5 Tips for Strengthening Your Brand Today

Every communication you send out either reinforces or diminishes your brand image. Inconsistent presentation of your message can erode your credibility in the market. Here are five things you can do today to protect your brand image.

1. Educate your employees on the importance of consistency and brand image - make sure they understand your message and expectations.
2. Develop an official version of your logo and tagline and don't deviate from its use.
3. Use templates to ensure consistency in your client communications - both print and electronic.
4. Review your social media channels to ensure that your posts and interactions are reinforcing your message and brand personality.
5. Monitor what's being said about your brand - set up a Google Alert for your company name to receive regular updates on who's talking about you online.

9 Steps to Defining Your Brand

In today’s market, there are hundreds of businesses competing for customers. In order to win them over, you have to show them that your service or product is better in some demonstrable way (price, quality, etc.). How do you achieve this? Through Branding.

Branding communicates the positive aspects of you and your service or product to your customer. It is the "face" that you show the world and sums up your personality, vision, mission and craft. Proper branding can help you build a strong relationship with your target market and help your business succeed.

Here are 9 questions to answer as you work towards defining your brand:

1. What are you selling? Describe the qualities of your service or product.
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2. What are your core values? How are they reflected in your service or product?
3. What is your mission? If you haven’t written a Business Plan – take time to define what you want to achieve.
4. What makes your service or product unique among all others?
5. Who is your Target Market?
6. What is your tagline? What message does your tagline send to your market?
7. Using steps 1-7, create a description that represents you and your business. Think of this description as your business “personality”. What characteristics stand out? What is your personality like?
8. How can you use the personality you just developed to create a relationship with your Target Market? What characteristics and qualities of your personality are going to draw the attention of your market? What are the “selling points” of your personality?
9. Now, create your brand profile. Write it as if you were writing a biography or personal ad. Use your creativity to describe your brand with words.

Congratulations! You’ve just “branded” yourself and taken a big step to increasing the success of your business. Your brand image is your company’s identity and it will be communicated in numerous ways with frequency and consistency throughout the life of your business. From here on out, every message you send out about your business or product should be targeted to your market and support your brand image through visual or verbal consistency.