Business Ideas

What is branding?

Branding is a set of qualities and characteristics that are associated with a person, product, company, or organization. Successful brands rarely have negative associations; brands with negative associations are rarely successful.

What does branding have to do with you?

In a word: everything. We all have a personal brand (whether or not we are aware of it) that either works for us, or against us.

In this regard, the first step in personal brand construction is to develop brand awareness.

This first step is also crucial because it forces you to see yourself as others do. Being aware of what you are subtly and unconsciously conveying to people is the key to controlling the magnetism of your personal brand. It’s also a changing mechanism for altering any negative perceptions that people may have of you.

What do people say are your most positive qualities? What first impressions do people normally have of you? What frequent comments do people make about you? How are you often described as a worker? What remarks or criticisms do people consistently have about your work?

Present these questions to people who are willing to give you honest answers.

Once you receive the answers to these questions, you will have taken a courageous first step in getting in tune with your brand awareness. Once you’ve completed this first step you will also be able to truthfully identify the benefits you are able to offer others.

William Bridges, author of Creating You & Co. and Jobshift, says employers pay for results and what you can produce for them. And those who are succeeding are the ones who know what they have to offer and what they are capable of doing better than some of their competitors.

Once you’ve developed brand awareness, the second step is to evaluate your brand viability.

Brand viability is the process of identifying a list of qualities and characteristics that will enable you to succeed in your professional endeavors. For example, if you are a salesperson, communication skills would have to be at the top of your list. Other qualities might be persuasiveness and resilience.

If you already possess the qualities that you listed, great. If not, don’t fret. You will simply have to cultivate them. If the qualities needed are just not within your reach such as being punctual (and you are always late) or dealing with stressful situations (and you have a quick temper), you should look at the other qualities in your list and determine if they are strong enough to compensate for the qualities you may lack, or re-evaluate your career choice.

The qualities that you list are going to be what you use to attract and retain loyalty from customers or favoritism from employers – but they have to be sincere and tangible. Sincerity is an emotion that you can not underscore – or fake for too long. We analyze information based on data, but most decisions are emotionally driven.

Effective branding engenders trust and loyalty. It will help you get a job, save your job, or win jobs that you bid on.

Step number three is to position your brand.

What is positioning? Al Ries and Jack Trout , who are the foremost authorities on Positioning, stated in their book, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, “Positioning is not what you do to yourself. Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect. That is, you position yourself in the mind of the prospect.”

In other words, how do you want people to perceive you? You’ve already identified the qualities you’d like to be associated with, but now it’s time for you to do something that will cause you to be perceived in that way.

It’s through consistent actions that brands are built.

Consistency (repetition over a long period of time) is what gives people faith in your abilities. It creates expectations.

A track record that shows what you are capable of is far more credible than telling someone what you are capable of. One fuels credibility, the other invites skepticism.

You can not establish a brand without first positioning it. Seek opportunities to position your brand once you’ve defined it.

The forth and final step of constructing a solid brand is to manage your brand.

Effective brand management consists of striking a balance between what your brand can deliver and the promises that it makes to your target market (employers/clients).

Do you know who your target market is? Do you know what they really desire? The key is to cater to them and their desires while fulfilling needs. Once you work hard to establish a brand that will earn you that reputation, your brand will yield profits for you in a multitude of ways.

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As consumers, we don’t really think about the importance of branding. We tend to go with the flow of brand names that have become transparent with our daily living (which is exactly what business(s) want to see). However, branding can drive your business significantly.

I like to drink “Coke”. And there are a lot of people who also like to drink “Coke”.

“Coke” is a brand, and the company Coca-Cola has been extremely successful on embedding their brand in our daily lives. The results? Huge profit. I don’t need to tell you how successful they are. You know it. That, is the power of branding. Other huge companies that are successful in their branding strategies include McDonalds, IBM, Microsoft, Nike…etc. Basically, all major business(s) have their own brand.

