MBA2419 What is Branding Anyway and How to Do It Right

Summary

The $100 MBA Show - Episode MBA2419: "What is Branding Anyway and How to Do It Right"

Host: Omar Zenhom
Release Date: January 22, 2024

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Introduction

In episode MBA2419 of The $100 MBA Show, host Omar Zenhom delves deep into the concept of branding, demystifying its meaning and providing actionable strategies for businesses to establish a strong and consistent brand identity. Drawing from over two decades of entrepreneurial experience, Omar offers insights that are both practical and essential for anyone looking to build or refine their brand.

Part One: Understanding What Branding Really Is

Defining Branding
Omar begins by addressing the common confusion surrounding the term "branding." He clarifies that branding is often misconstrued as merely marketing, sales, or advertising. In reality, branding encompasses all aspects of how a business is perceived.

“The simplest way to describe branding is what you are known for, what people say about you when you're not around. So in other words, it's like your personality, the business’s personality.”
— Omar Zenhom [03:15]

Brand as a Business Personality
Using relatable analogies, Omar explains that just as individuals have personalities, businesses possess brands that are reflections of their values and actions. He cites well-known brands to illustrate his point:

• Apple: Known for intuitive, beautifully designed, premium-quality products.
• Virgin: Recognized for being fun, bold, and risk-taking.
• Nike: Associated with motivation, movement, and winning.

These brands have deliberately cultivated their identities, ensuring consistent messaging that reinforces their core values.

“These are what they’re known for. That’s their brand. That didn't happen by accident. They actually design the messages that they want to put out there so that you can think of them that way.”
— Omar Zenhom [07:45]

Brand Integration Across Business Functions
Omar emphasizes that branding is not confined to external marketing efforts but is ingrained in every facet of the business:

• Marketing: The look and language of advertisements reflect the brand.
• Sales: The approach and interaction with customers embody the brand’s personality.
• Product Development: The quality and features of products align with brand promises.
• Customer Experience: Processes like returns and customer service reinforce the brand.

“Brand is baked into every part of the business. It’s how the customer experiences you at any point in time.”
— Omar Zenhom [08:30]

Part Two: How to Do Branding Right

Establishing Core Values
To build a strong brand, Omar advises entrepreneurs to identify and commit to three core values that define what they want their brand to stand for. This focused approach ensures clarity and consistency.

“Choose three values, three things you want to be known for. This becomes your rule book.”
— Omar Zenhom [10:00]

Practical Exercise: Defining Your Brand Values

1. Identify Three Core Values: Determine what you want your brand to represent. For example, a YouTuber might choose to be actionable, honest, and fun.
2. Implement Consistently: Ensure every piece of content, marketing material, and customer interaction reflects these values.
3. Create an Anti-List: Define three things your brand is not about to further clarify your identity. For instance, if fun is a core value, your brand might explicitly state it's not about being boring.

“If you’re all about everything, then you’re really about nothing. Choose these values carefully.”
— Omar Zenhom [12:15]

Maintaining Consistency
Omar underscores the importance of consistency in branding. Repetition of core values across all channels helps embed the brand in the audience's minds.

“Here is the secret of branding, and it’s one word: consistency. You have to continue to put out the same message over and over and over.”
— Omar Zenhom [14:00]

Utilizing Branding Experts and Guidelines

As businesses grow, Omar recommends formalizing the brand through professional help:

• Hire Branding Experts: Engage graphic designers or branding consultants to create visual elements like logos and brand guidelines.
• Develop a Brand Guideline: This document serves as a rule book for all branding activities, ensuring uniformity across different platforms and team members.

“Once you have these words, you may want to hire a branding expert... create branding materials for you... a guide to follow.”
— Omar Zenhom [15:30]

Key Strategies for Effective Branding

1. Define Clear, Focused Values: Limit core values to three to maintain focus and prevent dilution.
2. Consistent Messaging: Reiterate brand values across all marketing channels to build recognition.
3. Visual Cohesion: Develop a consistent visual identity through logos, colors, and design elements.
4. Customer Experience: Ensure every interaction a customer has with your business reflects your brand’s personality.
5. Documenting Guidelines: Create comprehensive brand guidelines to maintain consistency, especially as the team expands.

Conclusion and Actionable Insights

Omar wraps up the episode by encouraging listeners to actively observe and analyze brands they admire, reverse engineering their strategies to apply similar principles to their own businesses.

“Just figure out why you feel this way so that you can start doing things to trigger feelings in your customers to reinforce your brand.”
— Omar Zenhom [18:50]

Action Steps:

1. Analyze Successful Brands: Note what makes them appealing and how they communicate their values.
2. Define and Document Your Own Brand: Use the framework provided to establish a clear and consistent brand identity.
3. Implement and Reflect: Continuously apply your brand values in all business activities and assess their effectiveness.

