BizTips from SCORE – Effectively Building Your Brand

All businesses, large and small, are challenged with when trying to build their brand.  The challenge is to find a way to connect with buyers who have a need, want or desire that you can fulfill.  The process of brand building is taking buyers through the buying continuum. 

Almost every buyer starts with being unaware of who you are, what you do and what your offer is in solving the “pains” they have to making your brand a “gain”. (see www.strategyzer.com) After you gain awareness, buyers need to understand and believe in your offer, then trust that you can bring value to them, leading them to buy, recommend or refer you to others  Telling your brand story has to be cast in the buyer’s perspective not the sellers  Here are some ways to build a brand?

Be data focused.  Understand your SWOT.  What are your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Be observant and curious.  Know your competitors.  How is your value proposition being received?  How can you deliver it in a more efficient and effective way to reduce your sales and marketing investments? 

Be mindful.  Do you now at what point your message connected with customers to buy more or new buyers to initiate the buying process

Be imaginative.  The key to brand building is positioning yourself in the mind of buyers so they see no suitable substitute.

Put a human face on your brand.  Brands are perceptions.  Perceptions become facts.  Brand management is all about storytelling. 

Integrate your marketing.  Effective brand building is part of an integrated marketing initiative (traditional and digital) that connects you with buyers at a variety of levels. 

Making a positive connection with your brand message that demonstrates the values your brand represents is the foundation of building a positive brand that drives sales.

Contributed by Marc L. Goldberg, Certified Mentor.  Sourced:  10 Guiding Principles for Effective Brand Building, Jerome Conlon, 1/5/16.  For Free and Confidential mentoring on building your brand contact SCORE Cape Cod & the Islands.  www.capecod.score.org, capecodscore@verizon.net, 508/775-4884.