When you are considering the name of your company, you need to remember the importance of branding. Deciding a name for your business should be a well thought out process. You need to consider various names and their meanings.

Your brand must be simple and unique. Simply put yourself into consumers’ eyes; consumers like simplicity so they can remember easily. You business name should also be unique so they will remember you when people refer to your brand, not other companies with similar names. It’s also very useful to inject positive value and characteristics to your brand. Consumers like products to which they can associate positive qualities.

Proper branding creates loyalty. For example, when people ask me what I drink regularly, I reply “Coke”. When people ask me where I usually go for gas for my car, I reply “Petro Canada”. Now when I reply to people with all these brand names, I am also marketing these business(s) to them. That, is the power of branding.

Branding is what will help you the most in the most effective marketing strategy – word-of-mouth marketing.

Defining your brand is not an easy task; it is sort of a journey of business self-discovery. Previously mentioned your brand has to be simple and unique. However, more importantly is the meaning behind your brand. Ask yourself the following questions:

What is your company’s mission?

What’s special about your company’s services or products?

What qualities do you want your customers to associate with your company?

Your brand can be your business name; it is actually recommended if it is the same as your business name. Once when you have created the name for your brand, design a logo and think of a tag line. Then be true to your brand and be consistent on injecting your brand into your market. Your goal is to make your brand deeply embedded in your market and become transparent to people’s daily lives.

Now the question is, What is your business’ brand?

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The upshot of branding is fairly self explanatory, but for those who are a little unsure, here is what you can do with branding. The first thing people think of when they hear the word brand or branding on the web is probably PDFs or eBooks which are hugely popular. I’m sure many of you have downloaded eBooks which have been branded or even offer to give you branding rights, and it’s a great way to spread your own brand or affiliate link to the web. By giving away branded eBooks either free or as an incentive to join your optin list or newsletter, is a very powerful viral marketing tool, and here’s why…

PDFs are just the tip of the iceberg;

You can also brand many software applications or scripts with your messages. In fact offering branding rights to software titles is a fantastic way to increase sales, why? Quite simply the incentive to the buyer is irrefutable. Think about software programs which serve a useful and especially time saving job. People always need solutions to cut down on their working day and spend more time with their families. And if you can come up with a unique or even novel way to save time then you’re on to a winner. 

Finding software products to Brand

There are several companies that specialise in selling branding rights, you can buy individual branding rights for one product, or join one of the many membership sites like AX Gold or IM Buzz to brand multiple titles, and remember big software companies you may be familiar with have long since discovered the best solution to this problem. They buy software from third party developers, and then add their company name. If you want to go the whole hog and develop your own software then you can hire a software techie from the likes of sitepoint.com or check out the warrior forum, one word of caution, do not part with you cash until you have your product.

Searching for eBooks to Brand

If you’re looking for free eBooks to brand you shouldn’t have too much problem finding them, a great place to start is JVs or Joint Ventures, you only need to give your email address and then help yourself. Just make sure that they give a generous amount of links to brand, if you’re lucky the download will come with a brander application which is as easy as pie to use. Of course if you feel you have the writing skills to produce your own eBooks then that’s great. There are lots of programs out there to help you design and publish your eBook.

Here are some more ways to promote your branded products.
Ways to market brandable information 

• Give them away as Free bonuses to get new subscribers

• Offer them to your current newsletter subscribers

• Offer them at your website as free content downloads

• Present them via a popup / pop under or pop over screen

• Submit them to free search engines

• Post them in forums & announcement directories

• Advertise them in eZine ads & pay per click campaigns

• Create your own special reports based on affiliate products

• Promote others eBooks & reports branded by you

• Base an article on a report linking it to the report signup page

• Let others give them away

• Use them in JV deals (Joint Ventures)

And it’s all possible because of branding!
By giving Free Reports away, you can dramatically build your email list and boost YOUR affiliate commissions. The more viral reports you use in your marketing, the more it will increase your opportunities! Another great incentive for you to pass along free viral reports is the fact that more and more people are becoming interested in knowing how to brand PDF files. They want to know how they can create their own viral marketing funnel by branding eBooks’ and reports, and are willing to dig out their wallets in the process.

