The Branding Experts | Small Business Branding

August 13, 2009 By Ed Roach

How To Police Your Brand!

Your brand is probably your company’s most valuable asset. It is what provides you the opportunity to make money based on strong relationships.

Your brand makes advocates out of customers which means that they in effect become salespeople for you.

Being an advocate for a brand, makes it a pleasure to recommend that company to your network of contacts.

Paying close attention to the environment in which your brand exists will reward you at times when you find your brand in a bad place or subject to sloppy practices.

Because your brand is essentially your reputation, it is therefore, dire that you always defend its integrity. Here are 7 critical areas where you should police your brand:

ONE: Corporate Logo.
Your corporate logo is the face of your brand. It is what the public sees and identifies as your company. Every logo has associated with it a color palette and distinguishing features. Even the space your logo occupies is valuable real estate. Explain the rules for reproducing your corporate logo. Be sure to have an RGB, Hex, Pantone, Process Color, Black & White and Gray Scale version of your logo. DO NOT compromise on your palette/real estate. Once you drop the ball once, your audience will be confused. Consistency is powerful magic.

TWO: Type Style.
Choose fonts that accurately represent the personality of your brand. Use these fonts in everything you do. Apple has gone to the trouble of designing a font expressly for their use. Fonts like other graphic elements set a tone that can be recognizable over time.

THREE: On-Brand Thinking.
This one is over-looked at times. Be sure that your entire staff has a keen understanding of your brand statement or unique positioning strategy. If staff is allowed to define what you do, you stand a good chance of jumping into the sea of sameness along with the competition. On-brand thinking portrays an image of confidence.

FOUR: Internal Communications.
Internal communication is a sub set of on-brand thinking. Keeping your organization current with company news and direction, helps to eliminate communication by rumor. Rumors are often wrong and typically negative. It eats away at your brand from the inside and contributes to the erosion of business.

FIVE: Poor Corporate Behavior.
We only have to cast our eyes upon Wall Street to quickly see how well-established brands are destroyed overnight when greed rules the day. Once your brand has been trashed by your corporate officers, it is often nearly impossible to recover. Brand trust is what makes you money.

SIX: Exit Strategies.
If an individual represents your brand as it’s icon, do you have a plan in place if they should suddenly disappear due to natural or other causes? Mascots or spokes people are a double edged sword for your brand. Done well they can cement a relationship with an audience, but the trick is to make them larger than life – something beyond themselves. Great ones are Colonel Sanders, Ronald McDonald and Dave from Lenox.

SEVEN: Risk Planning.
Utilizing Compliance Branding and having a plan in place help offset an unplanned event that threatens your brand. A case in point: Martha Stewart. How Martha responded to the situation she found her brand in, resulted in a secure brand once the event was over. Determining how the company should react to any negative publicity and who should speak for them is important to weathering a storm.

Policing your brand is an ongoing effort. Your competition is only too happy to see you fall. Unless you take the proper steps to protect it you stand a great risk of not only allowing the competition to define your brand but it puts you in the undesirable position of reacting constantly to events that didn’t have to happen. Ignoring your brand takes money directly out of your pocket. The suspect in this crime is in the mirror.

Photo Courtesy of Paul Keleher

File under: Branding, Featured

July 25, 2009 By Ed Roach

Is Your Online Radar Turned On?

Sitting in my office here in Leamington, Ontario Canada ( just 30 miles ‘south’ of Detroit, Michigan – sounds odd I know), I reflect on how the web has changed the way I do business and in return strengthened my brand. Ten years ago, my market was essentially within a 2 1/2 hour drive of here – North America’s industrial heartland. I marketed traditionally which is to say totally offline except the token brochure website. Those efforts brought me a comfortable living.

Today, I market myself 90% online and use networking strategies both on and off-line. My market is now the world. Through my efforts I have come to build connections to companies in the Czech Republic, India, Canada, England, Australia, and the United States. Consulting has grown into a viable service to customers in need of positioning. Without the internet, this would not have been in the cards.

I recently attended a mentoring supper with local top business students from the Odette School of Business in Windsor, Ontario. All of these young people were chomping at the bit to get into the work force. None were intimidated by the economy. They were filled with optimism. Unlike my generation, they have a massive advantage – the internet. Their dreams can be realized by marketing to a global market instantly. If they never left the online world, they have the potential to build a brand of enormous proportions. If; on the other hand, their brand is limited to a niche market, they can still potentially enjoy a very healthy income.

When I do speaking engagements to predominantly small businesses, I ask the how many blog or utilize html marketing? It astonishes me how many are NOT doing either. Worse than that, it’s not even on their radar. Their reasons for not engaging the web essentially has been their desire for instant results with little effort or cost. Even in the luddite world this is not possible. I imagine, due to a simple lack of understanding (from SEO gurus is my guess) that all they have to do is have a search optimized website, customers will beat a path to their door. When that didn’t happen, they become disillusioned by it all.

