Effectively Building a Winning Brand

Creating a winning brand for your business isn’t going to happen overnight. Brand recognition takes time and dedication to develop. You have to be willing to do the work and stay impeccable with your business practices.

Obviously, the first, and most important, step is to come up with a unique brand name and a creative logo. Take your time through this process. Find something easy to remember, unique, and something that will cause curiosity. That is just the first step and what you do from there is really going to determine how successful your brand can be.
When creating buzz around your business brand name in the market you need to follow the fundamental guidelines of social media marketing and you need to have a clear understanding of what your consumers are going to want from your business.

Here are the first six steps for creating a winning brand name that will bring you more business:

1. Get your name out there. – In order to get your brand name recognized you have to spend some money. You are going to need both traditional media and social media coverage. Invest in commercials, direct marketing, promotions, and whatever you can afford as far as traditional marketing is concerned. Less expensive and almost more effective is social media marketing. Use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social sites to get your name out to as many people as possible. There are lots of ways to do social media right and wrong. Make sure that you know the best ways to get attention online.

2. Know your niche. – In order to get brand recognition you need to know your customers and your competitors. What do your potential customers like about your competition? What angle of the market is being ignored? What can make your brand stronger than your competitor’s brand? Ways to discover this information include using surveys, focus groups, and consumer research. You need to determine how you are going to meet your customers needs better than any of your competitors.

3. Create an image. – Yes, in business image is everything and even the smallest business can be helped with a good image. Branding isn’t just for huge companies, but for any business that wants to make a difference. Be honest and look at what your business can actually deliver to your customers. Don’t over promise, doing that will only lead to bad customer service, which is always bad for a brand name. Most importantly be likeable. You want people to see your brand name and have positive thoughts about your company.

4. Use it any way you can. – Your brand, business name, and logo, should be melded into every single part of your business. Everything you do is a reflection of that brand, so make sure that your business is being represented as you would want it to be.

5. Be consistent, but innovative. – This might sound like a contradiction, but your customers will want to feel like they can depend on you and in order to do that you need to stay consistent, but you don’t want to get stale in the process. You have to work to find the happy medium of staying consistent for your long term clients, but also keep things new and innovate for your potential new clients.

6. Make it personal. – People are more likely to use a brand that they have a personal connection to. Find ways to make your brand personal. When using social media, work to keep personal connections with people. By making it personal you will create more brand loyalty and this will build your customer base.

Readers: What are some of the brand name businesses that you can think of? What do they do well? What could they improve on? Let’s hear you voice in the comments below!