Make your brand irresistible in Singapore

Look around The Lion City – you see brands everywhere.
In fact, studies show that the average person living in a city the size of Singapore runs across 3,000 brands every 24 hours. Not convinced? Start counting the brands you see from the moment you wake up tomorrow morning from your brand of alarm clock, to your brand of sheets, toothbrush, toothpaste, refrigerator, coffee, smart phone, computer, and on and on. Then, walk down an aisle at Cold Storage, stop on Orchard Road and glance around, open up the Straits Times and look at all the ads. Get the picture?

This is the world in which your brand competes. In fact, business owners today face two harsh realities: (1) It’s more and more challenging to compete in this ever-growing sea of brand choices, and (2) this brand influx comes at a time when marketing budgets around the world are getting tighter.

Regardless of the size of your budget, I’m here to tell you that you already have what you need to build a strong brand and stick out. In fact, you have five assets you can use immediately to create a powerful brand, without spending a lot of money. In this and a few follow-up articles, I’ll share more about these five assets.

So, what’s the number 1 most important low-cost asset you already have in your brand-building arsenal?
Positioning. A smartly-positioned brand is the foundation for success yet, daily, I run into Singapore business owners who are unsure about their brand’s positioning.

What is “brand positioning,” anyway? It’s the way you want your customers to perceive, think, and feel about your brand, compared to competition. It’s a unique and specific piece of mental real estate that your brand owns in the minds of your customers, and it clearly defines the reason your brand exists.

Some small business owners in Singapore have scoffed at positioning and say, “We’re too small – we don’t have, or even need, a positioning.” The truth is: Small companies need a positioning even more than big companies. Large conglomerates have the budgets to make mistakes now and then, and they can recover quickly. But, if you’re small, even minor branding mistakes can cost you a lot. In fact, an unclear brand positioning for a small business could mean the end of the company – fast.

You Already Have a Positioning

Here’s another branding myth: “I’ve never given my company’s positioning any thought, so I don’t yet have one.” The reality is: You already have a positioning, whether you like it or not. That’s because your customers have perceptions, thoughts, and feelings about your brand right now. The question is whether those perceptions, thoughts, and feelings reflect the positioning you want.

Bottom line? If you don’t have a clear and well-defined Brand Positioning Statement, you just aren’t in the driver’s seat, and your chances of business success are limited.

By the way, positioning isn’t just the product or service you sell. It’s about the specific piece of branding real estate that you want to own. Let’s look at a service business as an example (although this exercise definitely applies to products as well). A quick surf through the Internet reveals a number of personal trainers who have each found a specific niche to own in a very competitive market.

• One trainer calls himself ‘the fitness guru for the urban warrior’ and focuses on outdoor fitness in a boot-camp type of atmosphere.

• Another personal trainer focuses on the combination of both body and mind wellness – a different kind of brand positioning.

• Yet another personal trainer works solely with women, honing in on female-specific physical training needs.

• Then, there’s a trainer who differentiates himself by going to people’s homes and training specifically in the sport of basketball.

• Lastly is a fitness guru who markets himself as “trainer to the stars” - quite a unique (and intriguing) positioning to own.

Getting your positioning right is the single most important part of the branding process, but “getting it right” requires that you first to have a clear, concise, and competitive Brand Positioning Statement that includes six core elements: Target Market, Customer Needs, Competitive Framework, Benefits, Reasons Why, and Brand Character. How well those six elements fit together to form the basis of your brand makes the difference between success and failure. And, that’s how you get your brand to stand out among the 3,000+ brands your customers are barraged with every single day in Singapore.