Benefits of a Customer’s Seal of Approval

Your Brand Values set you apart from the competition. Often brand values are intricately intertwined with marketing and business development strategies. Brand values are intangible promises made tangible through recognizable proven signs for providing value-added service! There’s no fake it ‘till you make it!

A brand value commitment assures customers of consistent performance and trust. When it truly becomes a part of your core business, especially in service, it creates emotional rather than rational bonds.

Brand values build promises between the product/service and the customer that contain implicit assurances of quality in every encounter with the dealership and organization. Brand value is about the total experience every day, every time and without fail. No exceptions!

Important Brand Value Elements:

From a customer’s perspective, brand values contain some very important elements that create perceived value that need to be proven.

1. Personality.
   Collectively, the different facets of brand value give it a personality that’s larger than the sum of what it is that you charge.

2. Brand value tells a story. Each brand, like people, has its own tale that’s intricately intertwined with the public’s perception.

• Never underestimate the importance of this story because people are used to listening to stories. (Here’s additional marketing advice related to stories.)

3. Brand Value is Consistent. Brand values are always the same and this give customers a comfortable, trusting, warm, fuzzy feeling.

• Customers know what they are going to get and they expect it.
• While brand values may have a price tag, shoppers will pay more for this dependability.

Factors that Make Brand Value Important:

While building long-term brands takes time and investment, brands provide the following:

1. Brand values increase sales or achieve many other similar goals in every profit center of the dealership.
2. Brand values create enhanced value beyond average products or services. Even more important, brand values contribute even more value to organizations.
3. Brand values provide and represent a customer’s emotional attachment to the dealership, product and/or service.
4. Brand values are attached and interconnected with a dealership’s or an organization’s history.
5. Brand values can be applied across the organization.
6. Brands create a hook for consumers to remember and for you to market your dealership and organization.

Ask Better Questions:

• Where do you start to build a value added brand?
• Where do you start to create a brand value strategy?
• How do you build value into your dealership’s brand?

Take a deep breath before you contact your ad agency, marketing or branding firm, and work through the questions listed below. Building real value into a brand requires more than dealerships’ slogans and logos. Brand values are about the proven history and personality that your dealership brings to the table.

Here are some questions and tips to help you start developing your dealership’s brand values.

• What does your dealership and organization do well?

• List your organization’s values and service specialties.

• How well do you provide your products or services to customers?

• Consider whether there’s something special, unusual or significant about the way you do business in the automotive retail industry.

• What target market(s) does your dealership sell to and service?

• Think about who your audience is and why?
• Who do you want to sell to and service?

• What do customers really want or expect from your dealership and organization?

• List the benefits that customers derive from your dealership and or service department.

• What does your competition do that you can improve upon?

• What are your dealership’s and organization’s internal strengths and weaknesses relative to your competitors?
• Remember that it’s critical to think from your customers’ point of view.

• How does your dealership set itself apart from the competition?  

• What makes your dealership so special?
• Is it Sales? Is it Service? Is it both?
• What does your dealership’s brand and organization stand for?
• What associations do customers have with it?
• Are they positive or negative?
• How can you improve them?

• What are your dealership’s brand’s visual cues?

• How do your customers and the public perceive them?

• What language, noises, voices, audio, music, sounds are associated with your dealership’s brand value and/or organization?

• Does it sound like a real valuable environment?
• Do you communicate and provide truly outstanding service or just average?
• Do your customers hear value added conversations?

• What colors are connected with your brand?

• Are they inviting?
• Are they too intense?

• What images do these bring to mind and what messages do they send to your customer base?

• How are images used within your dealership’s brand or company?

What do you think about marketing, business development and brand values? What would you add to this list? Why?

Branding the values of your dealership’s business are critical elements in today’s marketing and business development mix. They deliver a level of consistent messaging and knowledge that go beyond slogans and logos. Brand values provide personality, stories and consistency that customers expect and truly deserve.