What Is A Brand?

What truly makes a brand? It's more than just a flashy logo or a catchy slogan. Mark Drager dives deep into the heart of branding, teaching us that it's the emotional ties and trust that truly define it.

• Brands are about feelings, not just looks.
• Trust is earned, one promise at a time.
• A brand's value? It's in the eyes of the beholder.

Branding is more than business—it's personal. It shapes how customers see you and how you see yourself. So, if you're a business owner, or in sales or marketing, tune in. Mark's insights might just reshape how you think about your brand.

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Links to This Episode

• Apple Podcast
• Spotify
• YouTube
• Audible

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Key Takeaways

• A brand transcends its visual identity - While logos and designs provide a recognizable face for a brand, what truly defines it is the emotional connection it establishes with its audience. This emotional resonance often drives customer loyalty more than aesthetics do.
• The value of a brand lies in its perception - Different people might perceive the same brand differently based on their personal experiences and interactions. This means that a brand's value can vary significantly across its audience.
• Brands are built on trust and reliability - Mark emphasized the importance of brands consistently delivering on their promises. This not only ensures customer satisfaction but also fosters trust, which is foundational for any brand's longevity.

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Top 3 Reasons to Listen

Deep Dive into Branding: Mark Drager provides a comprehensive understanding of branding beyond just logos and aesthetics.

Trust Building: Learn the importance of trust in branding and how to foster it through consistent actions and promises.

Expert Teachings: Mark Drager's seasoned experience and expertise offer invaluable insights that can be applied practically in business.

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More About our Host, Mark Drager

AKA the Badass Brand Architect, 5th Generation Entrepreneur, Host of The How To Sell More Podcast

When he's not podcasting, Mark's the Co-Founder & CEO of SalesLoop. He's a dedicated husband to his high school sweetheart, Jacqueline, and a proud father of four.

Mark didn't follow the typical route to becoming a sales & marketing expert. A connected figure in the entrepreneur community, Mark provides listeners with a unique mix of wit, insight, and straightforward advice.

Some of Mark's unconventional adventures include commandeering a Boeing 737-800 for a day, facing harsh criticism from a billionaire, and shedding 70 lbs in his late 30s. Though he never attended college, Mark stands as proof of the might of maintaining a student mindset and being ever-ready to seek assistance.

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A Transcription of The Talk

So the other day I was out cutting my grass, and we have a big fish property. We're on about a half acre in the city. And so getting out there to cut the grass has become a chore over the last few years. It takes two, three hours to cut even with a riding mower. And you know, there was a point when I first bought the house where I loved cutting the grass. It was like a lot of fun. It was an amazing thing where I could just take time to decompress and get alone and honestly, I still love cutting the grass. But you know, the other night I was out there cutting it and I was rushing around it was late and I had to pick up my daughter from dance. And we had all of this other stuff we had to do. And I was just trying to get this thing cut as fast and quickly as possible. And then it hit me. When I first moved in, I had a lawn, and I took care of the lawn. And at some point over the last few years with how busy everything's gotten, it's become grass to me, I had to cut the grass, as opposed to taking care of my lawn. Now, that might not be a big difference. But in my mind, in my headspace, that's a huge difference. The difference between cutting grass, a practical, functional thing that has to happen, that's a chore and having a lawn, something that I'm proud of something with an aesthetic, something that says something about the owners who live there, very different things.

And then I realized that there was a time in my life where we had a house, right? We had an apartment, my wife and I lived in when we were young, and then we bought a house and it was a house. But there must be a difference between a house and a home. Right? Like what's the difference between a house and a home? Well, a house is an asset. It's functional, you know, condo, house, whatever you want to call it. But it's this place where you go and you rest your head and you sleep and you know, you got to go back to your house. But a home. Home is something more right? There's like a soul there. There's something there that makes it feel differently, you're going home, right? Like, oh, it just it just feels different, doesn't it? And so you either see where I'm going with this? Because we're talking about brand. Or you're saying Mark, what the hell does this have to do with brand? Well, what's the difference between a logo and a brand? What's the difference between some fonts and a brand? What's the difference between some colours and a brand? And what is a brand, actually, and what isn't it? Well, just like you know grass versus a lawn or a house versus a home? Most people think of a brand is a name for some terms, or some designs or some symbols and I'll give you the definition right? A brand is a noun, right? It's a name or design or symbols or any other feature that identifies one seller's goods or services as distinct from those of the other sellers. Oh, Yan, What a boring definition. And so most people think of a brand as as the colors as the logos as the fonts is the tagline, right? Like that's the brand, right? That's not a brand at all. I mean, that's a brand from a definition point of view. But just like grass is different than a lawn and a house is different than a home your brand is actually how you intentionally choose to be perceived.

This is how you look. This is what you say. This is how you make people feel.

