20 Points to Focus Your Thinking

1. We expect technology to assist us to complete tasks e.g. email, CRM, coffee machines. Is your website helping customers to complete tasks?
2. If you choose a risqué name, are you prepared to live up to it?
3. Stakeholders will scrutinise names within the context of a naming exercise. Outside of that context, nobody cares. Think of your audience!
4. Every business has a brand. The question; is it helping you grow? By 1% a day it's either pushing you forward or dragging you backward
5. The biggest killer of new brands is where the audience doesn’t understand what's being sold. - sell to your market, not your ego
6. Does a name need clear meaning in itself? No, it’s better to attach meaning to a name. Connotations are hard to remove
7. We absorb more information in 1 day than what past generations did in a lifetime. Is your message lost or clearly understood?
8. To a prospect that hasn’t yet transacted with you, a brand is a promise of what to expect. Avoid contradictions
9. You can’t be all things to all people.  A brand (should) quickly let people know who you are and what you stand for
10. Have you ever asked yourself ‘what if I reduced my marketing materials by 50%?’ could I still make the same number of sales? Avoid clutter
11. A name must play to the ego of your audience. It may look good on the boardroom whiteboard, but will it help you to achieve long term goals?
12. Want to develop a compelling message? Start from the point that ‘No-One Cares’ -it’ll focus you to uncover your true value and avoid fluff
13. People are your brand's most important asset. If they have no direction, neither will your brand
14. Your target audience isn't interested how you got to this point. Sell The Outcome, Not The Process
15. Naming competitions provide useful data but they seldom provide usable outcomes. Use them to see the values people associate with you
16. Survival in business is staying in step with your market, to innovate and excel is to be one step ahead
17. Web Stats: Use them like you would a rear view mirror, study them, but always focus and anticipate what's ahead
18. Economic Buyers need to feel safe and smart, Technical Buyers want info & specs. Is your brand strategy catering for both?
19. Your offering may be revolutionary, but the way people purchase is not likely to change just for you. Work from INSIDE the box
    
    And one that I think is especially important when competition is tight:
20. Failure is caused not by what’s being sold, but how it’s being sold.  In business, perception is reality

hamish@imagesubstation.com

© Hamish Chadwick, Image Substation 2010