Tweet

Building Your Unique Brand Identity

Guest post by: Dan Janal

Article Overview: For small businesses and entrepreneurs to get clients today, your brand must stand out and be unique. How many times have you heard that message? Probably too many times. Yet, it is true. But most people don’t know how to be unique. Here are a few tips on how to brand yourself properly. Legendary speaker Joe Calloway wrote a book called "Becoming a Category of One." I like that positioning! What he is saying is that when people think of a solution provider, only one name comes to mind. You want that name to be you. Adopt the “category of one” mindset that you and only you can accomplish this task.

Building Your Unique Brand Identity

For small businesses and entrepreneurs to get clients today, your brand must stand out and be unique.

How many times have you heard that message? Probably too many times.

Yet, it is true. But most people don’t know how to be unique. Here are a few tips on how to brand yourself properly.

Legendary speaker Joe Calloway wrote a book called "Becoming a Category of One." I like that positioning! What he is saying is that when people think of a solution provider, only one name comes to mind. You want that name to be you. Adopt the “category of one” mindset that you and only you can accomplish this task.

Now the question turns to “what is that task or solution?” Let me explain by focusing on what it is not.

It is not being everything to everyone. Nearly every new entrepreneur and small business makes this mistake. It isn’t bad to have lots of solutions or features, of course, but it makes it hard to stand out and be a category of one. That’s because everyone else is doing the same thing and sending the same messages. You might be great, but it’s hard to stand out when your message and market is the same as everyone else’s.

The true answer in defining how to stand out is to pick an niche and be the leader in that niche.

For example, I received an email the other day for someone who was promoting a message of how to start a business -- not unique. But he was focusing on the 50 and older man who just got laid off or who took a buyout package. Now that's great thinking! If you are in that target market and you searched Google for a consultant to help you, you’d find lots of people. But if you were just cashing your severance check wouldn’t you want to work with someone who understands what it is like to be 57 and trying to figure out what to do with the rest of your life? That’s a different skill set and a different mind set than someone who helps anyone and everyone start a business. The same logic holds true for vertical markets. For example, if you wanted to start a fashion business, wouldn’t you want someone who understand the ins and outs of that industry instead of a jack-of-all-trades?

To brand yourself as a category of one, you must find your niche. This niche probably -- hopefully -- will match your passion as well as your experience.

Here’s another way to define a niche. I have a number of clients who are women authors who have written books about dating. This is another area in which you can become a category of one. That’s because these books focus on women at different stages of their lives -- young and single, divorced with kids, divorced with no kids. divorced with kids under a certain age, widows, young widows, old widows. It was fascinating to see because each group had its own unique issues. For example, what do you tell the children? Do you introduce the man to the children? Do you let the man sleep over? The answers would vary if the children were pre-teen, teen or adult.

If you take these examples and apply them to your business and your message, you will be closer to building a brand that identifies you as unique and a true “category of one.”

Related Articles
  Everything You Do
  Get a Custom Logo Design and watch your Business Grow
  A hard working brand or just another pretty face
  Small Business Brand Identity Strategies
  How Branding Can Lead to a Business's Success...or Failure
  Three Powerful Reasons to Create a Unique Personal Brand
  Harness the Depth of Power In Your Brand
  Image Versus Identity
  What Do You Stand For? What is Your Brand?
  Creating a brand identity
  Branding and Business Identity - Image is Everything!
  Common Personal Branding Mistakes to Avoid
  Special Sales
  5 Steps to Designing a Strategic Brand
  5 Branding Tips for Creating a Bold Small Business Promise
  Why You Should Use Graphic Templates
  3 Benefits a Logo Gives to your Brand
  Branding Concepts
  5 Tools to Build Your Brand Platform
  Make Your Logo Work For You! Five Key Ingredients to an Effective Business Logo

Article Tags: branding, marketing, referrals, sales, small businesses, unique brand identity



Related Forum Posts
Type of business with building - If you owned a building and Wal-Mart was opening its doors across the street in a previously unoccupied area (along with 12-14 small shops), what type of business would you start? Here are the considerations: 1. Money is a non-factor 2. Building is fairly large (10,000) square feet 3. Building is on the corner of a busy intersection (about to get much busier)
Re: This is Marketing Warfare! - Hey GT, I guess this was from a while back, and it'll test your memory a bit but could you possibly elaborate on Unique Selling Proposition? Can you give us some examples of good USPs?
Re: What's in a Name? - Yeah! Bizking, you've nailed it. Unique and uncomplicated brand name is a prerequisite for successful branding. However, branding involves a whole lot of other factors. Then, given an suitable name, what are the top 3 other factors akin to effective branding?
Re: Seven Marketing Strategies To Attract The Affluent Buyer - Hello, Building confidence with positive communication skill is very helpful and it helps in attracting consumers. Regards, sarah_9
Re: Quick Ways To Utilize SEO Effectively - Hi Mary, It will only help if those websites are linking back to you, and then that's still not very affective. It's much better to generate one-way backlinks to your site. Building quality backlinks is the name of the game.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

How do I finance a franchise?

Are You Fulfilled

The OLD Way of Advertising, May Not be so OLD

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.