Know the real you... and never compromise

It's tempting to try to please everyone, especially when you're just starting out.

In an effort to build a customer base, you talk yourself up and say "Yes we can!"... to everything. When a potential customer asks what you do, you rattle off a long list of activities that you can do, including some you may never have tried, but might if someone asked.

While it may work for some, the problem with this approach is that instead of building a strong brand, you risk mixing together a whole lot of ingredients and ending up with a big bowl of beige.

How will anyone know who you are (or who your business is), if you don't? How can you build a brand without knowing the one single thing that will make you stand out from the crowd?

You can spend a lot of money with an agency defining your unique selling proposition, elevator pitch, positioning statement and even coming up with catchy slogans and taglines... and if you've got the money I strongly recommend you go through this process. But if a few days in a swanky advertising agency meeting room (or 'creative space' as some would prefer to call it) is not an option right now, then start off by asking these questions:

• Out of all the things my business can do, what things do we do best?
• Out of those things, what do we do better than any of our competitors?

And now that you've picked that thing... why the hell would anyone care?

Stop thinking about products and services, and start thinking about problems

"Gee, that sounds negative," I sense you thinking... but bear with me. The point of trying to build a brand is to provide potential customers with an emotional connection to whatever it is you do. What gets people emotional? Problems.

So now ask; why would someone use my product or service?

Just say, for example, you run a salad bar in a food court.
Why would somebody buy a salad? Because they want a healthy meal.

Then start laddering:
Why would they want a healthy meal? Because they want a healthy diet.
Why would they want a healthy diet? To look good and feel great.

So suddenly you're no longer selling salad. You're selling aspirations: good looks, fitness, energy!
Your customers may be a niche group, but they'll never go anywhere else in the food court.

If you can find one specific problem that you can solve better than anyone else, you're in business.

Know what you stand for and never ever compromise

Once your customers have an emotional connection to your brand, do not disappoint them.

Breaking a customer's heart is the worst thing you can do for your business.

It's like a teacher making spelling mistakes on a student's report card. It's like Jamie Oliver bringing home McDonalds for dinner. It's like Tiger Woods cheating on his wife (oh wait, that one really happened -- and look what it did to his brand!).

Never let a customer lose trust in you. Never stop solving their specific problem.

Back to our salad bar example. Just because one bloke comes up to the counter and says "This would taste better deep-fried," doesn't mean you should start selling buckets of greasy, unidentifiable chicken pieces.

The customer is not always right, especially not if they are going to jeopardise your brand.

Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should

While sifting through a mountain of junk mail the other day, something caught my eye: a flyer for a local business that was an Indian restaurant-slash-'homewares' supplier. The top of the page pictured a bowl of curry. The bottom of the page had a number of porcelain toilet suites on special. I laughed out loud. I don't think I'll be a customer there.

Diversification is a popular risk-management strategy. It can be scary to put all your eggs in one basket. Diversification is fine from a business perspective, perhaps, but don't mess up your brand.

Customers are a simple lot. I don't mean that disparagingly. What I mean is that an emotional decision is made faster than a rational one. Having a strong brand with an emotional connection helps customers make good decisions (or in the very least makes them feel like they've made a good decision). Complicating things just turns them off. Customers have better ways to spend their time than to try to understand your business. They want to see that you understand them. Don't waste their time.

If you need to diversify, do it secretly. If you're a salad bar owner who wants to start selling fried chicken, then buy a different shop in the food court. If you run an Indian restaurant and you want to branch out into plumbing supplies, then for goodness' sake, print a separate flyer.