A Solid Brand Strategy Includes Building Relationships

By Brandon Allen - Feb 24 , 2011

Your brand is about a promise. If you buy my product or service, this is what’s going to happen.  To build trust in any arena takes focused, intentional effort.  Your brand is no different.  A great brand has great relationships built around it.

Building relationships with your customers is the obvious piece to this but these aren’t the only relationships that are important to your business.  You also have 3^rd party vendors, employees and partnerships.  How you build relationships in all of these areas is vital to your brand.

Let’s say that you have a core value of your business that includes treating people with respect.  If you don’t treat your employees that way then what’s their incentive to treat other people well? Check out this great story from Tom Peters about why you should treat employees like customers.

I will get into the importance of branding from the inside out in future posts but one thing to know is that treating your employees right is a big part of your brands potential for success.

Apple is a great company with regards to building relationships around their brand. Everyone talks at length about how they create brand evangelists but it’s not just because of their messaging.  Some people love the fact that Apple is their own retailer of their products.

What separates Apple from Microsoft in this regard is the connections they can build with their customers.  If you are a Microsoft user, you use a third party retailer to buy their products and services. To be fair, Microsoft doesn’t create the hardware that their operating system works with.  They did a great job creating a strategic alliance with hardware producers which helped their business explode.  On the flip side this makes them vulnerable to having a disconnect between them and their end users.

You could see this disconnect in the issues that people have complained about through the years about Microsoft’s software and how Apple was able to exploit that.  Apple also has Apple stores.  Apple stores are fun.  The service is awesome.  People walk away satisfied with their experience.  They use the store to build connections with their customers and to understand them better.

Is your business building solid relationships on all sides? If you are not good at that, who do you know that is?  Are you engaging in the right social media platforms for your business?  This is a key component to building a brand that people talk about in a positive light and that has staying power.

What is one of the best ways that you have used to build better connections with your business?