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Final Thoughts

This episode of The $100 MBA Show offers a comprehensive guide to understanding and implementing effective branding. Omar Zenhom breaks down complex concepts into manageable steps, emphasizing the importance of clarity, consistency, and strategic implementation. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur or looking to refine an existing brand, the insights shared provide a solid foundation for building a memorable and impactful brand.

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Learn More: For additional resources and business lessons, visit The $100 MBA Show.

Transcript

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[Omar Zenhom]

Heyo. Welcome to the $100 MBA Show. Business lessons you can count on. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenholm. And in today's lesson you will learn what is branding anyway and how to do it right. Branding is such a buzzword. What does it mean? Is it marketing? Is it sales? Is it advertising? You hear people always saying you gotta be, always be branding, have a strong brand. But what does that mean practically? What do you do to do this? I find that this is a very gray area in business. A lot of people talk about this in detail, in practical terms. Well, no more. I'm going to talk about it in today's lesson. I'm going to define what really is branding in day to day terms. How to wrap your head around it and then how to make sure you do have a strong brand. How do you stay consistent and be known for something and not be ignored? Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. So today's lesson is going to be two big parts. Part one is dissecting what branding really is. And then part two is how to do it right. The simplest way to describe branding is what you are known for, what people say about you when you're not around. So in other words, it's like your personality, the business's personality. So let's say I asked you to describe your best friend. You might say things like, oh, they're funny, they're generous, they're fun. That's their brand, regardless if they recognize it or not. And that's the thing about branding. We all have brands. All our businesses have brands. Great brands are intentional though. They know what they stand for. And they reinforce these statements, reinforce these values over and over. People are going to say something, they're going to scribe you in a certain way and that becomes your brand. So for example, if you wanted to describe a famous brand like Apple, you might say things like intuitive, beautiful design, a premium product quality. These are the things they're known for. That's their brand. Virgin. We talked about Virgin Voyages on a business breakdown episode on this podcast. But Virgin's known for being fun, bold, risk taking, taking on, you know, the Goliath in the industry, Nike. Their motto is just do it right. So they're all about motivation, about movement, about everybody could be an athlete, they're about winning, right? This is what Nike is known for. This is how people describe the Nike and that's their brand. Now that didn't happen by accident. They actually design the messages that they want to put out there so that you can think of them that way. All the great brands do this and I'm going to show you how you can do the same in your business. When we get to part two, where we talk about how to do this, how to do branding, right? So where does branding fit in when it comes to advertising, marketing, sales, all that branding is baked in to anything you put out there in the world publicly. It's the how. Meaning, let's say you're going to do a marketing activity, you're going to put together a Facebook ad. Let's say, for example, this is part of marketing. How you do that marketing, how the ad looks, how the ad reads is the brand. Okay? How you implement that piece of marketing is the brand. That's how it's baked in. And brand is baked into every part of the business. It's baked into the product that you create. It's baked into the sales cycle that you have with the customer. It's how you do everything that's your brand. It's essentially the experience the customer has with you at any point in time, whether they're learning about you for the first time or they're consuming maybe something free like a podcast episode like this, or they're buying something and they're actually consuming a product that they bought, even when they're returning the product. Let's say, for example, you bought a T shirt from a website and you go through the return process. That is how they do the return. You're gonna experience that. That's part of the brand. So how anything is done in a business is the brand. This is why if you want a strong brand, you have to be Int you have to be paying attention to everything you do and don't do, because this will form the opinion of the customer or the audience member that's interacting with you and will form an opinion on identity. And that will become your brand. This is what you're going to be known for. So it's best for you to take control and say, hey, this is what I want to be known for. This is what my brand is. And you infuse those things into your activities, whatever it is, marketing, sales, the product itself. And that's where we get into how to do branding. Right, so just to recap, part one, branding is basically what people say about you. It's how they describe you, and it's an activity that you have to do in every part of your business. It's how you do anything, just like a personality of a person. If somebody's funny, then they're gonna infuse humor in every situation. How they enjoy a meal, how they go on a trip, even dealing with a conflict, they'll break it with humor. That's a funny person. So it's how you do everything. All right, so how do you do this in practical terms? How do you actually have a strong brand? I've spoken to a lot of brand experts, and it really boils down to values. It boils down to what do you want to be known for? And the easiest exercise you can do to start out with so you can have a strong brand is to choose three values, three things you want to be known for. Now, I gave some examples earlier with Apple and Virgin and Nike. But now it's time for you to define what you want to be about. This is the first step. Writing three words, three phrases that you want to be about, what your values are. So, for example, let's say you're a YouTuber and you're putting out content. Maybe the three things you want to be known for is that you are actionable. Like you teach actionable advice. You're honest and transparent, so you share your own experiences. And maybe your third aspect is fun. You like to have fun. So you have three things that describe you. This is great because this becomes your rule book. Everything you do, every single video you publish on YouTube, in this situation or any kind of marketing or any kind of interview or any kind of campaign you do or email you send has to incorporate one or more of these things. So all three of them, or two of them, or one of them. The point here is that this becomes what you're about, and you have to reinforce this over and over in every way you communicate. That's how you build a strong brand. And it's not a million things, it's just three things. That's the point is if you're about everything, then you're really about nothing. Okay? So you want to choose these values, these descriptors, carefully because this is what you're going to be repeating over and over in different ways. This is what you're going to be displaying and putting in front of people in all your activities. And this becomes basically your rule book. Anytime you produce any content for any reason, you're gonna be looking at these three things. Maybe you'll have a post it note on your desk that says, this is what I'm all about. I have to incorporate these things into my brand, into everything I do. And this is how people get to know you and get to know your brand. And this is how you become a memorable brand because you repeat it over and over in every Instagram post and every video and every tweet, in every sales letter, in every email. The point here is that you get to be known for this. Now, if you want to take this a step further, you also may want to create A list of 3 things you are not. Basically, this is like your anti list, your anti. This is what we're not about. For example, the people over at 37signals, they create software like Basecamp and Hey.com, which is email. They also talk about what they're not saying. Like we don't overcharge you like the other software companies, they have some enemies, right? They have the anti whatever they are. And this reinforces the other values we talked about, the positive values we talked about. In a way, these can become the opposite of what you stand for. So if you're all about fun, then you don't do boring. And this allows you to have more content to work with when you're putting out this message.

