In today’s economic climate when a business need to stand out from the crown they need to consider what their identity is and be clear about what it represents and stands for.  Typically identity gets associated with the Brand of a business. Which is not wrong, but it is when people focus only a logo and a strap line. True, a brand is something for customers to remember them by and refer to when recommending a business to others, but people are more likely to recommend businesses based on their experience of their product or service.

A brand is in fact made up of 3 key elements: your beliefs and values – what you stand for; your behaviour i.e. how you execute these values and your image – the net take out of these elements and this is where a logo and strap line has a role to play.  Your values, be they personal or those of the business, have a larger role to play than most people give them credit for, in fact in terms of making your business stand out, your USP is more likely to come from beliefs and values. The problem with this is that many SME’s just don’t know how to identify and isolate these and incorporate them into their marketing messages.

As a start point, business owners should conduct a sense check - begin by asking some questions: about their business, about their competitors, about their customers and importantly about themselves. And if they are brave enough - to ask their customers the same. Often customers can play a very important role in shaping the brand and values of any business, especially those who are loyal, as they will tell you what they like about you and why.

One of the core elements of The Best of Newbury and how we support the promotion of local businesses is to work with businesses to uncover and highlight their values and key strengths as part of anything we write about them and to harness customer feedback, using it to underpin these marketing messages.

So, when any business is developing a value proposition to communicate to their marketplace they really should take time to understand the positive impact of their staff on their brand and use it to their advantage to enhance their proposition or indeed isolate their unique USP – in effect, to make sure they are their own best advert.