Surprisingly, few online retailers and business owners comprehend some fundamentals of business. Online there are even fewer aspects of your business model that are distinct competitive advantages. In fact, the one you should pay attention to and develop, because it’s practically the only one, is your brand.
Yet, when it comes to branding, most businesses, regardless of size, don’t pay too much attention to brand. They hire someone to do their ‘logo’ and assume that’s the brand.
Brand is the story about your product/service/company. If you’re story is enticing enough, you’ll have a more memorable brand, not because of the story and the service, but because of the new evangelists (customers turned evangelists) that hype your product.
Seth Godin highlights the idea brand is perhaps the most important key to your business.
What do you have to do so your brand reaches the point where,
“Do they trust me enough to believe my promises?”
Quite simply, the reasons why most brands aren’t memorable are:
a) they weren’t designed to be memorable (again, it’s just a logo to the business),
b) most businesses don’t care to invest the time required to develop their brand.
It seems counterintuitive to put energy into something you can’t see immediate gains from (usually it takes years). Because of that, most ignore it entirely, or just adopt the cheapest alternative. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve explained to prospective clients they need to spend more time developing their brand if they want to become established players in their industry.
Therein lies your competitive advantage. Spend the time developing a concrete brand and you have the key to exceed competitors over the long haul.