business Archives - Startup Connection

The Holy Trinity of Brand Development: Features, Benefits, and Advantages

by Bert Shlensky | Aug 25, 2017 | Planning

Say what you want about trademarks and logos. They have their place. But if you’re really looking for brand development, making sure it’s successful in the market you’re targeting, there are three aspects you have to focus on the most:

You Simply Ask Yourself These Three Questions About Brand Development: What Are the FEATURES, What Are the BENEFITS, and What Are the ADVANTAGES?

Real quick, if you don’t know the answers to those questions, simply start researching. Get them. Without them, your brand isn’t a brand. But just a name. And there are a lot of names out there!

The thing is when you’re building your brand, educating your consumer base about the “holy trinity” does a few things — it lets your customers know what the product/service is, why it’s great, and why it’s better than the rest of the competition. We’re talking about a 1-2-3 combo, and if you were a boxer, that’s a knockdown on the 3rd round for the championship belt without breaking a sweat! You’re, of course, asking just why these three together make so much of a difference in your brand development.

Features — The “features” of your product and service happen to be exactly what it is. The specs. What your product/service does and provides. This is the nuts and bolts. The basic understanding. After all, customers may know what a fork does, but they had to have that explained to them when the fork was first introduced into the consumer market, right? These days, though, features don’t come across as that simple, hence why aspects like warranties, ease of use and distribution return privileges (the added “features”) make a difference as well.
Benefits — Here’s where we get a little tricky. The benefits are like the “features” except now we’re going above and beyond what the product/service does. Why does it do what it does? That’s the question. We now know what a fork does. But why do we need one? To effectively eat our chicken Caesar salad, of course, without any of the lettuce falling off! Now that’s a benefit. But it’s only a benefit if the customer believes he/she needs it and sees it as valuable.
Advantages — And, of course, lastly, it’s pretty obvious why a fork would be better than, say, a SPOON when eating chicken Caesar salad. This is where you have to explain what the advantages are. Target your competition. Set yourself apart. Sure, the spoon’s great for cereal, but when was the last time you successfully ate a salad with a ladle? These days selling the advantages of a product or service has been getting much more cutthroat and vicious with the shorter attention spans and seamless Internet communication capability.

Hence why more now than ever we focus on these three even heavier than before as part of branding. Packaging your product/service in this way along with that name and logo gets you started on the right foot. Plain and simple.

Now Get Started With Your Brand, Ring the Bell, and Make It Happen

Of course, I can help you with everything you need in propelling your small business, all the nuts and bolts. But you need the vehicle first. Here are the parts. Start building. And I’ll see you soon.

Dr. Bert Shlensky, President of The Startup Connection, directs all small business clients toward maximum sales and profit thanks to his 40 years of high-quality experience. He does this through technological, social, and online integration, supercharging your business success into the next level, so don’t hesitate to sign up for a free consultation RIGHT NOW.

Why Wayne Gretzky and Hockey Say a Lot About Running a Small Business

by Bert Shlensky | Aug 11, 2017 | Finance Articles

Business risk happens to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. However, if you give all the sheep hockey sticks and a puck like Wayne Gretzky, that wolf will likely hide behind the goal’s net. No one likes getting hit by the puck several dozen times! But we get it, though: we’re afraid of ticking off that wolf, and lo and behold: the wolf might come out from behind that net and start really nasty grunge fights with each sheep, and instead of a hockey game, we have a slaughter on our hands.

Honestly, Business Risk Is a Lot Like That: an Angry Wolf

But here we have the key to taming that wolf — we mentioned Wayne Gretzky.

It turned out he had quite the quote that makes perfect sense in hockey —

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

When you think about it, that makes perfect sense! And there’s no way around it. Truthfully, if you’re running a business, you have to accept the fact that you’re always going to be facing risk. And if you run away from it, the risk is even greater.

The key to managing risk is to take those chances — and learn from the historical data. Part of the problem is that we think risk is a lot bigger than it actually is. That wolf does look a lot bigger on the ice rink — until you start chucking pucks at him.

Sadly we’re creatures of habit, and before the innovation of technology — the Internet, mobile, Google, Amazon — we didn’t have a lot of “pucks” to chuck at the wolf like Wayne Gretzky would. So we were stuck on the old methods and didn’t want to try something new. And it’s understandable! — after all, we can’t predict much results with new programs or methods, because there’s nothing as far as historical data for us to analyze.

Thankfully, I Have the Goods Here About How to “Take All the Shots” Like Wayne Gretzky and Manage Risk Without Failure:

Here are some tools to keep in mind as you manage risk head-on while moving forward in your small business:

Measure, Estimate, Prioritize, and Adapt — Testing and experimenting are the keys to taming that wolf. In fact, we once had a client simply focus on key inventory items, eliminating unproductive factors by just looking at the clicks and monitoring the Google Analytics data. It’s simple. That’s one slap shot you can take like Wayne Gretzky.
Follow the 80/20 and 90/30 Rules — Develop your business methodology down to these numbers, and it’ll be a lot easier to forecast results. The 80/20 rule is how you’ll expect 80% of your sales coming from 20% of the offerings you make. So do the math. Likewise, 90% of all perceptions of your product will be realized in your customers’ heads within 30 seconds. So, in other words — make enough shots at the goalie in a short period of time, and you’ll definitely expect a lot of scores.
Lastly…. You Will Make Some Mistakes, and That’s OKAY — Why? Because that gives you the opportunity to adapt. After all, the longer you keep making those shots, the more hits you’ll make over time.

In other words: the more business risk you take, the less risk there will be.

It’s Not Easy, and You Need to Exercise Caution, Obviously

Simply be strategic. Don’t go all out. But balance your efforts. After all, Wayne Gretzky didn’t win on sheer will and tenacity alone; he had the skill.