Your Brand – Part I
Branding encapsulates anything you do that contributes to your customers’ opinions and feelings about your company.
Whether it’s a blog post, photograph, Facebook comment, or Linked In post, your brand needs thoughtful focus in all you do.
A successful brand is built over time and requires consistency. The Golden Arches, Coca Cola Red logo, and the Nike Swish were all carefully crafted to represent the values and Services of their companies.
That includes colors, style, and Images. And all the elements of your brand lead back to your brand story and What Do You Want To Be Known For?
If you’ve been with us from Week 1, you know we value a quarterly reset. That reset requires you to write responses to these three questions –
- Where am I today?
- How am I today?
- Are my goals the same? List them.
Those goals need to be the focus for your long-term content strategy.
What are Brand Essentials?
- A website with brand focus design
- A Content Creation Strategy that requires you to
- Establish your personality
- Build trust
- Social Media
- Find where your customers “hang out” and establish a prescence.
The last piece of Part I is having an authentic Brand Purpose. Your purpose will need to equal your perceived value.
Branding directly correlates to the price people are willing to pay for your product or service. Someone will spend according to their perception of the value of your products or services.
That purpose will support your brand personality. Every brand needs a personality, be it funny, charismatic, nurturing, or obnoxious. We can love them or hate them, but they have proven to be successful if we know what to expect from them. It’s their authenticity.
“Never create your brand personality around being “professional. It is not a personality”.
Crafting your brand is one of the most important steps you’ll take. What makes a good brand?
Brands we love –
- Align with our values
- Impact our lives
- Solve our problem
Brands we respect? We know they’re going to be there when we need them. And getting the public to know, like and trust your brand will need your focus, energy, and a strong value proposition.
Your proposition needs to –
- Have the strongest, clearest voice
- State what you do
- Share how you do it
- And for Whom you do it
- And what makes you different.
To do that you need to know
- Who your customers are
- Their needs and goals
- Be the best qualified to meet their needs.
Clients/customers want to know you understand their business. They want to know how you’ll solve their problems, and have case studies to prove it.
Knowing who your customers are, what they need and their goals will be the focus of Part II. But remember, you don’t own your brand, it resides in the mind of people you’re communicating with. And they buy based on emotion, then they validate their emotional purchase with logicj and reason.
Until next week. In the meantime, please do write your responses in your business journal. Craft a first draft of your brand, and feel free to ask for a friendly, position critique. Request a time here.
