business.

After all, most people don’t go into business thinking “this is gonna suck, but at least I’ll make some money.” Usually, you have some pretty cool visions of what’s possible. But then you get busy. And work starts to become transactional — a little more about getting the work done and getting paid than about feeling satisfied with your work.

But your brand story feels deeper, because it is. Your brand story is bursting with your “why,” even when you don’t directly talk about your values.

And when people think you’re talking about their problem, and you really understand their problem, it shows that you get it. It also shows that it matters to you. And while lots of people can claim they care, when your concern is anchored in your deeply held values, then you become a real, viable solution to their problems. At that point, who else will they trust as much as they trust you?

There are a few things you do in business that provide amazing leverage. They’re things with low investment, but extremely high long-term value. Your brand story is one of them. Here are a few ways your brand story pays off in the long run.

So you have a product. What makes your funders believe that this is the product and that you’re the one to do it? Because you sorta have to prove both, don’t you?

They’re not going to fund it if it doesn’t work. And they’re not going to fund it if you’re not committed.

There’s value in you doing this. They can’t just buy the idea. They need to know that the one who’s excited about it — the one who thought of it — can also lead the effort.

So whether you’re a manager trying to pitch an initiative or an inventor trying to pitch a product, they want to know there’s a problem the product will solve, and they want to know there’s a person behind it with a desire to fix the problem for people that’s embedded in their values.

Few things are more impressive than a speaker who knows where he or she is going at the beginning of a speech. Do you have a brand story that you can open with? One that you’re proud of? One that convinces your audience, right off the bat, that you’re not going to waste their time.

“Hi, I’m Ron. My company, Smile Co, started when we realized the emotional toll middle school takes on our kids, resulting in depression, sometimes leading to suicide. We help kids dream and grow a plan for their future, reducing depression and setting kids on a path toward growth and fulfillment…”

When you’re clear about your mission, you know the problem you’re solving, and you’re clear on your “why,” people know exactly what you’re about. Those who aren’t interested in that kind of thing will tune out. But those who are interested will be all ears.

Few things are more impressive than a person who knows what he/she is about. So many people aren’t sure what to say to other people at networking events or social gatherings. Even at church on Sunday. How you speak about yourself and your company tells them a lot about you.

What do you care about? How does your mind work? Are you in it for the right reasons?

Unfortunately, when people hear you introduce yourself, they think you mean every word you say. And if you’re unprepared and disorganized, they think you keep a disorganized mind. How much more in a business context.

Your brief and focused brand story will show your well-ordered mind and commitment to values-based service (problems you solve) wherever you go.

Because your brand story contains all the parts of your brand promise — the problem, why it’s a problem, your audience (for whom it’s a problem) and the solution — it can and should be used in all of your communication.

And if you run a content strategy, it can inform your first three-to-six months’ worth of content, as you talk about the different aspects of the customer’s problem, the different effects that can have on them, and the different pitfalls they fall into in looking for solutions.

A brand story continues to reward your marketing long after the initial time investment.

Even in a crowded market, your brand story makes you the clear leader, especially when everyone else is content to remain a commodity, refusing to differentiate themselves and plant a flag in the ground.

Your brand story spearheads all messaging and lets people know, in no uncertain terms, the problem you solve and why. And when they’re constantly hearing you talk about the same thing over and over again, it becomes difficult for them to ignore that you’re probably the foremost expert, the most committed and the most qualified to solve the problem. And for that reason, you become irreplaceable in their minds.

Download the worksheet and get yourself and your team on the same script.

Brand values give you confidence and set you up to know how to move your company forward with conviction — like there’s a spine of steel going through your company. How do they do this? By showing you what you stand for and holding you accountable to it. And with the right process and commitment, you’re not only defining values, but also carrying them out, both through your actions and your employees’.

But how do you get there? Before we start, we have a worksheet that you can download here. It contains a four-stage guided process. This is the exact same worksheet that we use to direct our paid workshops.

First the rules. These rules help you avoid some common misconceptions that could both weaken your defined values and cause you more work than you need. And that’s not efficient.

These things are all good. But these are the outcomes. Without your special, secret sauce, all those measures of success will be more difficult to attain.

Those values fail to differentiate you. Everyone’s likely to claim those values. Heck, most companies even exhibit those values consistently.

Determination, for instance, would be a false value if you had a really weak work ethic. It would raise serious questions within the company and outside of the company. And you don’t want confusion, because confusion doesn’t lead to confidence.

It’s pretty straightforward, but make sure you can think of examples of how you exhibit values. If you can’t, then maybe you should seriously question those values.

The first section consists of framing questions. If you can answer these questions in sufficient detail, then you wouldn’t really need to do the rest of this workshop. But for most of us, these questions are here to help you understand the purpose of all the following questions and show you where you are right now.

What’s your brand’s passion? What do you care about? What gets your brand out of bed in the morning (if it were a person)?

What does your brand fight for? What evil is it fighting? What good is it fighting for?

These questions can help frame and show you where you’re at right now and then help frame everything that follows.

The first big exercise is all about elimination. You go through a sample list of values and remove them until you get to 20-25.

If you’re using our worksheet, you’ll find almost 4 pages of values listed.

In this step, you’ll further reduce and organize until you’re down to three to five values. Here’s how you do that.

Once you’re done with that, you should have three to five values for your company. And here’s how you do it. You don’t just look up the definition, but you write down what it means to you.

So if someone were to say authenticity, you wouldn’t define it with “we are authentic.” Instead, you would say something like “We wear our heart on our sleeves.”

“Show, don’t tell.” Here’s a rule in writing that applies here. Stronger verbs usually make a more impactful statement. It avoids modifiers (adverbs and adjectives) and uses actions instead. You’ll notice that the stronger definition uses a strong verb, not “We are authentic,” but “We wear our hearts on our sleeves.”

Pro-tip: If you’re struggling with how to define your values using strong verbs, list what you do in your normal conversations, interactions, processes and operations that fulfill that value.

That’s the process. Simple, right? But the hard part is coming. I once heard that a dead fish can go with the flow, but it takes a live fish to swim upstream. If your values give you a level of boldness, you will be tested. The question is, are you building a company that’s meant to grow and thrive through a challenge, or are you trying to play it safe? Because your stated values will test that theory.

We’re not doing this to make a list of touchy-feely, nice-sounding words that we can put on a wall and show shareholders or customers. We’re developing a list of brand values that are close to our hearts that reflect the reason we have to wake up in the morning and to fight the good fight.

When we define and own our values, we can train new employees and strengthen existing employees. We’ll all have a rubric from which to make decisions in the everyday workings of our business. And if we do this consistently, we will find it easier to do in more areas of our business, until we have such a strong brand that people can predict the kinds of things we would and wouldn’t do because of our consistency.

Download the free worksheet here. And then if you need help, let us know.