Bill Chiaravalle served as Creative Director with world-renowned brand strategy and design firm Landor Associates before founding Brand Navigation, which has been honored with numerous branding, design, and industry awards.
In the same way that your brand name is the key that unlocks your brand image in the mind of consumers, your domain name (the string of characters web users type into a browser to reach your site, such as www.yourbrandname.com), and your social-media handles or monikers are the keys that unlock your brand online.
A brand is so much more than a pretty logo. To win loyal customers, you need to develop a story that represents the quality and character of your organization or product. By then telling that story consistently across all channels and backing it up with exceptional customer service, you gain all the benefits (and profits) that come from being a trusted name in the marketplace.
If you’re a solopreneur — a freelancer, a consultant, or a one-person business dynamo — building a personal brand, essential as it is, may not be enough to fuel your success. You might also want to turn your talents into a branded business that others know and trust.
This stands true especially if you want to compete with established businesses or if you have plans to grow your one-person business into a larger enterprise you can someday sell to a new owner.
There’s a reason personal branding is a priority of the most successful people you know. Those who achieve their goals and ascend to the top of their fields benefit from highly regarded reputations — personal brands — that pave the way for their success.
You’re not making your personal goals
Personal branding is how you manage your reputation and interactions to develop positive images in the minds of those you want to influence.
Branding your business takes a significant amount of thought and effort. In order to get you started in the right direction, you will need to know some lingo. Following are some need-to-know terms:
Brand: The essence and idea of what you stand for. Your brand starts with a vision and grows into a promise about who you are and what you stand for that gets reinforced every time people come in contact with any facet of your business or organization.
By following a few simple rules, you can successfully brand your small business. As you plan, launch, and manage your branding program, remember and train others to remember these three branding rules:
Your brand is a promise that must be reinforced every time people come in contact with any facet of your organization.
Times change, businesses change, consumer interests change, culture changes, and sometimes brands need to change, too. If your brand faces one or more of the events in the following list your brand strength may be at risk and a brand update may be in order:
Major business changes
Major market changes
Ch
Naming your brand is by far the most challenging, momentous, and necessary phase in the process of branding. However, coming up with a good brand name can be tricky. The following list presents qualities of a strong brand name.
Reflects the character of the brand
Describes the brand’s offering
Creates a
Branding is the process that aligns the opinions people hold about your brand with the set of thoughts you want them believe and trust. As you develop your brand, follow these steps, in this order:
Determine what you’re branding and whether your brand will be your one and only or one of several brands in your organization.
Great brands create consumer trust and emotional attachments. As a result, they foster relationships between consumers and products that lead to the following valuable benefits:
Premium pricing: Consumers pay more for branded items that they believe have higher value and lower risk than lesser-known alternatives.