Who will the real winners be?
All this spells good news if you REALLY want to take a position of brand leadership. If you move fast, you can strike first and take a leadership position. You just have to keep up to the minute with market trends and opportunities, and be ready to seize the moment at any given moment. Don’t worry about the size of your business. The smaller you are, the more agile you can be, making it that much easier to capitalize on e-branding opportunities. Search marketing, social networking, podcasts, blogs, and other e-branding tactics take large corporations months and meetings to bring on stream. Small and mid-sized companies are nimble enough and entrepreneurial enough to make them happen today.
If you win the race, you own the space.
Remember, first is where you want to be, no matter what business you are in. Because he or she who wins the race, owns the space. Once you’ve staked your claim as leader of a specific business segment or category, no one else can be first. You own the top spot, and the market recognition that can only be claimed by category leaders.
Now, not everyone can be first. So if you just happen to get caught one step behind, don’t drop out of the running. Take full advantage of being second, instead. Tell the world you wanted to wait just long enough to learn from the other guy’s mistakes. Or, do what Avis has been doing from the dawn of the rental car business: turn being second into your vow to try harder for your customers.
Whatever you do, do it fast.
Don’t over-think things when it comes to communicating your brand. The world-renowned scientist and lecturer, Edward Lorenz, who died earlier this year, shared this piece of wisdom with his adoring students, "You're only wrong if you never make a decision in the first place."
When it comes to branding, it is always better to take action, and then adjust your actions along the way, than to agonize over perfection and miss an opportunity to gain a competitive edge. We’re living in an age of instantaneous change. Every time you delay a branding initiative – whether online or offline – there is probably a competitor out there not delaying - taking swift action, instead, and building new customer relationships that could be yours.
Perfecting your brand is a process, not an event.
Of course, consistency and continuity are critical to strong brand development. But don’t sweat the small stuff at the expense of what really matters. There’s always the opportunity to keep refining your image along the way. Even the Coca Cola’s of the world keep evolving. Don’t waste time trying to make everything perfect. The famous and highly successful film producer Joseph E. Levine put it this way, "If I tried to make my movies perfect, I never would have finished a single one."
Your business can’t afford to wait for you to make it perfect, no matter what "it" is. You just have to keep making the best decisions you can, based on the best information at hand. But do so quickly, because in the age of e, tomorrow’s too late.
The Need For Speed In The Age Of e. - To learn more about this author, visit Ed Delia's Website.
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Ed Delia
(Visit Ed's Website)
Ed Delia grew up in the dynamic world of
marketing, and was named president of
Delia Associates in 1998, assuming full
control of the company his father founded
in 1964. Under Ed’s direction, Delia
Associates has directly contributed to the
growth of a variety of clients.
Ed is committed to the welfare of the
local business community and donates a
significant portion of his energies to the
economic development of the region. He was
a board member of the Hunterdon County
YMCA, and acting PR/Marketing Committee
Chair. He is also active with the
Hunterdon County Polytech Academy.
Ed is president of the New Jersey Chapter
of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO).
He was a founding member of Hunterdon
Young Professionals & Executives (HYPE) in
addition to the Flemington Chapter of
Business Networking International (BNI).
He served as board member of the Somerset
Business Education Partnership and the
Hunterdon Economic Partnership (HEP).
Delia graduated high school from the
Lawrenceville School (Lawrenceville, NJ).
He earned his BA in English from Dickinson
College. Ed is a frequent speaker on
branding, marketing, and creative
thinking.
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