And your brand is the foundation that you're advertising in your marketing, your sales, your social media, your community building, your customer service, your onboarding, really like every effort in your business is built upon. Everything that you put out there is your brand, how you answer the phone, how you send out invoices, how you do whatever Christmas gifts that you might send to people, how you onboard clients, how you fire clients if they're not a good fit, how you hire staff, your culture, like every single aspect of this makes up the brand. And what you put out in your look and your feel and what you say and how you say it, if this isn't aligned with what people feel when they actually start talking to you. And they start working through your process and meeting you. And if this isn't aligned with how people feel inside the company from a culture point of view and coming into work, and if this isn't aligned with how you deliver everything, once people are working with you, whether this is on the customer side or even on the in-house side with your team. If all of this stuff isn't aligned, then your brand is broken. You are not getting everything you could out of it. You are not reaping all the rewards; you're not maximizing all the potential. If you are losing time, you are losing money, and you're wasting future earning potential. Because things are out of alignment, and people can feel that. And so there are certain types of business owners, there are certain types of entrepreneurs who come from different backgrounds that value brands more than others. So if you come from a sales and marketing background, you know the power and the importance of a brand. But if you come from, say, an operations background, a finance background, tech systems, project management, if you are more on kind of, let's say, the internal operations side, and you find yourself becoming a business owner and building up a business, often I'm not gonna say all the time, but often, people with that background see business in more functional terms. And brand can be this really soft, you know, I was gonna say dysfunctional, it's not dysfunctional, it's, it's what's the opposite, it's an aesthetic, it's an aesthetic look, aesthetic feel. And in my experience, the people who are more operations or systems-focused or engineering-focused, they love aesthetics, you know, they, they have the cars, they have the clothes, they have the equipment, the tech, the computers, they love all of that stuff because they understand the power of it.

Here's the edited transcription of the second part of batch 2, following your provided rules:

But when it comes to their company, for some reason, they don't roll it in, they don't leverage it for themselves. And so your brand is so much more than a name, but your name is your brand, and a logo, but your logo supports your brand, or your design or your colours or what have you. And so earlier I mentioned the importance of understanding how you look, and what you say, and how you make people feel. I call this a brand stack. And so at the very bottom of this brand stack, if you think of it like a hierarchy of needs, like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you know, you cannot move up a level until you've kind of knocked out the previous level. And so how you look is at the very bottom of this foundation. Because you can hire a designer, you can go to Fiverr, you can, there's a ton of different things you can do. But as long as you have consistent, solid colours based on colour theory, that actually make people feel a certain way and are super functional. And you're consistent with it. As long as you have fonts that support the brand feeling and tone that you're looking to put out there. Because different fonts have different shapes of different styles convey different feelings and emotions. As long as you have a logo that's really functional and can work on small and work on large and is great colours and a good punch out and all of that stuff. And it's because clarity has a certain feeling and a certain design and helps you stand out as long as your photography is standardized, and I can keep going with this. But all of these things, as long as they're good. And as long as they're consistent. And as long as they're smart. You can have a great foundational how you look, your brand identity. And this is key. And so again, you can go to a designer, you can go to Fiverr, you can go anywhere you want. But what we're really looking for is to make sure that it fits to make sure that it that it feels right and to make sure that it stands out and is consistent. I want to give you a few things on the how you look side. So you can just start to see how powerful a brand is and how far it stretches. So your brand identity, how you look, the bottom of the brand stack. On the technical side, you're going to think design and quality. So this is as I mentioned, the logo, the colors, the font, photography, iconography. Also your landing pages, your sales funnels, and your website is going to be your social content or any courses you might create, your packaging. This can also be the platforms you choose to be on. So like which social platforms you choose to be on is an aesthetic look. Are you on Pinterest? Does it make sense? Are you on TikTok? Does it make sense? This is gonna be your video content or your graphics. It might be a studio setup if you make content, audio quality, your pitch decks, keynote presentations, your book covers, any branded merchandise, any sales sheets, any demo sheets, any case studies, just think about all the stuff on how it looks now. But there's this intangible side though as well. And this is how you come across. And so this can be what you or your team wears, who you're seen with, the places you choose to go. So think about the different networks, the different conferences, the different opportunities, the things you choose to do, what type of lifestyle you have, that you put out there, the publications you've been featured in, the amount of content you put out, like the actual amount, the frequency of content says something about you, the size and quality of your network, the level of your health, your confidence, all of these things go into how you're intentionally perceived. Again, your brand is how you choose to be intentionally perceived. And each one of these elements and more go into how people perceive you from a local point of view.

Now let's move up to the next level of the brand stack. Let's move up to what you say. Now what you say is really hard and challenging because there have been studies that have been done but every single day All businesses are wasting time, money, and potential because they're saying the wrong things to the wrong people at the wrong times. Saying the wrong things to the wrong people at the wrong times costs a lot of money. And so ideally, we're saying the right things to the right people at the right times, right. And so what you say is the next level up your brand stack. And on the technical side, I want you to think of things like positioning, copy. So there's going to be like your purpose and your values, your backstory and bio, your taglines, the calls to action you use how you introduce your product or service or offering how you differentiate yourself from the competition.

