SOP 95 — Climb the three levels of authority

1. Step 3: associate your brand with what they like

Three moves, in order:

Make content aimed at this audience.
Put it out.
Adjust it according to how the audience responds.

Everyone wants less pain, so build the brand from the customer's side of the desk. The running example is the business-law firm from SOP 94 — Pair the brand with what the ideal customer likes, serving assisted-living center owners. The content it starts making sounds like this:

Here is what our firm sees working across assisted-living facilities to lower costs and improve residents' quality of life.
Here is how facilities can set up their accounting to depreciate their investments so they keep more money. (This is offered as an example of useful content; tax treatment is not covered on this page.)
Here is how other facilities lay out their floor plans to fit more residents per square foot and ask less of an overworked staff.

The formats are videos, blogs, articles, booklets and PDFs, given away. Each one attaches the firm to what the owners want and what they need. When an owner finds that something made life better, the business they think of is yours. As the brand grows and gets reinforced, keep looking at every piece from the facility owner's point of view.

Put briefly, there are three ways to make the association: content they like, products they like (free and paid), and appearing next to people they like.

2. The three levels of authority

Owners might agree with your content at first, and even try what it suggests. Turning them into customers for life is a further hill to climb, and the aim is to make that climb as smooth as possible.

The strongest associations, for better and for worse, form around people the customer already knows and trusts. You can speed the climb by borrowing sources they already know and trust. The options run along a broad range, but they fall into three camps, from least authority to most:

What you say. You telling them: advertising yourself and making your stuff known through content, advertisements and outreach. This is the first level, and the least influential.
What other people say. What others tell them counts for far more than what you tell them. Here that means affiliates and other customers.
What they experience themselves. A person's own opinion of their own experience carries by far the most authority. It decides what they tell other people, and over the long run it governs your advertising too.

In short form the chain runs what you say, then what other people say, then what they say, and it is tied to making your products match your promises.

3. The cycle runs both ways

The same cycle turns whether your branding is good or bad.

Good branding. You advertise well and make the first sale. You keep your promises, and good branding follows: strong positive associations. Make them strong enough and customers buy again, and tell others to do the same.

Bad branding. You advertise well and make the first sale. You do not keep your promises, and bad branding follows: a strong negative association. The customer never buys again and talks others out of buying. It becomes a vicious cycle, each customer wearing away more of your reputation.

A premium brand has to deliver something special or it will not win the business; and, the owner adds, it will not keep the business either. You might win the first purchase and never see a second. When you charge premium prices, one practice here is to make sure the product is exceptional and reinforces the brand, and, at worst, does not conflict with it. A reputation only carries you so far; at some point you have to deliver.

Bad products make customers steadily harder to win. New customers get harder to acquire, and the first customers stop buying again and again, which makes business hard.

4. Brand and product shape each other

Brand and product each influence the other. Your brand influences how likely someone is to buy. The product then influences how they see the brand from then on. It also spills onto everything around it. If someone recommended the product, the buyer will see that person differently depending on how good the product turns out to be: bad, and they resent the person for the recommendation; good, and they are more likely to take that person's advice again and think more warmly of them.

The recommender changes how the product is judged. People also read a product through whoever recommends it. If an adult-film performer recommends an accounting firm, a prospective client may assume it is an accounting firm for adult-film performers. Because the relationship runs both ways, decide which values, people and experiences you want connecting the audience to your product, and, just as important, which of the things they hate you want to avoid, remove or ignore.

Advertising matters most early; the product matters most later. In the short term your advertising has the stronger influence on your brand. In the long term your product does, mainly because people have far more meaningful experiences with the product than with your advertisements. The advertisement tells people the thing exists; the branding creates a good association; they buy; from then on the product does much of the branding. Buy that great hat and find a hole in it when it arrives, and if it is your first purchase from the company, you might decide the product is bad, so the brand is bad, and the whole thing is a sham, and then start to resent everyone who recommends it.

The steps so far cover a good deal of starting a brand. To grow a good one, make promises and keep them, over and over again.

5. Patience

Measured over a long enough period, branding returns more than direct-response advertising. In the short term, if all you do is make associations, you might make less than you would with an aggressive offer. Over time, though, how well you deliver, the people who talk about your brand, and the promises you make and keep are what build your reputation: what people associate you with, which is your brand. The wait has a number: five years, without giving up.

Done right, you:

Get higher click-through rates on all advertising: outbound, content and paid.
Close more, over the phone, in person or at checkout.
Close at higher prices, higher by an amount that depends on how strong the brand is.
Keep people buying from you, over and over.
Win customers more cheaply than anyone else and make the most from them.
Get larger and larger customers over time.
Win customers you otherwise would not have, through word of mouth that compounds.
Draw the strongest people in the market, who want to work for the best.
Build an asset with value of its own.

Done wrong, you:

Drive good customers away.
Attract bad ones.
Pay more for customers today than you should.
Pay more for customers over time, as bad word of mouth compounds faster than any other marketing. It feels like you need some new marketing trick, when in fact people who would have bought are not buying because of what others are saying.
Lose customers on the back end.
Keep needing new aggressive offers to win customers.
Always struggle to hire good people, because strong players do not want to work for you.
Keep thinking about changing businesses.

One owner's brand did not appear by magic; it was built on purpose, and these are the steps that built it. There is no trick to it: teach people what you are about, and repeat it every day, indefinitely. Every day someone finds you who has no idea who you are, and they have to be served the same way you served your first fans. Follow the method and the brand is worth something: more clicks, more sales, higher margins and more repeat purchases, all at the lowest cost.

6. What this page does not decide for you

How to get other people talking. The second level names affiliates and other customers and says what they say counts for more. Recruiting affiliates and prompting referrals are not covered on this page.
What to do after a broken promise. Not established on this page. Recovering from a bad pairing is SOP 93 — Choose a market direction, section 4.

7. The checklist

Question	The answer
Step 3's three moves	Make content for the audience; put it out; adjust it to the response
Ways to associate	Content they like; products they like, free and paid; appearing next to people they like
The three levels, least to most authority	What you say; what other people say; what they experience themselves
What keeps the cycle good	Keep your promises; make the product match them
Short term and long term	Advertising shapes the brand early; the product shapes it later
A premium price	Deliver something special; one practice is an exceptional product that, at worst, does not conflict with the brand
How long	Longer than a direct-response campaign; five years, without giving up

8. What this page does not cover

Tax and accounting treatment are not covered on this page. Choosing whom to serve and what they like is SOP 94; moving the market, pivots and mistakes are SOP 93; the measures of reach, influence and direction are SOP 92 — Measure brand as reach, influence and direction.