Creating your brand is creating your identity for your business. Who are you are in the marketplace?

Restaurant Branding

First and foremost you need to know what you are promising to your customers. To do this you need to Create your brand and message. We do this through a series of steps.

1. SWOT Analysis
2. USP
3. USP Analysis

These are the first three steps we are going to address in creating a brand.

SWOT Analysis

What it is:A simple system for identifying a company’s strategic growth opportunities in the marketplace: also suggests strategies to increase competitive advantage.
Where it comes from: The 1969 book Business Policy, Text and Cases by Edmund P. Learned and others (Irwin).
Summary:
An organization conducting a SWOT analysis will list its:

1. Internal factors, such as proprietary brands, company culture, distribution systems, exclusive access to natural resources, image, market share, patents, and personnel. The analysts will then decide which of these factors are strengths and which are weaknesses.

2. External factors, such as competitors, economic trends, partners, regulatory concerns and suppliers. The analysts will then decide which of these factors are Opportunities and which are Threats.

Analysts then create separate lists for each of the SWOT categories (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) and compare them to uncover strategic insights. Example: Could a sagging brand image (a weakness) be reduced by a strong marketing department (a strength)? Your opportunities are then backed by your keyword research! Your keyword research helps identify the high demand, low competition phrases that position our business idea not only into the niche but also helps us to identify and move our brand into its future position.
What else you need to know:

SWOT’s usefulness depends on management creativity and vision. Example: A new technology might look like a threat in the hands of a competitor, but become an opportunity when you get the rights to use it.

USP (Unique Selling Proposition)

What it does:
Defines what makes an organization’s products successful in the marketplace; also pinpoints the most effective way to market products to consumers.

Where it comes from:

The term USP was coined by the legendary advertising copywriter Rosser Reeves, who explained it in his 1961 book Reality in Advertising (Knopf, now out of print). Reeves was known as a no-nonsense advertising copywriter who rejected the notion, popular in the 1950s, that people bought products because of deeper Freudian needs. Reeves wrote, “If the product does not meet some existing desire or need of the consumer, the advertising will ultimately fail.”
Summary:
The USP is the unique trait or feature of a product that differentiates it from competing products. It is the one predominant thing about a product that causes a consumer to choose that product over others.
USP’s are broken down into 3 parts
• Features
• Benefits
• Solutions

A great example of this is the Energy Star web site under Home Improvement

http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=home_improvement.hm_improvement_index

The page is broken down into 3 sections
• What Energy star is solving
• The Benefits of the energy Star Program
• The Solutions that Energy Star offers

USP in Advertising

These are really Slogans or Taglines these are the result of going through the branding process
Domino Pizza’s “Fresh, hot pizza delivered in 30 minutes or less, guaranteed.” No claims are made about the pizza being delicious. Speed of delivery is the USP.
Fedex’s “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.” There is no talk about nice-looking trucks or careful handling of packages. Overnight delivery is the USP.
Because the concept of USP has become widely used and misunderstood in marketing circles, it is worth returning to the definition that Rosser Reeves first gave for it in Reality in Advertising:
- Each advertisement must say to each reader “Buy this product and you will get this specific benefit.”
- The proposition must be one that the competition either cannot, or does not, offer. It must be unique.
- The proposition must be so strong that it can “move the mass millions,” as Reeves put it. In other words, it must be unique enough to attract new customers to the product.
What else you need to know
It can be a worthwhile exercise to weigh your products and services against the USP concept. Does your product have some critical feature that differentiates it from all its competitors? If not, can you develop one and use it to drive your marketing and advertising? In short, do your products have one compelling feature that causes consumers to make an immediate buying decision?

Create your Brand (Identity) Then Tell the World!! (or at least your 3-5 mile radius)

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1. How Can Social Media Help Your Brand
2. Where Did That Traffic Faucet Go?
3. Press Release Marketing for Restaurants