As a business owner or organizational leader, understanding your target market, market niche and position within that market is essential to growth. Developing a brand and branding message drives the consistency you need for the market to recognize you and then work with you. It creates the promise. So then you are done – right? No! In fact, if you stop there, we can say with certainty that your chance for long-term success and competitive dominance is dim. Why? Because unless you consistently and exceptionally deliver on that promise, you have set your business up for a fall.

Once you identify your market (customer and audience) and the message (brand expression) you want to send into the market, it’s time to deliver. And it is your company or organizational culture that creates and ensures the delivery. Culture is “how work is done around here”. And it enables delivery on your promise.

Think of it like a triangle. On top you have the market, where you are “pointing” your efforts. The other two bottom corners that establish your base are culture and branding. Without a strong base it is impossible to deliver consistent and high quality products and services to your market.

Culture is not the soft stuff that many believe it is. It drives how decisions are made, how responsibility is assumed, your behavior in front of customers and within your group, the standards and consistency with which you deliver your product or service

While brand sets the promise, culture drives your ability to deliver on that promise. One of the worst things you can do as a business is to set a promise and not deliver on it. It’s the empty words we are all too familiar with. Such as “your call is very important to us – please stay on the line and your call will be answered by our next available agent”. Ten minutes later the call that was so important to them may or may not yet be answered. We are certain, that you can generously add to this example.

Identifying your market and building a strong base (culture and brand) to deliver to that market is a competitive differentiator. Why, because many of your competitors (and would be competitors) will not take the time to do this. Believe us when we say your clients and customers will notice and will reward your efforts.

Copyright 2011 Kubica and LaForest

This entry was posted on Monday, February 7th, 2011 at 5:50 am and is filed under Brand Building, Business Growth & Entreprenurial Strategy, Culture Building: Creating a Talent Gravity Organization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.