It’s no different in the off-line world. They run a few ads and wonder why the phone isn’t ringing off the hook. It all boils done to a realistic strategy and having an open mind and realistic set of expectations. For my business efforts, I came to realize that patience was indeed a virtue. I enjoy musing with colleagues that you never know what the next email will bring you. Not unlike every form of marketing it is longevity that gives birth to results. As your influence grows from community to community, your opportunities grow with it. Before you know it, your customers who benefit from your product or service come from locales outside of your traditional reach. Your brand grows with the increased exposure you get.

File under: Beginners, Featured

June 5, 2009 By Ed Roach

Do You Possess The Winner Brand?

A Winner Brand is an enviable place to be. It ignites a favorable reaction to all who come in contact with it you. The Winner Brand can be a company, a product a person, or a place. The Winner Brand is hinged on strong brand values and a compelling message. It has outstanding characteristics. The
Winner Brand is the product of a concerted effort to be the best it can be. For the sake of this article, I am addressing the personal Winner Brand.

What can you do to be a Winner Brand?

• Build your expert profile In order for your brand to shine
You have to be taken for the expert that you are. You have to boldly declare your expertise in your discipline. You’re going to have to go against your Mom’s advice and brag speaking engagements, feature writing, pod and video
casts. Find as many portals to get your professional opinion into the hearts and minds of your target audience.

• Be a conduit for the positive
Make it a personal goal to bring positive energy to all you meet. When you see a friend in a glum mood, find the positive and bring them out of their shadow. Point out that opportunity is everywhere if they are willing to recognize and embrace it. Make the statement – “Every cloud has a silver lining” your inspiration for engagement.

• Give of yourself
Volunteer to groups or organizations that you have a personal interest in. Mentor to young minds at the university level. Show that money isn’t your only motivation. Show that your meaning of success includes helping others. It is a way of giving back to your community, and exposing your Winner Brand to all you meet.

• Show your passion
People love to see that you are truly inspired by what you do. Passion is contagious. It is the foundation of strong relationships. Passion has a way of taking them along for the ride. Because you have passion, you have an absolute belief in yourself. That confidence feeds your expert profile builds a loyal following.

• Become a resource
Share your contacts with others. Over the years, you have come to know many great suppliers of goods and services. Sharing this knowledge will really help those you meet making their jobs easier.

• Give valuable referrals
Keep your eye out for opportunities for friends, colleagues, and customers. Giving referrals brightens your brand. As they say – “It is better to give than to receive.”

• Blog your way to greatness
I can’t think of a better way to build your expert profile than blogging. A number of the above initiatives can be achieved through blogging. It is a great way to showcase yourself. Leaving positive comments on other blogs and guest writing are all key elements in successful blogging. It does you NO GOOD to stay silent. Share your opinion profusely. Leaving comments lures readers back to you – guaranteed.

Being a Winner Brand is your best opportunity to draw business to you. It drives away those dark clouds and allows you to recognize and embrace opportunities.

File under: Branding, Featured

April 28, 2009 By Ed Roach

5 Reasons Why Branding Won’t Work.

They’re never going to buy you’re the expert.

Here’s the thing, you really are an expert in your field, but here’s the rub – YOU don’t believe it. If you don’t believe in yourself , don’t expect customers to believe in you either. You have plenty of sales-worthy knowledge and a waiting audience. Roll up your sleeves and jump in. Failing isn’t the problem, refusing to get back up is.

You’ve got a wild idea, but nobody’s going to buy it.

Isn’t it better to try your idea and fail KNOWING they don’t like it, rather than presuming to know they don’t like it and never really finding out?

The timing isn’t right.

That’s the same as giving me a dozen reasons why you CAN’T do something rather than reasons why you CAN.

Branding is expensive.

Ignoring your brand is the real money pit. Placing ad after ad saying nothing special or countering a competitor makes you a follower. The competitor is actually defining your brand and you’re throwing money at defending yourself rather than leading with a strong positioning strategy, which gives your customer a compelling reason to buy from you.

I tried re-branding: I got me a new logo and tag line and guess what? Nothing changed!

What did you expect to happen? Your brand is your REPUTATION not your logo. All you did was spend some cash putting a new face on an old problem. If somebody tells you that re-branding is changing your logo – RUN as fast as you can – they have no idea what branding is!

As much fun as this post was to write, the honest truth is that all of us have to pay very close attention to our brands, how we sell ourselves and be open to new opportunities. Stop blaming the economy, stop blaming yourself and stop blaming finances. If you try and win – great! If you fail – so what? Keep moving, keep learning. You can’t reach your goal by standing still and that I can guarantee you.

File under: Featured