The key features and benefits of your sales pitch, how you describe your business, or how you move people through an ascension model, how you upsell them, how you handle your objections, social proof, testimonials, case studies, your customer service team, your Client Onboarding, the training that you offer, the articles, the posts, the content marketing, the email marketing is so much more, right, this is all what you say. And a really compelling, strong, consistent brand, with a unique voice will help you stand out. But you can see that this is why your brand is the foundational element. And once you unlock this, it turns it basically turns your sales engine on.

Now, there's also an intangible side to this. But just like with how you look, there's two different sides on the what you say, there's two different sides and this intangible side is how you come across. It's not what you say, it's how you say it. And so there's going to be your brand voice. How you say what you say? How clear or sharp your points are, how you speak. So your pace, your cadence, the language and verbiage you use? Is it super jargony? Is it super technical? Is it super inside? Or is it you know how to talk and like you're talking to a five-year-old, which we often have to do but we don't think we have to do it, whether you ramble or overtalk or overshare or oversell like I tend to. It's whether you write in an active or passive voice where you stand for the right things, whether you're against other things like so much more than this, but now you can see how your brand also impacts what you say.

Now let's move up to the top of the pyramid, the top of the brand stack, the top of the hierarchy of needs. And this is how you make people feel, your brand personality. This needs to be 100% surety. And it needs to be based on your leadership's personality or whoever's leading the company that it's very, very hard to create a unique personality for a company because a company is made up of people. And those people make certain decisions and act in certain ways and have a certain culture. And so the people and the culture are what your brand should be built on. Because that's, frankly, the truest you're ever going to be you to hold true to you to have that consistency from end to end as your prospects move through the entire process. And then stick with you and stay with you. Make sure there's consistency, make sure you're not throwing people off, make sure that it's true to the people and the culture. That is what we need to focus on. So this is going to be things like your personality, your level of energy and intensity that you bring to conversations, whether you give the feeling of being cheap or expensive, whether you're corporate or a little bit more agile, and chaotic, whether you move really slowly, or you're super quick, like the type of approach and feeling you give off the confidence and certainty you communicate with if you use fear and scarcity and pain avoidance in your selling process, or do you use hope and abundance and gain. The guarantees are the promises that you choose to make.

If you sell, and I say if because some people sell stuff without ever selling stuff, if you know what I mean, or how aggressively you choose to sell, whether you're trustworthy, whether you're honourable, and there's so much more to this. Off the top, I said that this whole episode was about what a brand is. And what it isn't. A brand is everything. What it isn't, is just one thing. It's not just a logo, not just colours. It's not just awareness, advertising, like throwing some banner ads up somewhere and paying money or just sponsoring an event. But if you sponsored an event, the events you choose to sponsor and how you choose to sponsor it, say something about your brand. And if you do awareness advertising, where you choose to advertise and what you choose to say and how it looks and how it makes people feel, says something about your brand. And every single touchpoint every single conversation every time someone connects with you, the way that the interaction, the feeling, how you look, what you say and how you make people feel, the brand stack at every single element is your brand. I hope in some small way. I've shared just how powerful this is. I want you to imagine two different types of companies. They both do the exact same thing. Let's say that let's say that they're they sell yoga pants. Let's say it's you against Lululemon. Now you can say yeah, Lululemon man. They got a lot of money. They got a lot of time, they got a lot of team, they got a lot of staff, they have all these resources that I don't have with my yoga pants, selling company, but truth is, you don't have to match them dollar for dollar, person for person, element for element, time for time, tactic for tactic…because you could create your own brand for your own people. It's different than Lululemon. You can create, you know, a reason for people to pick you a damn good reason for people to pick you. And that comes down to how you intentionally choose to be perceived. And ultimately, that comes down to your brand.

So as we move to the wrap-up, let's hit the three-point round-up.

Number one, I think I've flogged this horse as much as I can. Your brand is so much more than simply some logos and some other stuff, there's a lot of depth to it.

Number two, your brand's foundation is the brand stack, how you look, what you say, and how you make people feel; you can pick each of these things. And ultimately, I would suggest that you not only pick what's true to you, but you figure out what your customers your high-value customers want and desire the most. And you look at your competition in the marketplace. So that way, you to develop how you look and what you say and how you make people feel in a way that really appeals to your customers, and is really, really different than your competition. So you stand out. Now I'll share in future episodes how to do this because this is something that we do time and time again is really dear to us. And I've seen the impact of this. But for this episode, I just want to say it's really important that you understand the power of a brand stack. And that you start to intentionally think about how you look, what you say, and how you make people feel aligned with your customers. And in a way that's different than your competition.

And number three, this is probably the most important time, money and potential are wasted every day. Because the wrong messages are sent to the wrong people at the wrong times. You have to get this fixed. And the place to start is by working through some of these brand exercises that I've shared today or again in future episodes.