Branding is more than just your brand or logo. It’s literally everything that you do if you are part of the business industry. It is an activity about how you get out to the marketplace in an effective way. To help establish your brand, here are 4 vital components of branding that you should know about.
Positioning
This is about deciding and getting clear on how you want to position yourself with your customers out on the marketplace and more importantly, your prospective customers as well.
Personality
If your brand had a personality, what would it be? Would it be fun? Would it be serious? Would it be aggressive? You’ll need to explore this in a way you want to be positioned and how your brand’s personality will start to live in your business.
Congruency
If you’re clear in your positioning and your brand’s personality, then everything you do needs to be aligned to that. Every piece of marketing material and every conversation you had with a team member should be aligned with your brand’s personality and positioning. This is how you want to be perceived in the marketplace.
Promise
What doe’s your brand promises? What are you promising to your customers? Is everything you do with your customers aligned to that particular promise?
Do you know the difference between branding and marketing? This is important to think about because there really is a difference, and sometimes, we tend to “roll” these two in one. However, if you think upfront, it will help you as you get into the whole branding insight.
Confusion does reign around branding. Some people are asking if the logo is the brand. Some ask if there really is a difference between branding and marketing. Still, there are small business owners who ask if it is applicable to them. The answer is yes, branding is applicable even to small businesses.
When you’re working towards your business, you have to keep in mind its actual and real value. Focus on its growth. Be committed in making your business grow. Are you enhancing your profit performance? Growth without profit performance doesn’t make sense, nor does profit make a lot of sense without having a great cash flow.
Growth, profit performance and cash flow are important in reducing stress and improving your confidence as a business owner. You should also think about increasing your asset value and protecting and selling your asset. You may not intend to sell your business, but you do want to protect it.
When you got a business that is “saleable”, you may want to keep it. If your business is not “saleable”, then you really don’t have an asset that you can realise and some particular point in time. We don’t know what twists and turns are around the corner. Having a business that could be sold is incredibly important.
Branding is the sum total of everything you do. It is a promise wrapped up in the experience that customers have in doing business with you. It’s about capturing the interest of your target customers. This is what the essence of branding is all about.
