Your Brand Is How The Public Remembers You & Your Business
If you say the words Tim Hortons, or Walmart, or Coca Cola to anyone, and an image automatically comes into their minds, then you’ve experienced branding in action. While sometimes overused, or easily confused with advertising and marketing, branding is a distinct and important part of business (and even personal) promotion. While a part of a firm’s overall marketing efforts, branding is more than a logo, or a slogan – in essence a brand is your personal promise to deliver a service or product of a uniform quality – every single time!
Branding is important as it focuses on the impression you and your business make on your target audience. Branding is also about reputation, how past and potential customers think about you and your business. For a brand to be successful that impression should have a dual function. It should tell people what makes your business unique or special and it should always present you in a positive light. The British Petroleum brand (BP) probably didn’t leave too positive an impression on the residents of the Gulf coast following the catastrophic oil spill that saw its shores awash with a viscous blanket of crude oil. Once tarnished a reputation is a difficult thing to restore. Branding and reputation can be viewed as being virtually interchangeable in the minds of the public.
“It should tell people what makes your business unique or special and it should always present you in a positive light”
That being said, developing a brand is not an easy or simple thing. How would you describe your business or service? What do people think of when they think about your business? Can you describe it in a word or two? Effective branding is just as important when marketing a small business here in Nanaimo as it is to an international conglomerate. To brand your business, online, in print or over the airwaves, you cannot be confused about the reasons you’re in business. Branding is all about developing a unique identity for yourself or your business. Your brand is that thing that identifies your firm as being distinct from every other. In essence your brand is the perception people have about you, and what they expect to receive from your company.
“Effective branding is just as important when marketing a small business here in Nanaimo as it is to an international conglomerate”
Running your business there might be two dozen things you do for your clients (a pet store might sell puppies, but it probably also sells chew toys, or does grooming). Branding cannot work well if it’s trying to present a grocery list of products or services. For branding to be effective it must be clear and easy to understand. So before you can even begin to fret about your logo or your brand’s appearance sit down, ideally with your staff or partners, and come up with the one key thing your business delivers. It might be something physical like sandwiches or coffee, it might be emotional like fun or security, or it might even be something esoteric like quality or professionalism. Just find that one key thing, the undeniable “something” that sets your business apart from all others. Do that first and then you can begin in earnest the job of developing your unique and effective corporate branding.
