|
|
Like this article? PLEASE +1 it! |  |
|
Start Building Your Brand
| Guest post by: Jenny Stilwell |
Article Overview: Your brand is not just your company name or logo. It is what your clients and customers experience of your business and service and is what the brand menas to them. This article provides a list of unique experience contact points where the outside world comes in contact with your brand. Ask yourself how you’d score each item out of 10, and if it gets less than 8/10, then your brand needs some work in that area.
 |
Free Download - Create Your Signature IP for Easier & More Successful Marketing By Jenny Stilwell |
Start Building Your Brand
Your brand is not just
your company name or logo. I’m sure you know this, but, what our clients and
customers experience of our business and service is the reality of our brand to
them.
Here
is a quick list of ‘touch points’, which I actually refer to as unique
experience contact points where the outside world comes in contact with your
brand. I have covered 3 broad categories. This list is not exhaustive.
Some
of these overlap, but from this list, ask yourself how you’d score each item
out of 10, and if it gets less than 8/10, then your brand needs some work in
that area. (I recommend working through each unique experience contact point
because sometimes you may score highly on one aspect in one category yet
perform poorly on a similar aspect in another category).
Service businesses as
well as product companies can create strong brands and leverage off that for
increased business, higher market profile, being able to command price
premiums, and ultimately to be valued higher than most when the company is
sold.
It’s worth attending
to your Unique Experience Contact Points to start building your brand.
Direct contact – how many people have
‘experienced’ your brand today?
-
Phone
calls to your office/your team
-
Reception
area (no old magazines or out of date newspapers, or worse, streaming sports if
you’re not a sports-related company)
-
Email
sign offs – are they consistent
-
Messages
on hold
-
Voice
messages
-
Your
own/your team appearance and grooming
-
Your
car
-
Your
accessories – phone, keys, folders, pens
-
Your
events – how they’re run, how they’re conducted and staffed, the materials
given out, the other guests, the content, the venue, etc
-
Communication
– generic and impersonal or customized and professional
-
Client
gifts – quality, tasteful, personalized or generic or inappropriate (eg: wine
for people who don’t drink; chocolate for people who don’t like it; cakes and
biscuits for coeliacs)
-
Autoresponder
messages
Products and Services
-
Packaging
-
Quality
-
Ease
of use
-
Easy
to understand
-
Price
points
Marketing Materials
-
Signage
-
Logo
and company name
-
Consistency
– company name, brand, url, - across all materials
-
Brochures
-
Website
-
Social
media pages
-
Presentations
-
Proposals
-
Stationery
-
Banners
for events or speaking engagements
-
Colours
of your brand
What’s your
score?
How did you score and what is the impact on your
customer or client perceptions of your business?
What’s Hot in B2B Marketing?
How to Brand Your Business
Building A Better Brand in the New Year
Build Your Reputation
What Is Personal Branding?
The Power of a Brand Name and how to make your own brand powerful
Let Me Tell You About A Truly Great Brand
Are You Hiding In A Schlumpy Brand?
What is Brand Equity?
Overestimating/Oversimplifying Branding Efforts
Brand Enhancer, Detractor or Adolescent: Which One Are You?
Why You Are Making A Colossal Mistake If You Do Not Brand Yourself.
What Do You Stand For? What is Your Brand?
Strategic Branding Questions
Think of Your Brand as an Orange
Motivate Your Team by Creating Brand Champions
Five Easy Ways to Destroy Your Personal Brand
How To Brand Your Business Using Ten Action Items
3 Ways for Industrial Marketers To Evaluate Their Brand
Do Bean Counters Understand Brand Value?
Article Tags: brand expectations, brand image, branding, Your brand
|
About the Author: Jenny Stilwell RSS for Jenny's articles - Visit Jenny's website Want to use this article on your website or your own ezine? No problem! But here's what you MUST include: Jenny Stilwell is the founder of BOSSMENTOR®, a mentoring consultancy providing advice on strategy and business growth for professional, lifestyle-oriented business owners who want to grow the value of their businesses and ultimately spend less time working in them. To get your complimentary copy of Jenny's special report ‘3 Ways to Dramatically Increase Your Income & Business Growth' and receive her fortnightly information on marketing and business strategies that will help you create a better business, visit http://www.bossgroup.com.au Click here to visit Jenny's website   Is Something Missing From Your Business Which Client Are You Create Your Signature IP for Easier More Successful Marketing How Relevant Are You Really To Your Clients Stay Relevant Adapt Reinvent Your Offer |
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: 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: Getting Started With Social Media
- Hi,
Start your campaign on twitter and face book. Both are great social platforms to promote your business. If you want to connect with your customers and want to maintain a close relationship with them face book is a very good platform.So much is the impact that Some restaurants today, book tables through face book, inform about their new dishes etc. You need to have some good contacts initially to establish your presence in face book. Twitter is a good platform to promote your company and services, inform about new releases or launches. You can establish a contact base at twitter comparatively faster than face book even with out having any initial contacts. Google Buzz is also a good social platform, the advantage of buzz is that you can tweet as well as blog. writing blogs related to your line of business, could help you drive some traffic to your site.
How you do social media is very important, too much of self-promotion will not yield result, you can promote your business once a while but your focus should be more about providing your followers or fans or friends with useful information, sharing your knowledge and interesting contents. Building a reputation is crucial.
Re: Should you hire ambitious workers or employees with no goals
- According to Guy Kawasaki, he says "you should only hire and keep people that you'd hustle over to and engage in a conversation...Life is too short to work with people you don't naturally like-especially in a young, small organization" ("The Art of the Start" pg 112). I think the reverse is also true and I wouldn't want to work for anyone I didn't like or want to talk to if I saw him/her outside of the office.
In addition, Kawasaki also says "Steve Jobs has a saying that A players hire A players; B players hire C players; and C players hire D players...This trickle-down effect causes bozo explosions in companies. If there is one thing a CEO must do, it's hire a management team that is better than he is" ("The Art of the Start" pg 101). Kawasaki's quote is definitely in favor of hiring the ambitious worker, but do most CEO's even have the humility to admit that someone is better than them?
Re: How can I promote my site?
- To promote website online you need to hire professional SEO expert because you have to perform the below activities for your website promotion:-
Start On page optimization which includes the following task:-
1. Meta tag optimization
2. Header Tag Optimization
3. Alt tag Optimization
4. Content Optimization
5. Anchor Text Optimization
6. URL Optimization
7. Navigation Optimization
After On page optimization, Start off Page Optimization which includes the following task:-
1. Link building
2. Directory submission
3. Classified Ads submission
4. Article submission
5. Press Release submission
6. Social Bookmarking
7. Business Listing
8. Local Listing
9. Blog Optimization
10. PPT Creation & Optimization
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.
by: 
How To Use Carbon Copy Pro As A Strategic Tool For Your Business
Best Automated Forex Trading Strategy
Build Your List with Joint Venture Giveaway Events
May 2012 Top 100 Social Media Experts to Follow on Twitter
What to measure to be phenomenally successful in business
Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!
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.