Importance of Branding

Branding is one of the most important aspects of any business, large or small, retail or B2B. An effective brand strategy gives you a major edge in increasingly competitive markets. But what exactly does "branding" mean? How does it affect a small business like yours?

Simply put, your brand is your promise to your customer. It tells them what they can expect from your products and services, and it differentiates your offering from your competitors'. Your brand is derived from who you are, who you want to be and who people perceive you to be.

Are you the innovative maverick in your industry? Or the experienced, reliable one? Is your product the high-cost, high-quality option, or the low-cost, high-value option? You can't be both, and you can't be all things to all people. Who you are should be based to some extent on who your target customers want and need you to be.

The foundation of your brand is your logo. Your website, packaging and promotional materials--all of which should integrate your logo--communicate your brand.

Brand Strategy & Equity

Your brand strategy is how, what, where, when and to whom you plan on communicating and delivering on your brand messages. Where you advertise is part of your brand strategy. Your distribution channels are also part of your brand strategy. And what you communicate visually and verbally are part of your brand strategy, too.

Consistent, strategic branding leads to a strong brand equity, which means the added value brought to your company's products or services that allows you to charge more for your brand than what identical, unbranded products command. The most obvious example of this is Coke vs. a generic soda. Because Coca-Cola has built a powerful brand equity, it can charge more for its product--and customers will pay that higher price.

The added value intrinsic to brand equity frequently comes in the form of perceived quality or emotional attachment. For example, Nike associates its products with star athletes, hoping customers will transfer their emotional attachment from the athlete to the product. For Nike, it's not just the shoe's features that sell the shoe.

Defining Your Brand

Defining your brand is like a journey of business self-discovery. It can be difficult, time-consuming and uncomfortable. It requires, at the very least, that you answer the questions below:

• What is your company's mission?
• What are the benefits and features of your products or services?
• What do your customers and prospects already think of your company?
• What qualities do you want them to associate with your company?

Do your research. Learn the needs, habits and desires of your current and prospective customers. And don't rely on what you think they think. Know what they think.

Once you've defined your brand, how do you get the word out? Here are a few simple, time-tested tips:

• Get a great logo. Place it everywhere.
• Write down your brand messaging. What are the key messages you want to communicate about your brand? Every employee should be aware of your brand attributes.
• Integrate your brand. Branding extends to every aspect of your business--how you answer your phones, what you or your salespeople wear on sales calls, your e-mail signature, everything.
• Create a "voice" for your company that reflects your brand. This voice should be applied to all written communication and incorporated in the visual imagery of all materials, online and off. Is your brand friendly? Be conversational. Is it ritzy? Be more formal. You get the gist.
• Develop a tagline. Write a memorable, meaningful and concise statement that captures the essence of your brand.
• Design templates and create brand standards for your marketing materials. Use the same color scheme, logo placement, look and feel throughout. You don't need to be fancy, just consistent.
• Be true to your brand. Customers won't return to you--or refer you to someone else--if you don't deliver on your brand promise.
• Be consistent. I placed this point last only because it involves all of the above and is the most important tip I can give you. If you can't do this, your attempts at establishing a brand will fail.

4 Steps to Personal Branding Success

Personal branding helps you stay very productive because you can focus on projects you enjoy and have a sense of purpose and passion behind them. It’s really hard to be productive, without truly loving what you’re doing, because motivation is so critical to achieving maximum results. There are many other benefits for personal brands, such as the ability to demand a premium price, just like Donald Trump has done with the ties and steaks that wear his name. Also, you gain greater visibility and acknowledgement for your work and opportunities that your peers won’t be able to maintain. The four step process (DCCM) that BRAND Capita has developed walks you through self-discovery, all the way to maintaining your brand as it grows.

Discover

In order to really understand who you are and carve out a career path moving forward, investing in self-discovery is critical. In fact, if you don’t spend time learning about yourself, your values, personal mission, and unique attributes, you will be at a disadvantage when marketing your brand to others. Start by removing yourself from distractions and ask yourself, “Who am I?” and, “If I could do anything, what would it be?” Also, when discovering your brand, you’ll want to lay out a development plan for yourself that includes your current situation and your goals broken down in intervals, from one year to twenty years in the future. It’s extremely important to have a destination in your head and on paper before proceeding to create your brand in step two. The most successful individuals will be able to merge their passion with expertise, so that they have the fuel needed to push through adversity, and the skills required to solve customer’s problems. Also, selecting an unsaturated niche that you can claim during this stage is significant for positioning your brand as unique.

Create

Creating your personal brand is all about forming marketing materials that position you as extraordinary in your niche. For instance, now you can create a blog, or a video resume on YouTube or a LinkedIn profile to separate yourself from the other individuals applying for the same jobs as you. The point of creating your brand is to have several materials online and offline that can help sell you. They are all used as talking points that can get a conversation started between you and your audience. Online, they tell your audience more about what you do, what you offer and the benefits of working with you. Offline, they are used in situations where people need a visual display of your brand.

Communicate

Now it’s time to use everything you’ve created to let people know you exist. The communication stage is focused on allowing you to gain the necessary visibility to be recruited based on your passion or what people readily see online. There are many direct and indirect methods of attaining this visibility, such as commenting on blogs or attending in-person networking events in your industry. You can even do some freelance writing for magazines, newspapers, online websites and blogs to get your name out there. When it comes to your own blog, if you build it, they won’t come. You have to find way to attract your audience, which could mean joining forums, interviewing experts, starting a newsletter, networking with people in your industry and much more. In this step, you’ll want to put on your “personal PR” hat and leverage your materials to pitch the press, which includes bloggers and traditional journalists now.

Maintain

As you grow, mature, and accelerate in your career, everything you’ve created has to be updated and accurately represent the current “brand you.” It’s very easy to be careless with your online brand, leaving your websites months or even years old or your LinkedIn profile positioning you as an intern, instead of a marketing manager. Going back to everything you created and updating it with fresh information is critical. Also, you need to monitor your brand online to ensure all conversations about you are positive and factual. Brand maintenance also captures reputation management, where you have to own your Google results by ensuring that you have the right social networking profiles setup and monetized, as well as enough content created or press mentions to own the top ten results for your name in Google.