Your brand should be building your business.
You have put years of effort into building the business and making it valuable to customers.
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You have put years of effort into building the business and making it valuable to customers.
You have put years of effort into building the business and making it valuable to customers. It is worth asking whether your brand is helping you make enough of that investment, or whether people have to work with you before they understand what makes it worthwhile.
Brand can help customers recognise your value, give them stronger reasons to choose you and support the opportunities you want to pursue. That contribution depends on strategic choices, practical application and what the business actually delivers. It needs to be examined in your market, rather than assumed from a new identity or a well-written strategy.
Your people know their work and customers who have spent time with you understand why it is worth the money. But someone encountering the business for the first time may find the services difficult to connect or the best evidence buried, leaving them to work out the significance of your capabilities for themselves.
That gap can affect whether you are considered, which work comes your way and how confidently someone can explain the choice to colleagues. A new offer may also struggle to benefit from a reputation the business has already earned if people do not understand how the two connect.
It is also possible for the brand to communicate the existing business reasonably well while doing little to support its ambition. A company entering a different market, developing a broader offer or seeking a stronger reputation has another question to answer. What should the brand help us become able to do?
By commercial brand value, I mean what the brand contributes to a business’s ability to compete, attract demand and develop worthwhile opportunities. People build an understanding of a business through its products, people and reputation, as well as its name, identity and communication. Those experiences shape what they expect and remember, whether you manage the brand deliberately or leave it to develop on its own. The opportunity is to make considered choices about what you want it to contribute and what would make that credible.
I am talking here about how useful the brand is to the business, rather than assigning it a monetary valuation. An increase in enterprise value needs its own methods and evidence; a positioning exercise cannot promise a known financial uplift. My interest is in where the brand could improve your commercial position and what would need to change for that to happen.
Give the right customers clear, credible reasons to choose you.
We identify what matters in their decision, where your business offers particular value and how your positioning, messages and evidence can make that value easier to recognise.
That involves understanding the buying situation as well as what you want to say about the business. A stronger presentation helps when the offer is relevant, accessible and supported by evidence customers have a reason to trust.
Make the value behind your offer easier to understand and justify.
We examine what customers gain, which differences matter and what evidence supports your claims, giving your brand a stronger basis for explaining your price and handling comparisons.
A customer may understand that two businesses provide the same category of service without seeing why the work, judgement or experience is worth a different price. The task is to make the relevant value assessable and support it with evidence, recognising that suitability, budget and other buying conditions still matter.
Develop the brand around the opportunities the business wants to pursue.
That could mean making a broader offer easier to buy, establishing credibility in another market or helping customers recognise your capability for larger or different work.
These priorities often overlap, but each gives the work a different emphasis. We agree what the business needs most and how the brand could support it before choosing the activity.
Give the right customers clear, credible reasons to choose you.
Are relevant buyers considering us?
Something to examineBuyer interviews, shortlist mentions and enquiry sources.
Make the value behind your offer easier to understand and justify.
Is our value convincing?
Something to examineReasons given in wins, losses and price conversations.
Develop the brand around the opportunities the business wants to pursue.
Can we extend our reputation?
Something to examineAwareness and credibility in the proposed market.
A recognisable identity, trusted reputation and clear position can support more than one campaign, while a useful body of project evidence helps different people explain the business. A considered offer structure also gives you room to develop without asking customers to make sense of disconnected additions.
This is the kind of asset I want to help a business build and keep developing. It needs attention over time, with consistency helping people recognise you and evidence and experience giving the reputation substance.
Creating value does not mean customers will automatically recognise it or know when to involve you. They need to understand enough about the offer to see why it matters, remember the business when a relevant need arises and have a practical way to buy. The experience then needs to support what was promised. Looking at that whole journey helps you choose the right response: more advertising may bring people to an unclear offer, while a better website will achieve little if the service behind it keeps letting them down.
Brand work can connect the promise to the experience and reveal where they disagree. Some of the work needed to close that gap may belong to operations, product, sales or service delivery. It is useful to identify that honestly rather than put every business problem under the heading of brand.
The experience feeds back into how the business is recognised and chosen next time.
Becoming the first choice means deciding which customers and buying situations to focus on, what you want them to recognise about the business and which strengths you can substantiate. It also involves choosing what to stop emphasising so the important things have room to come through. Those decisions connect the brand to how the business competes. Michael Porter’s account of competitive strategy is a useful reference here because it emphasises a distinctive position, trade-offs and the way activities fit together. [1]
We do not need to rebuild the company strategy in every engagement. Sometimes the commercial direction is already sound and the brand needs to carry it more effectively; in other cases, a proposed rebrand exposes decisions that have never been settled. Understanding which situation we are dealing with helps keep the work useful and proportionate.
Kantar’s Blueprint for Brand Growth connects brand perceptions with commercial performance across its research and stresses the role of market presence. It supports taking brand seriously as a commercial subject. Its findings are not a forecast of what a particular engagement will deliver for your business. [2] Start with a specific hypothesis and evidence you can realistically collect.
| Commercial question | Something useful to examine | Important limitation |
|---|---|---|
| Are relevant buyers considering us? | Buyer interviews, shortlist mentions and enquiry sources | Inbound enquiries omit buyers who never contacted you |
| Do people understand the offer? | Unprompted explanations of what you do and who it is for | Understanding does not establish intent to buy |
| Is our value convincing? | Reasons given in wins, losses and price conversations | Price, relationships and procurement also affect the decision |
| Is the work a better fit? | Agreed criteria for suitable opportunities and the mix received | Changes in channels and demand can change that mix |
| Can we extend our reputation? | Awareness and credibility in the proposed market | Existing reputation may not transfer to a different need |
| Does delivery support the promise? | Relevant feedback, repeat work, complaints and referrals | These reflect the whole experience, not brand activity alone |
Before the work starts, record what you know about the current position and agree what you will review over a relevant period. That review should account for other changes, including pricing, sales activity, capacity and market conditions, using comparisons or other evaluation methods where feasible. Where you cannot attribute a result confidently, acknowledge the limit. You can still make a reasonable decision with imperfect evidence, provided you understand which part rests on evidence and which part rests on judgement.
The practical component for this article is loading.
If the third and fourth answers are mostly assumptions, that tells you where to investigate. If the fifth answer immediately becomes “a new website”, ask which customer decision that website should improve and how.
Your brand should have a job in the business. Make that job explicit, build the reasons it can do it and carry the choices into practice. Then keep examining whether it is helping.
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Customer preference6 min read
Customers choose in particular situations, against particular alternatives. Understanding those decisions gives you a better starting point than simply trying to sound different.
Put your brand to work
Let’s talk about what the business is trying to achieve, the evidence you have and where the opportunity might be.
