Tag Archives: branding

Are You Branding the Wrong Message?

My career has necessitated a lot of air travel over the years. During that time, I only flew one airline, so I could get all the points and perks that go with an airline trying to make me a loyal customer, and they did.

For about 15 years, I never flew another airline. They sent me a bag tag that said I was in their million-mile club. I got free upgrades to their airport club, extra reward points, first-class seats and on and on. You would think they had retained a customer for life … but they didn’t.

In the last 12 years, I have again flown over a million miles on another airline and never used the first airline again, even though the rewards with the first airline were far greater. The reason was simple; the first airline constantly jerked you around with almost everything they offered. The “free” airport club ended up having to be paid for. The rewards points needed for a free flight would double or triple every time I wanted to use them. There were constant blackout periods every time I wanted to redeem my points. The final breaking point was when I sent four letters to the company complaining about the treatment they were giving a customer who flew over 100 flights a year and no one answered any of them.

This is a cautionary tale of what can go wrong when you want to send a message to the customer about what a great place this is to do business, but the consistency of that message is never followed through and it ends up doing more harm than good.

As we work harder and harder to keep customers from defecting, we must keep in mind that this message begins with our people. We start out with our core principles and design a program around these values. We design what we think is a great loyalty program that should grow our business year after year. We allocate funds to give teeth to our message. Then we forget to train our staff on the message. Everyone needs to get on the same page. Once our branding message is developed, it should be presented to the entire group and not only reviewed but rehearsed with the word tracks that we expect to accompany our values.

A good way to design your values is around your retention program. The benefits we design for our customers should reflect how important they are in the relationship. When we set up certain things like car washes, loaner cars, oil changes or rewards programs, we are telling the customer how much we appreciate their business. However, it is critical that at the same time, this message is developed the same way and delivered the same way, every day. If we are offering a rewards card but no one talks about it or helps the customer redeem their points, what good is it? If a core value is to treat our customers with respect and we don’t even have time to say thank you, what message are we sending?

If we have taken the time to design a program to help retain the customers then we need to go the extra step to design a method to train and supervise what we want the customer to hear. There should be monthly training classes (both group and individual) for everyone who interacts with the customer. We should solicit ideas from everyone on how to improve the program. In these meetings, review the surveys and see what customers think about their experience. Get input on what tools we need to develop the message. For example, websites, apps, digital marketing are all things we can use to get our benefits in front of the customer. We can’t communicate enough with the customer nor for that matter listen enough.

I spend about $75,000 per year flying on business. In the last 12 years, the original airline I flew lost almost a million dollars of my business. Not because they didn’t take the time to design a great program but the implementation of that program and their method of communicating it was terribly flawed. The same thing can happen in almost any business if we don’t take the time to train and develop everyone to do the same thing every day, every time, without fail, no exceptions.

-Jack Garrity

Who is Branding Your Message?

Often, a business that is part of a franchise will have trouble carving out its own niche. Usually it is the company selling the franchise that is responsible for developing the branding message for all the franchisees. The automobile industry might be the exception to the rule.

The manufacturers do try to brand their products with slogans and marketing. For example, “It doesn’t just raise the bar; it is the bar,” “Let’s go places” and “The power of dreams,” to name a few. However, unlike most franchises, car dealers do more to separate themselves from the pack than almost any other business. It is not unusual for a dealership to not only promote their business, but to compete directly with the other franchisees.

Branding has been around for a long time. According to Google, the modern word “brand” is derived from the word “brandr,” a word from the Ancient Norse meaning to burn. By the late 1500s the meaning had changed to refer to a mark burned on cattle to show ownership. After reading that, it made sense to me that our current method of branding is a way to burn our core values into our customers’ minds.

Some companies are so successful at branding their message that their name can denote an entire industry. Go Xerox, Amazon Prime and I’ll have a Coke, are examples. Others use branding to control a complete segment of a certain market, electric cars – Tesla; guaranteed low prices – Walmart; taste great, less filling – Miller Lite.

When it comes to branding your automobile business, the job becomes somewhat more unique. Most dealers would love to brand themselves different than any other dealer in their market place, but where do you start? Lowest prices in town, biggest inventory, relentless advertising are all methods that have been tried in the past. But to really brand yourself, you need to start with your core values. What is important to you, and more importantly, what is important to your customer?

It’s critical to start by developing those core values and letting everyone in your organization know exactly what they are. You need to hold everyone accountable for how these core values are presented to the customer. How do you want your business to be perceived, by not only your customers, but also your employees? Build your business around those values. While the factory is branding their core values, you need to develop yours — and they will not always be the same.

Often, it will not be about price or advertising, but the customer’s ability to experience what makes you different. If the core value is about branding you as the dealer who spends his marketing dollar on the customer and not crazy TV ads, that message will resonate with not only your customer but also your entire staff.

The ability to develop your message can only come from you. Factory programs are great for branding the manufacturer’s product, but your message needs to be developed by you. What are you doing to give a customer a reason to buy here and service here? It does little good to spend your entire budget to get someone to buy something if you don’t give them a reason to come back for service and their next purchase.

I have a friend with a Hyundai store in Pennsylvania. He spends very little on advertising and yet he has increased sales tenfold since he bought the store almost 10 years ago. His core value is the money he would spend on advertising he is giving back to his customers in the form of a lifetime engine guarantee, lifetime oil changes and lifetime tire rotations.

He trains his people to sell the value and benefits of buying from their store. His branding philosophy is the same message, every day by everyone to every customer. The customers have bought into the message as well. His retention rates are in the high 70-percent range for both new and used cars. He calculates that he spends $68 per customer to retain them. This is not in addition to, but is the money he would spend to create a new customer. It works.

There are different ways to brand your business. Your main concern should be not letting someone else (the factory) brand it for you. Factory branding programs are designed for a broad demographic and must be so general that they don’t work for everyone. A program that develops your message around your program will have much greater results for your dealership and everyone working with you.

-Jack Garrity