Has your Business got a Brand Gap?

Have you got a Brand Gap? Here are five classic signs that there’s a hole in your business strategy:

1: Your customers just don’t ‘get it’

It’s frustrating: your customers – or, the people who you think should be your customers – just don’t seem to ‘get’ the product or service you offer.

2: You’re always competing on price

You feel compelled to keep your prices down, whilst other people somehow charge more than you feel that you can, for products or services that are really no better (perhaps worse) than yours.

3: You feel invisible

It’s depressing: your competitors seem to be basking in the glory of five-star reviews & a constant stream of referrals, whilst you’re left out in the cold.

4: You’re lost for words

Someone asks you what your business does, and you find yourself muttering yet another hollow, inadequate response. Even to your ears, it doesn’t sound very convincing.

5: You’re overwhelmed

You feel paralysed: your vision of the business you wanted to run is a thousand miles away from the reality of your current situation, and you don’t know how to change that.

If any of these situations sound familiar, then you might have a Brand Gap in your business.

What’s a Brand Gap?

A Brand Gap is a gaping hole in the middle of your business strategy, where your brand ought to be.

When I say your brand, I don’t mean your logo or your social media content. I mean the absolute, rock-solid foundation that every strong and successful business has at the very centre of its being.

Brand is the spark that attracts likeminded people – your target customers – and keeps them coming back for more. It’s the streak of individuality that runs through everything your business does or ever would do, the same way that the writing runs through a stick of seaside rock. Quite simply, your brand is what makes your business make sense.

And if that spark and inner logic is missing, is it any surprise that your customers don’t seem interested, or that your value proposition doesn’t stack up?

How to mend a Brand Gap

To have a Brand Gap in your business is not unusual. And once you’ve noticed that it’s there, it’s almost always fixable.

So long as your business exists for a genuine reason, and you are here in good faith to provide a product or service that has real potential use or value, then the good news is that all the ingredients are in place to fill your Brand Gap.

You just need to work out what those ingredients are.

 So how do you do it? Well, first of all, put your credit card away. You can’t fill a Brand Gap with a smart design job or a fancy marketing campaign (though once you’ve filled your gap, you can certainly go right ahead and splash out on either of those). But before you start spending money on expensive communications, it’s time to look inwards to work out what makes your business tick.

Like a human character, a business’s brand is the sum of many parts, moulded together to form something that is credible, recognisable and memorable.

A strong brand is built from the inside out. You couldn’t decorate a cake before you’ve baked it, and the same is true of your business: there’s no point jumping straight into thinking about the ‘icing’ of how you’re going to present your brand - logo design, colour choices, photoshoots and social media content – if there’s nothing more than a big gaping hole underneath the icing, where the cake should be.  

If you want to fill your Brand Gap, you’ll need to identify the individual parts that make up the substance of your unique brand: your business’s purpose, personality, style, attitude, and outlook.

Get those in place, and the raw intelligence that you’ll need to fill your brand gap is right there at your fingertips: ready to be shaped and moulded into your website refresh; your next customer profiling session; your pricing strategy; your graphic design brief; your new strapline or your new marketing campaign.