Matching Economic Trends With Your Resources to Value Brand

The smart way to expand your customer base and grow your bottom line is my trademarked Inside : Outside Branding System™, a creative and surprisingly simple formula for success that can enhance any company’s products or services.

Here’s how it works.

Look "Outside" for business or consumer trends that are driving growth in related or non-related businesses. Look "Inside" for resources you already have that can be incorporated to embrace that "Outside" trend. Put the two together for your "Match-Up."

Outside: Business or Consumer Trend
Inside: Your Resources
Match-Up: Integrate the Outside trend with your Inside resources!

The goal is to build customer loyalty by adding value to your brand, which can serve to attract new clients attracted to the "extras" you are providing. To do so, you must learn to recognize and capitalize on outside economic, social and cultural trends that are of high interest to the demographic of your existing and potential customer base, and then think creatively in looking at how you can incorporate that trend.

Here is one example of Inside: Outside Branding™ at work:

Gourmet coffee is the latest consumer trend, considered an "affordable luxury" for most demographics. Indeed, many consumers are shopping coffee houses and supermarkets for coffee beans from exotic countries of origin with the same fervor a wine connoisseur would shop for a bottle from a prestigious vintner featuring a trendy blend of grapes.

Today, companies that have nothing to do with the coffee business are branding out by offering gourmet coffee service to their customers. I have a dentist who serves Starbucks brand coffee in his waiting room.

High-end hotels in San Francisco are offering gourmet coffee to their guests, installing special coffee brewers and heavily marketing this service.

One hotel is offering weekly "creative" hours featuring cooking lessons featuring gourmet coffee as an ingredient.
Any business with space for a coffee pot and service cart can do likewise, and your customers will begin associating your brand as more desirable with that extra service attached.

California premium wines represent another strong consumer trend that may have nothing to do with your business at first glance.

The California Wine Institute reports that sales of California wines in the United States are reaching all-time highs each year.

Today, increasing numbers of restaurants and grocery stores with added wine shelf space are featuring in-store wine tastings and wine-related restaurant events that showcase popular California wines.

There literally are hundreds of ways to match outside economic, cultural and social trends with your firm’s inside resources to implement, market and add value to your brand while building client loyalty.

Study the demographics of your client base, and also the demographics of your potential client base. What are their interests, or trends with substantial impact on their lives, which you can incorporate for your Inside: Outside Branding™ approach?

By enlisting the expertise of your staff, or yourself, in fields of interest that might have nothing directly to do with your product or service, you are personalizing your brand while expanding its appeal. It’s a smart way to build your customer base and grow your bottom line.

Just think inside outside!