Not long ago, the 60 Second Marketer ran a post called What Walmart Could Learn from Google and Starbucks. In it, we discussed the challenges Walmart faced regarding its perception in the marketplace.

The essence of the piece was that Walmart, in its efforts to keep costs down, was sometimes overly-aggressive with its suppliers. On several occasions, we’ve heard from suppliers and manufacturers who worked directly with Walmart about the tactics they used to get the lowest prices possible.

(In fairness, one of our readers had this to say about our previous post, “The perception that Wal-Mart somehow abuses their suppliers comes as a surprise to me–I have called on Wal-Mart for many years and while their standards are high and they are tough negotiators, they are exceptionally fair in their business practices. I do not know one manufacturer with Wal-Mart as one of their top five accounts where Wal-Mart isn’t the most profitable of the five. Wal-Mart’s brand image among their shoppers and among their suppliers are two totally different things.”

We followed that story up with another one called Will Walmart’s New Marketing Improve the Company’s Image? In that posting, we outlined the efforts of Stephen Quinn, who was helping run the marketing efforts for Walmart. Mr. Quinn was working diligently to promote the best of Walmart in all of its marketing and communications programs.

Our completely-unscientific-and-pretty-much-a-hunch point-of-view is that Walmart’s new marketing efforts are a) genuine and, b) beginning to take a hold. The company has conducted an outreach program to help bloggers better understand who they are and what they’re about. (And, no, we’re not one of the blogs who heard from them.) The company also conducted a “Money Management Day” recently that was designed to help customers get their finances back on track.

What are the lessons marketers of all stripes and colors can learn from Walmart’s efforts? We’ve come up with 5 ideas that you can put to use in your company:

1. Find out who your company really is. Remember, a company is usually a reflection of its founder or CEO. Larry Ellison, the founder and CEO of Oracle,  once hired people to sort through Microsoft employee’s garbage to steal corporate secrets. His primary competitor is Bill Gates, who is donating his billions to charity. The bottom line: You want someone like Bill Gates as your CEO, not Larry Ellison.
2. Get buy-in on your brand essence. You can’t work in a silo, come up with a brand essence and then tell everyone what it is. That just doesn’t work. Instead, you have to engage employees in the process of developing the brand essence. You can do that through surveys, focus groups, executive interviews, etc. 
3. Create multiple versions of your elevator statement. As you know, an elevator statement is something an employee could say on a 20-second elevator ride that would convince someone to buy your product or service. But not all elevator rides are 20-seconds. Some are 5 seconds and some are 5 minutes (if the elevator is busted). So be sure to create multiple versions of your Elevator Statement. And be sure to end your Elevator Statement with an open-ended question like “So, when are you planning on buying your next car?” or “Where are you shopping for school supplies?” Open-ended questions change the Elevator Statement from a monologue to a dialogue, which is a good thing.
4. Develop a marketing program that focuses on what makes you different from your competitors. Communicating your differentiator sounds so obvious, but what was true 50 years ago is still true today — figure out what makes your brand different and tell people about it.
   
5. Make sure your brand essence comes through in everything you do. Remember, it’s not just about doing a press release or an ad campaign. Your brand essence should come through in the way your receptionist answers the phone, the colors you use  in your logo and even the copy you use in your paid search campaign.

What’s the ultimate bottom line in all this? It’s that Walmart has worked very hard to figure out what its brand essence is, that they’ve worked very hard to try to communicate that brand essence to consumers, and that you can use the same techniques Walmart uses to position your product or service as a better option than your competitor’s.

That’s good news for Walmart and it’s good news for you.