Branding Your Business

WHAT IS A BRAND?

Your brand is more than just the logotype on your stationery and business cards or your business name. It is your corporate identity. An effective brand tells the earth who you are, what you do and how you do it, piece at the same time establishing your relevancy to and credibleness with your prospective customers.

Your brand is besides thing more ethereal. It is how your business is perceived by its customers. If your brand has a high perceived value, you enjoy galore advantages over your competition, especially once it comes to pricing. Why do you think folk are prepared to pay stupid money for items of article of clothing with the initials "CK" on them? Perceived value. Perceived value as a result of really effective brand promotion consequent in really high brand awareness.

Now, I'm not expression we all need to rush out and start creating brands that are going to be recognized the earth over. Most of us just don't have the time or another resources necessary. What I am suggesting, however, is that it is possible for your brand to dominate your niche.

WHY DO I NEED TO CREATE MY OWN BRAND?

=> Differentiation

We touched on this in the previous section once we looked at what a brand is and how it can be used to increase the perceived value of your products and services. The main reason for creating your own brand is to differentiate yourself from your competition. New websites are a dime a dozen. So are home-based businesses. You need to perpetually be looking for route to set yourself apart from your competition. Your brand can do that for you.

=> Much Effective, Efficient Marketing

Another nice reason for creating your own brand is to do your sales force (even if that's a sales force of one - you) more effective and efficient.

Imagine if you didn't have to spend the 1st 50% of your time with a new prospect explaining who you are, what you do and how you do it. What if your brand had already communicated that for you? You can spend 100% of your time focusing on sales rather than educating your prospects just about your business

Another benefit of stigmatization is that the efforts you expend increasing your brand awareness through promoting and marketing your brand to your target market mechanically transfers to your products and services. So, even as once you're advertising your brand, you're indirectly besides marketing your products and services.

HOW DO I CREATE MY OWN BRAND?

OK, so you're positive you need to create your own brand. Wherever on earth do you start?

We saw earlier that your brand inevitably to say who you are, what you do and how you do it. It inevitably to do all these things at the same time as establishing your relevancy to and building credibilty with your prospective customers. Gratuitous to say, it is absolutely essential, if you are to build your own brand, that *you yourself* have a firm grasp of who you are, what you do and how you do it. If not, you're going to have the devil's own time acquiring that message across to anyone else, let alone establishing your relevancy and credibility.

=> Write A Mission Statement

So, let's start by creating a mission statement. What is the mission of your business? Evidently you're in business to do a profit. But devising a profit is a byproduct of a booming business. Focus instead on how you choose to accomplish that profit. What are your core values?

A nice place to begin thinking just about your mission is to put yourself in the shoes of your customers. Put yourself in their target market. Let's say your business is web hosting. If you're in the market for a web host, what things are important to you? Some folk wish be looking for several benefits but you can bet that they want their website to be available to site visitors so dependability wish be high on their list. Cost is besides likely to be high on the list as is 24/7 technical support. What just about add-on features such as unlimited email aliases, cgi keep and what-not? These things wish be extremely important to several and less important to others. So focus on the benefits that are likely to be extremely relevant to the majority of your target market. Let's settle for our purposes on reliability, cost and technical support.

Your mission statement mightiness see thing like this: "I strive to earn a fair return on my investment of time and money by providing low-cost webhosting with bonded 99% time period and 24/7 telephone technical support". That's a pretty general statement and if you decide to focus on a particular niche of the webhosting market, such as small business, you may want to more narrowly focus on that group in your mission statement.Now that you've written your mission statement, you can begin thinking just about creating a brand that reinforces and supports your mission. So, acquiring back to the fundamental questions of who you are, what you do and how you do it, you can now begin to think of your business in these terms. You're a webhosting provider, you host websites of small businesses and you do that by offering cost-effective webhosting solutions, bonded 99% time period and 24/7 telephone technical support.

When you create your brand, you need to keep the who, what and how firmly in mind but besides use the brand to establish your relevancy to your target market and build credibleness with that market.

Let's turn now to the balmy and bolts of creating your brand.

=> Describe What You Are Branding

List out your business's key features and characteristics, your competitive advantages and thing else that sets you apart from your competition.

Using our webhosting example, you'll focus primarily on the objectives from your mission statement namely, reliable, cost-effective webhosting solutions supported by 24/7 technical support.

=> Identify and Describe Your Target Market

Decide whether you want to target lthe entire webhosting community or only a segment of it such as small business websites. Describe your market.

=> List Names that Suggest the Key Elements from Your Mission Statement

The key elements from your mission statement were reliability, cost-effectiveness and client service. List names that are suggestive of these elements. Let's use Reliable Webhosting for our example. (I don't claim to be a creative genius.)

Don't limit yourself to real words, though. A coined name with no obvious meaning is a absolutely legitimate name provided it conveys thing just about your business. You wish find coined names easier to trademark and secure domain names for too - a definite plus!

=> List Tag Lines that Reinforce Your Mission Statement

We'll use: "Outstanding dependability and technical keep at a cost your small business can afford". I know, I know. You can do more better, I'm sure.

HOW SHOULD I USE MY BRAND?

=> Create a Logotype for Your Brand

Your logotype is NOT your brand but your logotype should allow your brand to be instantly recognized by those familiar with it. To this extent, your logotype helps create and reinforce brand awareness.

The logotype you create should be able to be used systematically in a variety of several media. It should be suitable for corporate stationery and business cards, as well as for your website and corporate collection (if any). You do NOT want a confusing odds and ends of logos and banners and heaven knows what else. Everything you produce inevitably to use the same, consistent style of logotype so that, over time, your logotype becomes similar with your brand. Instant recognition is what you're going for here, so don't dilute it by exploitation several some logos for several purposes.

=> Consistent Usage of Institution Name, Logotype and Tag Line

Going back to our webhosting example, putt the brand name and tagline together, the physical manifestation of your brand wish be:

RELIABLE WEBHOSTING

Outstanding dependability and technical keep at a cost

your small business can afford.

To establish brand awareness, this stigmatization inevitably to be used systematically and often in everything your produce, whether that be letters to clients, business cards, brochures, quotations, invoices, advertising, promotion, on your website, on the front door of your principal place of business and on your products. And don't forget to be consistent in your use of color schemes. These can be powerful brand reinforcers.

=> Marketing and Promotion of Your Brand

Once you've created your brand, you need to market and promote it, in addition to your products and services. This is how you establish your credibleness and relevancy to your target market. You can hopefully see why your brand inevitably to be suggestive of your mission statement. If, at the same time as you're merchandising your products and services you besides push your brand, your brand becomes similar with your products and services. And vice versa.

A properly synchronic brand and high brand awareness amongst your target market wish allow you to more easily introduce a wider range of products and services once they're developed without having to start by once again merchandising who you are, what you do and how you do it first. Your brand has already presold YOU. Your job then is to sell your products and services.

About The Author

Elena Fawkner is editor of the award-winning A Home-Based Business Online ... practical house business ideas, resources and strategies for the work-from-home entrepreneur. http://www.ahbbo.com