While it would be amazing to start up a business, make a lifetime’s worth of money in a year and then sell it on, we all know that’s unlikely. So you want a business that provides you with a decent income for the foreseeable future. You want a business that endures.
Why create an enduring brand?
If you want a business that endures you need a brand that endures. Remember what we said a brand was? Your brand is what your customers are saying about you; what they think and feel about you. So you need to make sure that your brand is relevant to customers for years to come.
It’s not difficult to understand that having the same customer buy from you again and again is more profitable than having to spend money on marketing campaigns to attract new customers. If you have an enduring brand you will slowly build more trust in your audience. The longer this goes on these customers will not only trust you but will start to be emotionally attached to your brand. And as they move further on in their relationship with your brand they will repeatedly buy from you and encourage others to buy from you too.
Having people that are external to your brand advocating for your business is a brilliant double whammy. You get the profits from any new business they send you and you save on the marketing costs that it would have otherwise cost you to get these new clients.
The importance of customer lifetime value
Let’s sidestep a little here and enhance our understanding of an enduring brand by having a look at the concept of customer lifetime value. Customer lifetime value is the amount of profit a customer will generate over the lifetime of their relationship with your brand. There are a lot of variables that can make this into quite a complicated calculation. But let’s say you know that your average customer buys around 10 items of clothing generating a gross profit of £200 per year. They remain a client for 5 years so their customer lifetime value would be £1000. From this rough and ready calculation you can see that it wouldn’t be worth paying out any more than that in marketing or other business costs to either acquire them as a customer in the first place, or to keep them as a customer.
If your marketing acquisition cost per person (ie the amount of money you spend on a marketing campaign ÷ the number of new clients this brings you) is £450, you can see that you’re not actually going to make a profit until you’re into the 3rd year of your relationship with this customer.
This is where the importance of an enduring brand comes in. If your relationship with this client doesn’t go beyond 2 years you’ve actually lost money. But if you can keep the relationship going as long as possible and extend it beyond the previous 5 year average length you are getting more bang for your buck on that original marketing acquisition cost.
How to create an enduring brand
Creating an enduring brand brings together the work of some of the other “Es” from our 7 Es of Brand framework – Essence, Experience, Emotion and Evolve. When you are writing up your brand strategy you need to consider how each of these elements will create your enduring brand:
Essence – this is the heart and soul of your brand, the core identity, what you are all about. Make sure that it’s something that is true to you but that is also able to move with the times and endure. eg. – Uber started as a private driver service but their brand essence is movement. This means they can adapt and expand in ways that are not simply connected to private cabs (Uber Eats, deliveries etc)
Experience – consider how you may have to adapt your customers’ experience as they progress through their relationship with you, but also as the outside world changes their expectations and needs.
Emotion – emotional connections with your customers take time. Consistently working towards the emotion that you want to evoke in your audience will result in their trust and the longer they trust you the more they will start to feel an emotional connection to you.
Evolve – this is arguably the most important E for an enduring brand. Make sure that your business is evolving in an appropriate and timely manner. Scheduling regular times to go over your brand strategy will ensure you are always on top of it and on the right track to creating a brand that will last.
Example of an enduring brand
To bring this all together let’s have a look at one of the world’s best known entertainment brands – Netflix.
Netflix’s brand essence is “movie enjoyment made easy”. They have evolved from renting DVDs by mail then a subscription service, to streaming and most recently producing their own content. So their product has evolved but the basic premise of the brand essence, allowing people to easily enjoy movie and TV entertainment, underpins each progression. The customer experience is always “easy” – signing up is simple, even cancelling is easy. You can start watching on a tablet then over to the TV and Netflix will remember exactly where you were each time. And emotion? We feel delight and satisfaction at watching our favourite programmes, and ultimately on a higher level, they give us an escape from reality.
All of these elements together contribute to make Netflix an enduring brand.
In summary
An enduring brand is obviously good in and of itself, because it means that you will have a thriving business for the long haul.
But it’s also a virtuous circle – the longer your brand endures, the more your customers will trust and be emotionally attached to you, the more they will recommend you, the higher your profits will be. The higher your profits are, the more your brand will endure.
At Frejz we are experts in getting to the core of your brand and working with you to create a brand strategy that will last. Check out our services page to find out how we can help you create your own enduring brand.
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