Defining Your Brand for Clarity

What makes you memorable is more than what is unique about you: your brand is sourced in the value you provide to your audience, and how they see it.

In the rush to market, small business owners often let their branding fend for itself, thinking it will evolve on its own.

Yet talented start-up teams and skillful established businesses work to define themselves— and then maintain their profile— powerfully,l. They understand that branding is one of the surest ways to express your unique idenity and relevance.

When left undefined, your audience will decide what your brand is own their own, without the patience or care you alone have to make that statement what you want it to be.

How do you source your brand? Identify and address the three essentials of Brand Clarity.

Sourcing your Brand

Branding Research

Knowing what your prospects and clients are seeing from others in your field gives you the advantage: identifying what makes you unique, knowing your strengths, and preparing for important questions they’ll want answered.

• Competitor Reviews: Head-to-head comparisons are everywhere online. Ask vendors, strategic allies, and yes, trusted clients what has come to their attention, ot only from you but from others.

• Trends Research: Check industry writers and publications weekly for what’s new in your industry, in both rising and falling trends.

• U.S.P. (Unique Selling Proposition) & Positioning Development: Work on finding a way to say what matters about you in under 10 words and a quick couple of seconds. That’s how much time people give you before their innermost yes or no kicks in and their listening disappears. Nite: this is not just abotu thw words you say. Before your message is even voiced, opinions start forming, so learn to use silence and body language adroitly, which means this: be authentic.

• Market Receptivity Testing: Ask your customers what they think or want. Talk with those those who are new and long-time, active and lapsed. They are a goldmine to help you avoid or repair missteps that damage your brnad.

Branding Development

• Business and Product Naming: It;s the 21sts centeury and bsuiens is onlieb (even if you are not). Start with domain name research. So many great ideas are already taken, but others are happily yours for a modest annual fee. Lock that down early. Don’t stop there; think through how how a name can be adapted to PR and ad campaigns. And don’t forget to Google or Bing to see who’s using or something very similar to you planned name, in and out of your industry. Consider both positive and negative word associations and reputations.

• Tagline and Slogan Development: Humor is great, bold claims feel terrific, but how will your audience respond? Ask them before you commit to this critical aspect of your brand persona.

• Visual Branding: What’s customary in your industry or client universe that inspires trust? What’s been done-to-death? Know your own visceral prejudices. Increase your objectivity by going beyond yourself and your significant other, to evaluate whether a draft concept is a strong fit for your business. Critical: make sure you obtain the rights to any images to avoid some expensive lessons in copyright or trademark infringement.

• Branding Coordination:  Personal Presence, Products and Services integration all need to be thought through intentionally. If your personal social media is visable to your business contacts (and mostly it is) are you happy to have them see all your posts? Or do you need to edit and elevate your online communications? Do you present your brand consistently across advertising, business cards, website, social media headers, product graphics, etc., etc.?

• Rebranding: This takes careful planning, and often multiple graduated stages so you do not lose existing client trust or business connections. A name change may be apppropriate, but without a bridge, you become digitally invisble. That said, rebranding can powerfully expand your reach into new profitable arenas. It can be just the thing to create newsworthy PR when handled proactively. But do take steps to aovid also disappearing online if search engines can no longer find you. Worse, clients may think you are out of business or left the industry, so let them know what’s going on so they feel includedmf can still refer to you via wor dof mouth.

Branding Messaging and Visibility

• Creative Brainstorming: Ideas are not rare, but they are fleeting. That briloant inspiration you had at the gym or in the shower, or ona an erlly morning powerwlak will disppear the momennt you turn to a new task. Record it on your phone right away! Many marketinig and branding pros find formal brainstorming using outside facilitators helps stretch insiders’ own mindsets. The key here is not to edit yourself severely in the early stages of such sesison and programs. It takes being willing to hear what you might normally reject, then giving your creative juices time to marinate.

• Creative Direction: Once you’ve gathered input and ideas, sifted and found those that you want to rise to the top, it’s time to establish clear creative direction, adopting branding stands that will guide future endeavors for consistent brand presence. A recent movie (presented by Netflix and titled AIR, here’s the IMDB link) about Michael Jordan’s professional rise made it clear that red was his color. His brilliant mother and the inventive Nike team made sure that info was not tossed aside, even in the face of strong competative pressures from other sports sponsors. The dream is often in the details.

• Media Selection: Where do you need to be seen? Where do your audience segments expect you to be? Where do they hang out? Budgeting time, timing, and money are essential. Making a momentary big splash may feel exciting, but it’s usually not smart marketing budget allocation, and rarely yields the onoging results fantasized.

• Media Integration: Small business owners wearing too many hats simply turn away in overwhelm here. Big companies err too, by throwing the kitchen sink at multiple media, often equally ineffective. Identify your options, then choose a top few where you want to have an ongoing presence for the long run. Always be testing new media channels, but in limited scope and defined ways, using trackable offers you can reliably measure and replicate if they test well.

• Marketing Outreach: Big companies accept the mantra “always be selling,” though some do it much more attractively than others. Small business owners are challenged to wear this hat among many others that they like wearing better. The phrase “marketing outreach” creates a new context that emphasizes strategy and marketplace presence, both central to effective branding.

What’s next?

Get yourself a cup of coffee or tea, and sit for a full 15 minutes with this checklist. [Do this agian weekly, then monthly, until what listed here becomes second nature in your thniking.]

Quickly note down in a notebook (paper or virtual) what you do, and what you don’t. Date each weekly/monthly entry with so you cnan track and rview your progress over time. Notice what you need to consider adding to your brand activity.

This is a first simple step toward creating greater clarity for your own brand, whether you are a new or a longtime marketer.

We wish you prosperity and satisfaction!

— Diane A. Curran