You are Your Business Brand

If you want to attract customers, you have to have a good marketing strategy. As a small business, especially when you are only starting out, you have to carefully monitor every step. You also have to monitor whether your efforts and strategies are working at attracting and gaining customers.

With small business owners, your business brand often assumes everything that the owner’s personal brand has – the good and the bad.

How do you marry the two so that it’s sustainable and duplicatable by others (team members, assistants) who come to represent your business?

Here are a few tips on how you can start building your own brand:

Your business values – You can only start building your brand when you know what impression you want to make on your customers. Setting your company values is always a good place to start. You can shape your brand based on how you want your customers to remember you. If you have employees, train them in how to act and do business the way your brand does it. Keep in mind that whatever you or your employees do or say gives people an impression of your brand. As a small business with a relatively small workforce, it’s easier for you to control your employees so take advantage of this.

As part of your marketing campaign, choose a simple branding message. This message should convey who you are and should attract consumers to try your products or services. It should be aligned with your products or services so that when consumers try it out, they will trust that you are someone who does good business.

Set the right tone – Your company voice should have the right tone when communicating with your customers. Your company “voice” should always be aligned with your business values and your brand. This adds consistency to your branding strategies. So whether you are physically or virtually interacting with customers, you should be sending your brand message in a consistent manner. This alone will help you stand out from the rest and it will help your customers distinguish you from the market.

A brand logo – People are quite visual beings and there is nothing more impressive than sending out a consistent message along with a logo or image that represents that message well. Having a good logo that complements your message will add consistency to your marketing strategy. This will also make it harder for consumers to forget you because they have something to associate their great experiences with.

Trial and error – Branding does not happen overnight which is why you have to be patient. You should be ready to try and mix things up until you can get the right tone, message, and logo to truly show who you are as a brand. Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback. If you have a social media account, use it to listen to what other people are saying about your business. Interact with your customers, whether online or offline. Take the feedback and use it to tweak your message, tone, or logo in order to satisfy your customers better.

Take care of your customers – Consumers can make you successful in so many ways. While it may be true that you were the one who came up with an innovation, your customers can help you shape it so as to attract even more consumers. If you know how to take care of your customers, even in the smallest way, you can become successful. Pay attention to their needs and they will keep coming back to you. Watch out for consumers trends and you will attract even more.

The toughest part of any relationship is the people. Isn’t that the truth!  Help yourself by connecting the dots on how you express your personal brand and how that translates to you business brand.  Share that with new team members and help them connect the dots from their personal brand to your business brand.  The ideal situation is when a person can express your business brand in their own style and voice – nothing is more genuine and powerful!