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Q: I recently became my own boss, joining forces with my brother. I am enjoying this experience very much, but we are struggling with finding ways to draw attention to our business and earn customers’ trust. I’d like your advice on dealing with this.
- Randall De Freitas Trinidad & Tobago

A: Congratulations on your new venture. Setting up a new business is tough, and most fail within the first year—usually due to a poorly executed plan, a lack of public awareness, or shortage of money. At the start of my career, I always tried to address the first two problems by making sure we had a great product/service and that everyone knew about our businesses by way of great publicity and cheeky advertising. I believed if we addressed these two critical issues, it would be easier to tackle the third challenge: generating enough cash to keep the business going. On the whole, this method worked.

In assessing where Virgin didn’t get it right, a clear pattern emerges: Our businesses didn’t succeed when the Virgin difference was hard for customers to grasp—products like drinks, cosmetics and clothing. These businesses had limited marketing budgets and due to the differentiation problem, we couldn’t create lasting awareness of and interest in them.

By nature, I’m not a numbers man, so I didn’t measure the success of a new venture by the money we made. In Virgin Music’s early days, we wanted to create great places to listen to music and meet friends. My sense was that if our staff liked our stores, there was a good chance our customers would, too. At Virgin Records, this attitude meant we signed bands we thought were fun, like The Sex Pistols and The Rolling Stones. Then, we would create a stir about them.

This brings me to a secret to lasting success: Securing your customers’ trust, which should be part and parcel of your differentiation and marketing. At Virgin, we first did this somewhat accidentally by relying on openness and simplicity in our communications with customers. As we’d created companies that everyone on staff was proud of, we were all deeply concerned about quality and customer service. And our marketing focused on why the businesses were different.
When I was preparing to launch Virgin Airlines, Sir Freddie Laker, the late veteran aviator, gave me a key bit of advice. He said Virgin didn’t have the budget to compete with mainstream brands, but the clever use of challenges—like our attempts at setting world records for crossing the Pacific and Atlantic oceans by boat and balloon—and humorous stunts and ads would help raise our profile. It did. We often made headlines, spending a fraction of what our rivals did on marketing.

I also encouraged customers to e-mail me directly and advised our CEOs to do the same; this strengthened our ties with customers. Over the years, we won their trust, and their confidence gives us added impetus to give back. I believe this strategy of differentiating and marketing your product with a view of winning customers’ trust is the way to build a sustainable business. Keep your message simple, direct, honest—and very public. If you do, you and your brother should go far.

RICHARD BRANSON is the founder of the Virgin brand, which houses over 360 companies. If you have a question for him, you can e-mail him at BransonQuestions@Entrepreneur.com. Please include your name and country with the question.

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advertising, customers, publicity, Richard Branson, trust, Virgin, Virgin Airlines, Virgin Music, Virgin Records