The Importance of Your Brand

When a patient thinks of you, what do they feel? What kind of emotional response comes over them?

What about when a regular consumer thinks of you? Someone who isn't your patient...what do they think of you? What kind of response are they feeling?

Are they?

When you establish yourself in your community, and begin marketing your practice and chiropractic to those people, there are a few truths you should keep in mind regarding how you are branding:

• Your brand is your promise. You are promoting who you are, what you're about, what you stand for, and the unique products and services you are delivering. How you show up in your community speaks volumes about your brand. From being active in community events to just how you look in public establishes your brand image. Did you know that 65% of the people in your community will make their judgment of you just on your appearance. Without ever meeting you. That's part of your brand.
• You build that brand by living up to that promise. Every single time someone in your community comes into contact with you, you need to deliver on that brand promise. Whether its meeting someone in the grocery store, your advertising campaign, billings, email communications...every touchpoint someone has with you, you must deliver on your promise to enhance your brand.
• You strengthen your brand through integrity. By keeping your promise. If you don't...if you falter and let things slide or get misaligned with your promise, your practice will suffer. You are essentially breaking your promise.

This takes focus, determination, attention, money and persistence. But the payoffs of establishing, building and strengthening your brand are huge.

Just ask Coca-Cola, Apple, and Intel...

Brands make selling easier, build equity for your business, unlock profitability, and build name awareness. When someone in your community asks, "is there a good Chiropractor in town?" who in your community is on the top of the list in the response? Is there anyone?

Time to start building your brand bigger!

Logotypes...Establishing Your Brand Image

What image do you present to your community? Is it one that sticks in their mind? Something that is easily recognizable, that can be identified and associated with your business? An image that conjures an emotional response in their minds, whether they've been to your practice or not?

Here's a quiz. See if you can recognize these logos and associate them with their company. It's not hard, but I also want you to think about what emotion this draws out of you...











I bet you even recognize a color as a logo, one that certainly stirs strong emotion...










Your logo is a big piece of your business identity...it helps establish who you are.

Here's some standard hints on what to do to pick a logo that will work:

1. Horizontal is the rule - ideal sizes are 2.25 units horizontal and 1 unit vertical. Why? Your potential customers are seeing it out of their eyes, which are mounted in your head on the horizontal plane. It should be the same shape as a windshield. Vertical logotypes are too difficult to read.
   
2. Must have a legible typeface - if words are what communicate the power of the brand, the typeface used enhances or hinders that power.
3. Who are you trying to attract? - use fonts appropriately. Sans serif typefaces are modern, serif typefaces are old-fashioned, bold connotes masculinity, and light typefaces look feminine.
4. Hire someone to design it for you - you are a master at adjusting and communicating, not in design (most likely!). Meet with a branding strategist to establish your brand properly. They will go through a detailed interview with you to ascertain your vision and then magically will identify several images to create it for you.

Maybe it's time you updated your logo. Is the one you're using now outdated? Is it aligned with the vision you have established?

If so, use these strategies to help your company be more identifiable.

Enjoy!!

Advertising vs. Publicity

Which form of marketing is best to create awareness for your brand? Advertising or publicity?

You may be asking...there's a difference?

Big difference...one that could make your business explode with committed followers excited to build it for you.

Simplified, advertising is a form of mass communication efforts designed to create awareness for your product or service in an effort to convince the consumer to purchase said product or service. It says "this is what we do and here's how it will benefit your life" all in 30 seconds on TV/radio or less as you're paging through a magazine. In a sense, it's throwing your service out there to as many people as possible and hoping there's some stickiness to it. In my opinion, a rather outside-in approach...fairly random, usually very expensive with returns that are hit or miss.

Publicity, on the other hand, is usually more focused, more inside out...targeted messages that are usually inexpensive, stickier and are farther reaching in establishing your brand identity. Publicity usually shows up as TV news interviews, op-ed pieces in the newspaper, articles done on your business for magazines and newspapers, testimonials given on your facebook, website, in public gatherings, in house and external presentations, etc.

Big businesses have been built by focusing almost exclusively on publicity over advertising. Starbucks, especially during its massive phase of growth, spent very little on advertising (only about $10M over 10 years) and The Body Shop, started by Anita Roddick, who spent years criss-crossing the country, promoting her natural products through TV interviews and newspaper articles. Wal-Mart and Sam's Club devote very little of their expenses to advertising, yet may be the first company to reach over a trillion dollars in revenues.

To me, publicity is more of a call to action, it's the story behind the service you're providing. It establishes you as the leader of a revolution in health. It's intriguing, and if done right, downright captivating.

And who has a better story for humanity than we do?

Go out and tell it.

Laws of Branding...Expansion

I recently read The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding by Al Ries...phenomenal book that I highly recommend. One of the laws he makes a case for is the Law of Expansion, noting that the more diluted your brand becomes (the more products or services you have assigned to that brand), the more confused the public gets. Take Chevrolet for example...multiple car lines all the way from the Corvette to the Cobalt. And in the example Ries gives, he offers the evidence that because Chevy has extended its product line from cost-conscious to high-end with multiple variations in between, it has diminished the Chevrolet brand. Over the short run, adding product lines and multiple revenue streams to your business may earn you more money in the next few months or years, but in the long run you risk losing market share and brand dilution in the minds of your potential customers.

Ries provides an interesting example from Levi Strauss. In an effort to establish a wider market, Levi's began producing different cuts like baggy, zippered and wide-leg jeans to the point in which they had 27 different cuts. But their efforts failed them, this dilution of their message caused them to lose 12% of the denim jeans market over a seven year period.

Ries also points out that as consumers, we tend to assign one name to each product, we don't worry about the megabrand (Chevrolet) and all the sub-brands that fall under it (Cobalt, Corvette, Equinox, Malibu...). Further, we don't assign names consistently, we also tend to use the name that best captures the essence of the product. The Cobalt owner will say "I drive a Chevy." The Corvette owner will say, "I drive a 'Vette."

Interesting isn't it?

This begs the question: What is the essence of the brand "Chiropractic?" And what are you doing with your business with that brand? Do you think how Chiropractic is being branded through individual offices throughout the world will set us up for long-term sustainability and increased market share? Would love to hear your thoughts...