Expand your Brand

| December 2008 Posted in Consulting, News |

0 Comments Tags: branding, business blog

What is Branding?

Well, my favorite definition for branding comes from wiktionary.org,

branding – process in which a mark, usually a symbol or ornamental pattern, is burned into the skin of a living personal or animal.

I picked this definition because I believe that it gives us a visual image of what branding is, when you create a brand and then spend time building that brand, exposing that brand you want people to know that that brand belongs to you! It’s not a pride issue, its business! People remember brands more often then they remember the CEO of that brand. Oh, as a side not, I have a little suggestion, if you can come up with a catchy jingle to go with your brand people will start singing it at the most inappropriate times without any warning. Its strange, it’s like they can never get it out of their head!?

Every time a farmer or rancher purchases more livestock they have to brand it. Well, I guess they don’t have to, but if they want to be sure to keep it, it is a wise idea for that farmer or rancher to mark his property.

A clothing designer would always be sure to place their brand on the clothing somewhere.

Every company has a logo, a tradename or trademark…something that they use to distinguish themselves. If you are business owner with out one of these things, you should work on it, get one soon.

To answer the question, What is Branding? A brand is your mark, the mark that represents you, your business, your style. Who you are and what you do! And branding is the process of marking your property, so people know who it belongs to.

Why is having a brand and branding your business important?

Its simple really. You want to separate yourself from your competitors. You want to stand out, and the bigger the brand (meaning popularity), bigger the price tag. And maybe its not about the price tag as much as it is about being a leader. For example, I think that MAC computers has done a great job of branding themselves and their products as the better solution. They have been providing great products for years, and so when they slap their brand on something, most people want it. And the other important thing about branding is customer service or customer relationships. If you want people to want your brand build relationships with them, be willing to solve their problems.

How to market or expand your brand?

First off, let me start by saying there are wrong ways to build your brand, and not every effort will end successfully. Look at this attempt;

**Disclaimer, no animals were hurt while filming this video.

Clearly there is a right way, and a wrong way to brand something! And I can a sure you that it is more painful to do it the wrong way and then to try and fix your mess later.

So lets talk about expanding your brand. When I talk with business owners and CEOs, they always want to know how they can reach out to more of their market. How can they drive more conversions. Now most business savvy people have already started to take advantage of a advertising method that was often not thought a lot about. Internet Marketing. I work with a lot of business owners that want to use google adwords and other advertising methods to expose their brand to consumers on the internet. I think that google adwards are effective and we use them in almost all of our marketing campaigns, however, something is changing in the way consumers make their buying decisions. It use to be that ads could sell just about anything, but now, with the use of the internet and all of the information available, consumers are becoming more aware. Content is driving consumer awareness more then ads. And the good thing about google adwords is the fact that it is content based. Meaning, ads are displayed based on relevance to searches made in the search engine.

When it comes to expanding your brand, I like to discuss, what we call The Big 5.

Authority
Presence
Findability
Consumer Relations
Cost Effectiveness

All 5 are important aspects to expanding your brand, and there is one way to combine all 5 into one marketing campaign.

Starting a business blog!

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Call me Directly for a FREE consultation – 480-652-7414 – 877-90 Blogg

Fill out the form below and I will contact you!

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