Do your brand promises something to your customers? Maybe some uncompromised quality, lowest prices, most innovative designs, unparalleled durability, or matchless customer support service? Theoretically, a brand promise is a statement that the company makes to its customers. Ideally, an established brand is in itself a promise. It's not just a name, not merely an idea and most certainly not limited to a logo. Brand name is an image, trust and a set of expectations all associated with the brand. Till now only large companies have successfully used the power of brand promise, however, there is no reason why some small businesses cannot reap the benefits of branding in their respective niche.

Planning a brand promise:

Planning a brand promise goes beyond thinking of some fascinating tag line with a smart play on words. Planning your product or services as a brand starts from the very early stage of your business planning. You need to build your business around your brand promise. Your budget, advertising, sales, each and everything should be according to your brand promise. Think from the customer's perspective, what unique offer do you have? Why would some customer want to buy from you repeatedly? The promise must be distinctive, apart from being deliverable.

Delivering what you promised:

Promises are meant to be broken? Don't even think of this phrase when talking about brand promise. A brand that fails to deliver on its promises is a brand lost forever. It's not about delivering once; it's about delivering again and again. It's about delivering each and every time a customer buys from you. That's how you achieve customer loyalty. You cannot start with promising for higher quality and after realizing that you are unable to deliver, change it to lowest prices.

Putting it across your employees:

Remembering what you have promised to deliver is easy if you are a sole proprietor. The things may get a little difficult if you are running or managing a large group of employees. Many times the employees have no idea (strange but true) of what their business promises to its customers. You need to communicate, train and motivate them to deliver the same.

If you are a small business, start from a single promise (e.g. quality, price or design, one at a time and not all). If needed, you can add more in future. Try to appeal a specific set of customers in your initial brand promise. Instead of changing your brand promise to attract new customers at expense of disturbing your old customers, try coming up with a new product or a new brand.