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Ahead of their Business AM seminar on 1st February, Stockport accountants Hallidays and Stuart Bradley (pictured), founder of creative problem solving consultancy, Dos Dedos, share how branding and marketing are key to helping your business grow.
If you’re reading this then you want your business to grow, and who doesn’t? But you need to really know who you are first. And then you need to decide what that growth really looks like. Do you want to be the biggest or the best? And if so why? Will you be scaling success or just scaling stress?
Because if you don’t know who you and your business are, you’ll end up scaling something you don’t like or enjoy. That’s why I set-up Dos Dedos as a business growth, mentoring, and non-executive director service…to ensure you can scale success not stress.
The 4 key parts of the process
But if you want to grow your business, let’s return to my first point…you need to know who you are! This is where this eighth step in the BAM series will help. It follows the initial steps that Dos Dedos prescribes to achieve tangible scale, and happiness for you. The four key parts of the Dos Dedos process are…
- Honesty
- Peace
- Clarity
- Victory
The first step of ‘Honesty’ applies to every stage of this BAM session. But particularly the first two stages, this is because we’re going to be tackling your reputation and values. These are two areas that are traditionally ticklish areas to address honestly. Many business owners are in the dark about their actual reputation; constant team and customer surveys are an essential way to tackle this. And when it comes to values, the ones that founders started with may have evolved or been lost through time, a changing business landscape, or team structure.
Understanding your brand
The importance of understanding your actual reputation is a vital starting point. It is worth remembering that your reputation is your brand. Which means your brand is what people think and say about your business. Which is distinctly different from your branding, because branding is your logo, colours, typeface, and all the visual elements you surround your business with.
This idea of reputation, visual identity and inherited brand was defined in a brilliant simple way to me when I was reading to my little boy [He isn’t very little any more, and he doesn’t let me read to him! But that’s by the by.]
The book is ‘Look Out! It’s the Wolf!’ by Emile Jadoul. The story focuses on a group of cuddly woodland animals who all seek shelter in Mr Deer’s house because “The Wolf is coming!” One by one Rabbit, Pig, Bear all find safety with Mr Deer and all keep watch for the wolf who is steadily and ominously approaching. Finally, the Wolf gets to the house…and guess what happens? That’s right, the animals had planned a surprise birthday party for him!
The reason I love this story so much is that it explains reputation, visual identity and inherited brand in a way that infants and adults understand. The inherited brand of the wolf is that of a baddy. A menace. A carnivore. A predator. An opportunist. And we all understand that immediately. The writer doesn’t have to say he is a baddy. It is just accepted immediately, which is why the ending is so surprisingly, charmingly wonderful.
Our natural programming means we agree with the assumption that the cuddly woodland animals are in danger, and that the Wolf is the embodiment of that danger. What this means to your business, is that you need to understand what assumptions people make about your business. For example, are all builders going to take your money and not finish the project? Are all IT companies going to blind you with tech science? Are all mechanics doing work on your car that doesn’t need doing? What I’m asking is this, “Is your company’s brand damaged by association with poor practice in your industry, previous owners, or a company with a similar name?” You need to understand these things before you begin your marketing, otherwise you could be building your metaphorical house on the sand.
Read more on the Hallidays website
Hallidays Business AM
The Business AM session on ‘Growth through Marketing’, will help you understand the questions you need to ask to understand your brand and reputation now, what you can do to affect it, how your values are essential to this process and how the right marketing can reach the right people at the right time to help you achieve your growth plans.