Defining Your Brand

Whether you’re selling a product or offering a service, setting up and establishing a business requires a lot of thought, time and money. There are many things to consider, but what often gets overlooked is defining your brand.

As many of you know, your brand is not the logo design you created for your business name. A brand is the way a product, company, or individual is perceived by those who experience it. 

Jeff Bezos explains it brilliantly in his famous quote—“Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.”

What your customer thinks or says about your business will determine whether you fail or succeed. 

Building and sustaining brand equity is all about creating the right perception with your target audience. Let’s face it, what your customer thinks or says about your business will determine whether you fail or succeed.

Every day, your customers are bombarded with millions of images and messages, and their brains are constantly filtering:

• What’s relevant
• What can be stored away for another time
• What can be discarded 

All decisions percolate in the mind. What a person thinks about a product or service will determine whether they will buy. That’s why creating a positive perception about your brand is so important to your business.

Branding is an integrated strategic approach that permeates everything relating to your business. This may include:

• Your business environment
• Customer service
• Quality of service or product
• Availability of information
• Website accessibility and functionality
• Policies about diversity, inclusion and equality and other relevant topics
• The values of your business
• Marketing resources
• Promotional messaging
• Much more

How are you going to get valuable space in someone’s mind? Thoughtful and strategic consideration is essential to achieving this:

• Which messaging or images works best to create a positive perception of your brand?
• Which communication channels will maximize engagement with your target audience?
• Once you’ve engaged the people you seek, how do you cultivate and maintain the relationship? 

What should you focus on?

• Getting your target audience to: 
  • Go beyond liking your brand, to falling in love with it
  • Always use your product or service
  • Recommend it to their sphere of influence

It’s your prerogative how you define your brand, but branding doesn’t happen overnight. Everything your business does—combined with your consistent messaging—will help you build a strong and lasting brand.

So, what are people saying about your brand?

For support with branding your business, we can help! Let’s talk.

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