Branding Your Business Published: Dec 18, 2003

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In this article we look at how creating a strong brand for your business can help you set yourself apart from the pack and lay the right foundation for the future growth of your business.

If you think only big corporate names need to think about things
like brand names, think again. Your brand says a lot about you
and your business, and that's as true for a one person home-
based operation as it is for a multinational conglomerate. In
this article we look at how creating a strong brand for your
business can help you set yourself apart from the pack and lay
the right foundation for the future growth of your business.

WHAT IS A BRAND?

Your brand is more than just the logo on your letterhead and
business cards or your business name. It is your corporate
identity. An effective brand tells the world who you are, what
you do and how you do it, while at the same time establishing
your relevance to, and credibility with, your prospective
customers.

Your brand is also something more ethereal. It is how your
business is perceived by its customers. If your brand has a high
perceived value, you enjoy many advantages over your
competition, especially when it comes to pricing. Why do you
think people are prepared to pay stupid money for items of
clothing with the initials "CK" on them? Perceived value.
Perceived value as a result of very effective brand promotion
resulting in very high brand awareness.

Now, I'm not saying we all need to rush out and start creating
brands that are going to be recognized the world over. Most of
us simply don't have the time or other 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 when 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 constantly be looking for ways to set
yourself apart from your competition. Your brand can do that for
you.

=> More Effective, Efficient Marketing

Another good reason for creating your own brand is to make 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 first 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 about your business

Another benefit of branding is that the efforts you expend
increasing your brand awareness through promoting and marketing
your brand to your target market automatically transfers to your
products and services. So, even when you're advertising your
brand, you're indirectly also marketing your products and
services.



HOW DO I CREATE MY OWN BRAND?

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

We saw earlier that your brand needs to say who you are, what
you do and how you do it. It needs to do all these things at the
same time as establishing your relevance to, and building
credibilty with, your prospective customers. Needless 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 getting that message across to anyone else, let alone
establishing your relevance and credibility.

=> Write A Mission Statement

So, let's start by creating a mission statement. What is the
mission of your business? Obviously you're in business to make a
profit. But making a profit is a byproduct of a successful
business. Focus instead on how you choose to achieve that
profit. What are your core values?

A good place to begin thinking 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?
Different people will be looking for different benefits but you
can bet that they want their website to be accessible to site
visitors so reliability will be high on their list. Price is
also likely to be high on the list as is 24/7 technical support.
What about add-on features such as unlimited email aliases, cgi
support and what-not? These things will be highly important to
some and less important to others. So focus on the benefits that
are likely to be highly relevant to the majority of your target
market. Let's settle for our purposes on reliability, price and
technical support.

Your mission statement might read something like this: "I strive
to earn a fair return on my investment of time and money by
providing affordable webhosting with guaranteed 99% uptime 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 about creating a brand that reinforces and supports
your mission. So, getting 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, guaranteed 99%
uptime and 24/7 telephone technical support.

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

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

=> Describe What You Are Branding

List out your business's key features and characteristics, your
competitive advantages and anything 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 the 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 customer 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 perfectly legitimate name provided it
conveys something about your business. You will 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 reliability and technical support at a
price your small business can afford". I know, I know. You can
do much better, I'm sure.

[pagebreak title='Using your brand']

HOW SHOULD I USE MY BRAND?

=> Create a Logo for Your Brand

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

The logo you create should be able to be used consistently in a
variety of different media. It should be suitable for corporate
letterhead and business cards, as well as for your website and
corporate signage (if any). You do NOT want a confusing mishmash
of logos and banners and heaven knows what else. Everything you
produce needs to use the same, consistent style of logo so that,
over time, your logo becomes synonymous with your brand. Instant
recognition is what you're going for here, so don't dilute it by
using several different logos for different purposes.

=> Consistent Usage of Company Name, Logo and Tag Line

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

RELIABLE WEBHOSTING Outstanding reliability and technical
support at a price your small business can afford.

To establish brand awareness, this branding needs to be used
consistently and frequently 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 credibility and relevance to your target market.
You can hopefully see why your brand needs to be suggestive of
your mission statement. If, at the same time as you're selling
your products and services you also push your brand, your brand
becomes synonymous with your products and services. And vice
versa.

A properly descriptive brand and high brand awareness amongst
your target market will allow you to more easily introduce a
wider range of products and services when they're developed
without having to start by again selling 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.