Branding Your Business

WHAT IS A BRAND?

Your brand is more than just the trademark on your letter paper 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, patch at the same time establishing your connectedness to and believability with your prospective customers.

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

Now, I'm not language 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 different 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 disapproval 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 as well marketing your products and services.

HOW DO I CREATE MY OWN BRAND?

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

We saw earlier that your brand necessarily to say who you are, what you do and how you do it. It necessarily to do all these things at the same time as establishing your connectedness to and building credibilty with your prospective customers. Uncalled-for to say, it is dead 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 deed that message across to anyone else, let alone establishing your connectedness and credibility.

=> Write A Mission Statement

So, let's start by creating a mission statement. What is the mission of your business? Apparently you're in business to do a profit. But fashioning a profit is a byproduct of a eminent business. Focus instead on how you choose to attain 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 dependableness wish be high on their list. Cost is as well 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 power see thing like this: "I strive to earn a fair return on my investment of time and money by providing cheap webhosting with secure 99% 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, deed 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, secure 99% 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 as well use the brand to establish your connectedness to your target market and build believability with that market.

Let's turn now to the around the bend 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 consumer 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 dead 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 dependableness 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 Trademark for Your Brand

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

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

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

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

RELIABLE WEBHOSTING

Outstanding dependableness and technical keep at a cost

your small business can afford.

To establish brand awareness, this disapproval necessarily to be used systematically and oft 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 believability and connectedness to your target market. You can hopefully see why your brand necessarily to be suggestive of your mission statement. If, at the same time as you're commerce your products and services you as well push your brand, your brand becomes substitutable with your products and services. And vice versa.

A properly synchronal 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 more commerce 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