Branding Is Not Just For The Big Boys
By Bob Francis
When we talk about brands or branding we frequently think of Coca-cola or Microsoft or Intel. Indeed these companies pour huge amounts of money into their brands to grow their business and become a worldwide symbol. However branding is not just for the big boys-every company should develop their brand and it need not be expensive.
Let us look at what we mean by brand. One definition is that branding is a means of differentiating your product or service. The aim of the process is to encourage customers to identify with the product, service or even company. A brand therefore promotes an identity and an image that sets it apart in some way from its rivals.
What a brand is not is logos and letterheads. And a brand does not need to relate just to a product it can relate to the company. The Intel “Intel inside” tag line is an example of this. Intel makes thousands of different microprocessors but they all use the tagline Intel inside.
So how do we create a brand?
A number of steps need to be taken to create a brand. The first is to segment your customer base to understand what their needs are and how your product or service meets those needs. You need to understand how this benefits your customers and how you differ from your competitors. If you feel that there is no difference then you need to create a difference. This can be done through your image, product or service, partners or strategic alliances or even how you handle your customers. All and any of these can be differentiators but they need to be defined in terms of what it means to clients, what values they perceive in order to create higher perceived value than your competitors.
Brand experience must equal brand promise. This means that if you pride yourself on customer service, you must ensure that your personnel for instance are not ‘abrupt’ with clients when they phone at an inconvenient time. The banks are prime examples of this. They say in their ads and literature that they have good customer service and they treat you as an individual. But just ask them to close an account and you get the telephone shuffle as you are passed from operator to operator and probably, half way round the world, before you get any satisfaction.
To create a good brand image your messages must be consistent, written as well as verbal. The values behind your brand must be reflected in the way you run your business, how you interact with customers and staff your image and much more.
Ultimately customers must be able to recognise and identify you in a crowded market place and you need to stand apart from your competitors.
(All trademarks are acknowledged.)
Bob Francis is an experienced business consultant spending most of his time helping clients with sales and marketing issues. He can be contacted at bob@abio.ltd.uk
If you would like to review your branding or positioning contact us and one of our consultants will contact you.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bob_Francis
http://EzineArticles.com/?Branding-Is-Not-Just-For-The-Big-Boys&id=839011
Tags: branding, differentiator, image, marketing, message, segment, values
General | Matthew C. Keegan, 23 Nov 07
By 5ubliminal, November 23, 2007 @ 10:36 pm
Why would you post free public articles on your blog? If this your branding… using someone elses work?
Or maybe it’s yours and you post it there. But the very fact your post exists freely and can be used by anyone makes you a very weak brand from my pow.
Write original stuff, rewrite existing stuff, don’t write … just don’t copy/paste!
PS: I see your site is quite new as the archive is only for November. Duplicate content will not make Google love you!
By Matt Keegan, November 24, 2007 @ 7:07 am
5ubliminal, one public article doesn’t make for a site dominated by other people’s stuff. I thought it was a good idea and worth sharing. Occasionally, I’ll share other articles as appropriate.
My brand is currently through my The Article Writer site. After the first of the year I’ll work on fully developing this site.
As far as Google goes, I can’t worry about them. Sure, I optimize my site for the search engines, but they don’t dictate my content exclusively.
By 5ubliminal, November 24, 2007 @ 7:15 am
It was worth sharing but you could have written a short description and just link to it. Copy/Paste of content looks bad no matter how you look at it.
One phrase and one link would have looked so much better. And I don’t discuss the quality of the article here.
Regards.
PS: This is just how I think. Everyone else might be happy with Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V content but I somehow find it insulting to readers. I don’t know…
By Matt Keegan, November 24, 2007 @ 7:33 am
You are entitled to your opinion although I cannot see how anyone would be insulted given that full credit and links to the original article are given. If they objected to the content, then that would be another matter.
Seeing that I get one or two visitors per day at the moment, there isn’t all that much to go around yet. If this site was as busy as my flagship blog, then that might be another matter.
By Mig, November 25, 2007 @ 8:39 am
Well, Matt, it was about time that you started a blog on a domain with your own name. That’s ideal branding.
By Matt Keegan, November 26, 2007 @ 10:48 am
Thanks, Mig and I agree: my name is my brand and harnessing it through a blog makes perfect sense.
By Richard, April 5, 2008 @ 12:33 am
I think 5ubliminal is a little too touchy. I think he forgets or just doesn’t know that the people who write these articles and submit them to places like ezinearticles.com absolutely love it when people use their articles and give them proper credit and a link. It’s basically why most do it.
If anyone doesn’t agree with that point well maybe you’ll agree with me when I say that most people appreciate when bloggers do this as I would have never known about this article/good read if you hadn’t posted it. I find a lot of good stuff when other people post stuff.
Anyways, thanks for the post and good luck!
Richard
By Matthew C. Keegan, April 7, 2008 @ 12:22 pm
Richard, I agree. I have more than 700 articles on ezinearticles.com and am glad when someone takes my article and republishes it provided they leave the author information in tact.
Sure, I could have easily rewritten the article, but that wasn’t my point — I wanted to give credit where credit is due.