BY KAREN McSTEEN

Do you understand what your brand stands for? Do you know what makes your brand unique? If you are a woman-owned business, how can you best leverage that status to make your brand more powerful? Here are five steps to help you answer these questions.

Step One: Know your customers.
As a woman business owner, use your ability to forge strong relationships to really get to know your current and potential customers. Find out what’s important to them. Find out what keeps them up at night. Listen carefully to the problems they have that you and your business are uniquely able to solve.

Step Two: Understand your competitive environment.
Ask your customers, “If you weren’t working with us, with whom would you be working?” Identify the companies to whom you most often lose business. Learn as much as you can about these competitors, including how customers perceive them, what makes them unique, and why they win the business they do.

 Step Three: Define your brand personality.
Brands are like people. They have personalities, and people choose brands based upon whether or not the characteristics fit them. Make sure the two to three personality traits that define your business come through in everything you do. This includes your collateral materials, your Web site, the people you hire, and even the way your employees answer the phone.

Step Four: Define your brand promise.
Talk with your customers and try to determine what, in their view, makes your brand unique at both the rational and the emotional levels. Understand how they see your business, and what your brand means to them. Find out what is important to them about choosing a woman-owned business and what benefits they get from doing so. Make sure your brand promise is important and valuable to the customers you want most. Once you understand your brand promise, state it in clear, concise language so everyone in your organization understands the promise and what is expected of him or her.

Step Five: Identify your brand cues.
This is how you bring your brand to life. Brand cues are the tangible demonstration of your company’s values and beliefs and come directly from your brand personality and brand promise.

Southwest Airlines is an example. Employees can choose to dress casually and also have some fun in the way they greet and address passengers. The company’s symbol on the NYSE is LUV (because they love their customers), and the name of their inflight magazine is Spirit. These brand cues reinforce Southwest Airlines’ brand personality and brand promise to their employees, to their customers, and even to Wall Street everyday.

Brand cues also are evident at Nordstrom department stores, where employees come from behind the counters to hand customers their purchases.

By defining and formalizing the two or three cues that are most important to your business, you are reinforcing to your employees the priorities of your business. Are the cues your company sends intentional? Some businesses send negative cues when their employees interact with customers, yet the owners don’t realize the negative impact these interactions can have on the business and the brand.

Make sure the cues your company sends are positive, consistent, and a true reflection of how you want your business to be run.

A Final Thought

In today’s business climate, just being a woman-owned business is not enough. It is important to differentiate your brand beyond that fact, so that another business — including another woman-owned or minority-owned business — can’t simply come in with the same potential offering at a lower price.

The investment you make in defining and communicating what is truly special about your business will bring you financial results through loyal customers. Leveraging that along with your woman-owned status can create a most powerful and successful combination — one your competitors will be hard-pressed to beat.

KAREN McSTEEN is president of brandMatters (www.brandmatters.com), a certified, woman-owned consulting firm that helps organizations strengthen their businesses by strengthening their brand. She can be contacted at 703-757-0998 (e-mail: kmcsteen@brandmatters.com).

(This article is reprinted from the 2004 Enterprising Women of the Year edition of Enterprising Women magazine. Copyright 2004 Enterprising Women Inc.  Reproduction in whole or part is prohibited, except by express permission of the publisher.)