What is your brand’s end result? Know your outcome!

So many brands do not focus on customer-based positioning of their brand. This is critical in a new branding effort or rebranding effort. What tends to get lost is the end consumer or customers who will connect with this brand over time.

In our stakeholder meetings with advisory boards, senior brand managers and teams it often becomes apparent that there’s a lack of understanding about how connecting the brand’s internal goals to relevant concerns of the consumer—what the brand does for them—is the ultimate goal of the branding process.

Consumers are constantly shifting their perceptions and trying to understand the unbelievable range of choices they have among brands. It’s frankly overwhelming, whether you’re choosing a high-level cloud-based software solution for your company or just some new, environmentally friendly cleaning products.

How do we choose, as consumers? How can brand value be positioned correctly with the brand name, the identity and the strategy that pitches the brand? These are tough questions that just don’t get enough attention because companies, non-profits and organizations are too busy selling what they already have – their products – not the customers’ solutions.

Defining the solutions around key customer profiles — customer personas—really begins to build the connection between product attributes and how customers must perceive it to make their choice. This exercise also takes into account the competitive landscape. What and why consumers choose is not what sellers may even be thinking of.

Ultimately, crafting the brand strategy and positioning needs to be a customer-driven process. This gives brands a fighting chance for recognition and value in the market, which is, of course, driven by customer choice.