brand strategy, how to brand yourself, brand your business, Albany, NY

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4 Easy Steps to Build YOUR Brand:

1
Create a unique and easily identified representation of your offering.

Your brand should be able to represent your business without explanation. This is done with a variety of components, begining with your logo. To be effective, your logo should emulate your core business. Color, scale, use of typeface and taglines, if any, all contribute to the ability of a logo to further your brand.
The other components that contribute to the growth of a brand are:

Visual Communications - stationary, print communications, signage, office presentation, website interface, product packaging, uniforms, event presence, shipping components, coupons, etc.

Passive Communications - marketing communications, sales presentations, internal communications, newsletters, emails, shareholder statements, annual reports, coupons, the "hold message" on your phone system, the list goes on.

Interpersonal Communications - how you describe your business (think one minute infomercial), the way the phone is answered, how you interact with customers during and after the sales process, etc. Also, keep in mind that how you convey your mission through your organization's culture WILL directly affect how your employees convey it to the outside world!

2
Generate guidelines and tools for every part of the business to actively support the brand.

This can be challenging but it is very worth the effort. By assessing how the components listed above (visual, passive and interpersonal communications) play into your organization's day-to-day operations, you should be able to identify opportunities to promote your brand.

Aside from the obvious, you may consider creating a catchy, yet respectable script for the receptionist, specific copy that appears on the bottom of every invoice or guidelines for the presentation of key components on internal and external communications. Upon repeated exposure to your brand, your audience of existing customers and prospects will begin to recognize your brand...which eventually contributes to increased market share. The bottom line is that you want them to remember you when it is time to find a solution or make the decision!

3
Research and Respond to keep your brand current with your business as it grows.

As your business responds to the ever-changing trends of a comepetitive marketplace your brand may also need to adapt. Rarely will a brand live its life unchanged. Even the branding masters such as Coca Cola, Nike and Ford have had to adapt their brand to emerging trends to maintain their dominant positioning.

Remember to continually research what the competition is doing, how well you are regarded by your audiences and how effectively your brand is performing. Your response to your findings could be as simple as an updated tagline, new color or as significant as a total brand makeover, depending the specific needs of your business.

4
Perpetuate it! Apply it to everything you do, every time you do it!

There are many ways to contribute to the furthering of your brand without hitting your audience over the head with it. Use your imagination and encourage members of your organization from every level to find new ways to convey your organizational mission throughout their department, and be sure to reward them for their creativity!

Next issue: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Help your prospects find you! What you can do to improve your site's performance on the web.
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