The Key to Brand Recognition

By Lisa Terry
Everyone knows it’s important to market their business. But what about branding? As the IT marketplace shifts to one based on services rather than product margins, it’s important for solution providers to emphasize their own brand over their software and hardware partners. VSR talks to a branding expert Jonathan Fisher, chairman and COO of BrandExtract, about how technology companies can build and sustain their brands.

What is branding?

A brand is a person’s perception of a product, service, experience, or organization.

The marketplace has something they want or need, and you have a product or service you want or need to provide. The art of branding is to make those overlap as much as possible. The greater you can align the perception with what the market truly needs, the more compelling. When they are aligned you build loyalty.

Why is it important for solution providers to create a brand for themselves?

Solution providers need to differentiate themselves in the market and understand that the brand has to be unique and be aligned with needs. With a strong brand you can get premium pricing, accelerate demand, protect your territory, shorten the sales cycle, and create barriers to entry. Psychological tests have proven that people are hard-wired to prefer a known brand regardless of the way it performs.

A brand is an asset; we’ve seen companies being bought for an additional multiplier due to the strength of the brand.

How should solution providers balance their own brands with their association with big IT brands?

Big brands in today’s market are becoming more commoditized. Particularly with hardware, other solution providers can sell the same product. Therefore, the solution provider has to build a value proposition around the big brand—a way to enhance it and show that you’re not just a pair of hands delivering it to them.

With software, people are looking for the underlying technology to be secure. The power of the big brand is that it provides that feeling of security. But it’s not enough to have that core technology. You’ve still got to provide the service to back it up, show how much faster or more efficient you are in delivering it, for example, so it starts to matter in the decision process.

Solution provider business models are changing quickly. How can you create a brand that stays consistent even as the business evolves?

You have to go back to the question of what the marketplace truly needs and wants. Is it software you’re selling, or is it assurance, clarity and competence you’re selling? We have one client with decision modeling software, but are they selling software or the confidence that the decision-making is the best it can be? It’s hard to compete with features and functions—they don’t differentiate you for more than a few months. You’ve got to dig down into your true value proposition.

What’s the first step?

You should start with an assessment of your brand in the market, both quantitative and qualitative. You need to interview existing customers and prospects on their current view of the brand, and do a gap assessment. You need a mechanism for accepting feedback—surveys, calls, a benchmarking study.

That can be outsourced or done in house, but sometimes it’s easier to work with an outside firm than do this exercise internally, because outside professionals are objective; they’re not arguing for their jobs, or the politics of the organizations. They’re not focused on historical failures. They don’t have preconceived notions. Clients may not tell you what they really want to, because they want to be non-confrontational. An outside party allows an unbiased view. In 10 minutes I can uncover things a company has never heard before. I have seen organizations be successful doing it on their own, but it’s an advantage to use an outside firm.

How can you sustain the brand over time?

It’s not one and done. Brands are constantly evolving; the marketplace will force your brand in a direction. You can’t keep the same message; it’s got to continuously shift. The secret to making it sustainable is to honestly focus and pilot and perfect before you move on, not to put more things in the plan than you can actively handle.
   
What are some common branding mistakes?

One is not doing an assessment; assuming you have the correct answer: I’ve always sold this way, therefore this must be successful.

Two is not looking at the competition, not doing external research to the depth it needs to be done. You don’t want to come out with a great new tagline and then receive a cease-and-desist order from the solution provider down the street.
Three is thinking there is going to be some silver bullet, that any one tactic, channel, or method is capable of managing and building the brand. It truly requires integrated strategies.

Four is thinking branding is just a logo or a tagline or a brochure or website. Brand is perception—how you answer the phone, what your office looks like and what your reps do in client offices.