Appearance and Branding, often the first thing a potential client or customer will come in contact with when being introduced to your product or service. It happens long before they walk through the front door or say hello to the person at the front desk. It includes brochures, signage, your website, company logo just about anything that you put your name to. Whether or not it is something you put much thought into as the owner, you better believe your client does and is right now.
Let me share with you a brief story about a local company who failed to recognize the importance of appearance.
Recently I watched a local restaurant close it’s doors for what I believe to be the 3 (possibly 4th) time in the past few years. Sure it’s not all that uncommon for a restaurant to go under, change hands or be replaced with a more appealing alternative, but in a matter of a few years? Not a single one of them making it for more than a year or two, often times only months? Something isn’t right.
Why?
It’s not location. This particular restaurant is smack dab in the middle of the local shopping hub. There is a hotel 3 doors down and a huge movie theater right across the street. No, not the location.
It’s not the food. Honestly the food
It wasn’t the service. The service was pretty good in my experience. Everyone was nice, polite and happy to serve with a smile. Again not the service.
Not the atmosphere. Similar to that of an Olive Garden. It’s comfortable, again not over the top, but a decent atmosphere. There is a nice bar area, a huge flat screen TV. (You would think that alone would bring in a few off the street or at least a few guests of the hotel down the street which houses it’s fair share of business travelers. So no I wouldn’t say it’s the atmosphere.
So What Then?
In my opinion one of the biggest contributing factors to this particular restaurants persistent failure is do to appearance and branding. The owners, managers, decision makers, whatever the case may be, failed to take a hard look at branding and appearance.
How Can I Be So Sure
I’m not, in all honest there were more than likely a number of contributing factors that plague this restaurant, but I do know that branding and appearance was definitely one of them.
I personally passed by this little place for almost 3 years before figuring out that it was actually a restaurant and then taking the time to walk through the front door. There was nothing that stood out and grabbed me, said hey there is a great restaurant here, come eat. In fact there was nothing there that even said, hey this is a restaurant! To be honest, for the longest time I thought it was an extension of the children’s daycare center next door.
The signage or logo whatever one might call that mess was severely lacking. All this money had been dumped into building a decent restaurant, yet not a single person thought to take the time and invest in the outside appearance. What’s that old saying, “first impressions are everything”?
I wasn’t alone here either, my reaction or lack thereof was quite similar to that of others. More than half the people I mentioned this place to had no idea that it was there and the other half where pretty sure that it was just some low budget buffet that wouldn’t really be worth their time to check out if they were looking for a decent meal.
This isn’t a huge community and the simple fact that so many local people, who more than likely pass by this place each day had the same impression as I, that should tell you something. Imagine what the outsiders and visitors must have thought? Probably not much at.
How Could Some of this Been Avoided?
Simply taking the time to give some thought and invest in their appearance. I am not going to lecture you on how to go about it or who to hire, I am going to simply say, get involved and put some thought into it. The interaction with the person creating your logo, signage, branding etc., should not stop at we are a restaurant, this is our name, put something together for us.
Enlist the right person for the job. If you head out to the local sign company with nothing in hand and ask them to put together a nice sign for you, no doubt they are experienced and are every bit capable of putting together some great signage. However if you head out to the local sign company and ask them to design your logo plus make signage, be sure that they at least have someone who is capable of doing so. If my outlets aren’t working I don’t call the plumber, do you?
So please take some time, put some thought into it and invest in your appearance, if you don’t customers like me might just pass you by.
I also agree that branding and marketing your business is crucial to staying afloat. I am seeing more and more businesses think that they can just jump in the market and make a million. Unfortunately they hit a will and they hit it hard when they realize that their market is saturated with other businesses doing the exact same thing. Truth is, you need to separate yourself and brand yourself to the likings of your target audience. Why do you think PEPSI and other large corps. are branding themselves to the younger generations? Because thats who buys their product. You have to know who your focus group is and then work within current trends to get them in the door. The same goes for e-commerce websites. If I go to a website and its not visually appealing or has what I expect from an e-commerce site then I will not shop there. I don’t care what prices they have or how secure they are. We are all attracted to certain things and that is where branding comes in. Prices, Customer Service, and product can only go so far. Branding and marketing will fill in most of the other voids.