Essential pieces of the Branding Puzzle Part 2

Developing your brand.

In part one we covered the basics of branding and gave you an opportunity to rate yours using our branding assessment worksheet. By doing the assessment you should now have some idea of what areas of your brand are working and those areas that need improvement. Or you may have discovered that you really don’t have a brand.

We will start at the beginning with a very simplified process to create a brand geared for small- and medium-sized businesses that don’t have the resources to invest in an extensive brand development project. But even on a small scale, if you get these things right it will make a difference when attracting your target audience. So let’s get started!

What’s unique about you?

Let’s begin with you and your company. List as many attributes as you can.

• Expertise – Define your strengths and professional focus.
• Values – How do you prefer to do business? What are your attitudes and convictions as they relate to your business?
• Background – How can your professional experience relate to a market niche? What have you done that your competition hasn’t?
• Personality – Honestly assess how your personality can naturally be an asset to your brand.
• Service – Do you have something to offer in your field that no one else does? A product, service, concept, or process?

Rate them in order of priority or strength.

Finding your target market. Who are you selling to?

A successful brand doesn’t appeal to everybody. So let’s determine who your IDEAL prospect is. Don’t make the mistake of thinking the customer is you. More than likely they are not. List as many attributes about this ideal customer as you can. Even go so far as to name them and describe them as a real person.

• What is their age, gender, and ethnicity?
• What kind of lifestyle do they have? Family status?
• What is their profession and income level?
• What do they like to do for recreation?
• Where do they hang out, travel to?
• What do they listen to and read?

You may have more than one target persona for different products or services. Pick the most important/profitable profiles.

Define your company’s unique category.

Now see if you can define your business category – the more narrow the focus the stronger the brand. Can you create a NEW category based on what is unique about your company. Some examples are: Domino’s Pizza cornered the market for home pizza delivery; Mercedes-Benz is synonymous with expensive cars. Narrow the focus to a slice in the market and make your brand stand for that category.

Create your brand with attributes that connect with your target market.

Take one or two of the things that make you and your company unique and fashion them in ways that appeal to your target audience. You want to use words and images that your target audience will associate with you. Develop these into:

• A simple image that can be designed as a simple logo, not an illustration
• A tagline that sums up what you want to be known for
• A positioning statement that defines what you do and for whom
• A business process that appeals to your target market 
• A look and feel for all your marketing tools that includes a font, color palette, type of photos, and style of template

Once you have established these guidelines you are ready to integrate your brand into all of your marketing pieces. Download our Brand Development Worksheet to start.

Key steps to developing your brand:

• Define what makes you and your company unique
• Identify your key customer
• Develop key images and words that can be associated with you