Your brand identifies your company through its name, a visual image or both. Well known brands include IBM, Apple, Nike, Coca-Cola, each eliciting an image or reflection on what that brand means.
A brand with a positive image can create value for a company by helping to increase sales through recognition and driving new customers to try the product or service. A brand with a negative image will do the opposite.
As your business grows, your brand will become more exposed to a range of potential customers and the public in general. Making sure people know what the brand stands for, is an important part of your marketing and/or overall business strategy.
In order to tell people what your brand stands for, you must first define this yourself.
You need to think about:
- Your vision, mission, values and company goals
- What brand’s core values and attributes are
- What the brand is trying to communicate
- What it is trying to selling
- Who the target audience is.
Once this is defined, you can then start to promote your brand.
In doing this:
- Your message should be consist and clear
- Use many channels including e-marketing and social media
- The extent to which these channels are used will depend on the target audience
- Develop a long term strategy, as building a brand can take a long time
- Make it stand out – develop its personality, make it different, ensure that people know who you are.
A brand can become an important part of your company’s intellectual property and may need
to be protected by a trademark.
Visit the marketing module of the Small Business Tool Kit for further information, quizzes, case studies and interactive market planning tools.