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[Omar Zenhom]

Here is the secret of branding, and it's one word consistency. You have to be consistent. You have to continue to put out the same message over and over and over. And most people don't do this because they feel like it's boring. They're hurt already. No, you have new audience members and people have to hear things over and over in order for it to stick. You gotta be consistent. You can't vie away from your brand, otherwise people get confused, you get ignored. You don't get remembered because they're not known for anything. So you gotta be consistent. So it's important for you to, you know, choose those values and go ahead and incorporate them. Every time you communicate, every time you do anything, it becomes the how you do anything. Now, once you have these words to help you, you may want to hire a branding expert, a graphic designer, you know, somebody that creates logos and branding. And you can find plenty of people on sites like Upwork.com to help you with this. But you can give them, this is what I'm all about, and then they can create branding materials for you, whether you need a logo or a fresh logo or you need some branding guidelines so that you have a rule book for you and your team, or even might be some branded templates for your posts on Instagram, LinkedIn, whatever. The point here is, is that you need some guardrails. And a guideline created by a visual artist can help you and help your team. And you could just say, hey, we just follow this guideline for everything we do, regardless if they're a team member or you're hiring a freelancer outside the company. The point here is, is that you have a rule book and formalizing it in an actual guide is really useful. And a lot of people, you know, they take this for granted, but it's something that you may want to invest in after you have the ball rolling in your business and your business is growing and you know you're sustainable, it's a good investment to do. It's only like a few hundred dollars, really. You can get this done pretty inexpensively and get some decent work out of it, and then you have a guide to follow. Well, there you have it. That wraps up today's lesson. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. Don't forget to hit Follow on your favorite podcast app. Whether you use Spotify or Apple Podcasts, follow the show so you get our next episode automatically and get access to over 2,400 episodes in our archives. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Whenever you are a consumer and you are enjoying a great brand, the next time you're at a restaurant that you enjoy, next time you're on an airline that you admire or think is cool, take some notes on your phone and ask yourself, what do I like about this brand? Why do I think about this brand in this way? What have they done to influence me and my opinion of them? Reverse engineer it so that you can implement some of the same ideas in your business. Not the same brand, but the same ideas of how to come about it. So for example, you might be at a restaurant and it's kind of fun and it's tapas and you feel like this place is kind of cool and fun and I want to have a brand like this. Well, what about it is making you think it's fun and cool? Well, you might look at the menu and see, oh, it's got a fun font and there's some squigglies and some confetti everywhere. Just make some notes. You don't have to do that. But the point is that just figure out why do you feel this way so that you can start doing things to trigger feelings in your customers to reinforce your brand. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in Wednesday's episode Q& A. Wednesday I'll see you then. Take care.

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