What is most important to consider when it comes to branding development for your business? Whether you are a huge multinational organization, or a small home business, branding will be of crucial importance, and can make a very significant difference to the success of the company.

For new businesses starting up, the concept of branding can seem exciting – and indeed, it can be a lot of fun. However, this is also an aspect of your business which needs to be treated seriously, and it will be important to consider a range of aspects.

By considering a wide range of aspects of corporate branding, you will be able to ensure that your business retains a consistent image throughout the marketplace. There can be no doubt that confusing branding can be highly damaging, no matter how clever the concept was in the first place.

One of the starting places which it might be worth considering is to check out the branding ideas pursued by your competitors. To understand how they have arrived at the branding images they have developed provides you with an appreciation of how you might be able to market yourself differently. It will be important to ensure that your company is seen as being, not only distinct from your rivals, but also more professional. Copying ideas of branding styles from your rivals does not make you the market leader, and can often lead to confusion; confusion in turn often leads to loss of sales and customers.

Piggyback branding is where a company launches a product or corporate branding image which is deliberately designed to look very similar to a known, successful brand which has already reached a wide audience and established a name for itself. The idea being that by creating products or a brand image that is similar, people will either purchase your products in error, or assume that they are of similar quality. Orientals are masters at this type of branding.

This is dangerous territory. There are few success stories when it comes to piggyback branding. The only market that can safely achieve this is perhaps in supermarket own-brand items. Where supermarkets package their own brand to look very similar to the leading product, but at a much lower price, they are often able to achieve much greater profit margins. People are rarely confused into buying their product, but it does help to draw attention to the own-brand items. That is one of the major objectives of advertising: the ultimate being to make a recurring sale.

In other areas of the retail and service industries this can be very tricky, and is rarely advised. Ensuring your own distinct brand image allows you to establish yourself as distinct, unique and able to provide a service or quality of product which is good enough in itself not to need a branding development which relies on confusion or mimicry to succeed.

Having said that, there are certain markets where themed brandings have taken off rather well, and in these fields it will be helpful to understand the trends being used. If a branding trend has succeeded, customers will be aware of this and will frequently start scanning for particular colors, styles of themes.

Think of the colors used for gaming consoles for example. Silver and black are dominant themes used in many products and labels, with green and blue used often as secondary colors. This is no coincidence since the colors evoke impressions of sturdy space age metal, NASA technology and futuristic styles. Developing a brand quite distinct from this could work either for or against you. Creating a brand which ties in with a known theme, and with a successful visual style, can help you to be seen as a significant part of the market.

On the other hand, heading off in a new direction in terms of style and color could work in your favour, with the impression being implied that your technology is different, and is heading off in a new direction. Being able to support these claims will be important of course.

Frozen foods often use blue and white within the theme to evoke ideas of ice-cold environments, whereas hot salsa products will invariably be packaged in warm reds and oranges with a general sense of heat.

These are just small examples of how the market has often developed successful branding styles which will be important to cash in on for maximum success. It might be an interesting experiment to try selling frozen food packaged in red and salsa sauce in blue and white, but it could end up being a very expensive one!

In terms of successful branding development you will need to consider the name of the company, and there again the same ideas apply. In piggyback branding, the name, and even the font used in the advertising campaign, could mimic a known rival or established brand. However, there are also many well-established styles and themes which work well and are worth considering. To go with the flow or to break away – it’s a tough decision.

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even though critics claim that personal branding easily turns into an ego trip and let you be perceived as egocentric this is not always the case personal branding is not about promoting yourself constantly or talk about your own strengths too often if yo,you are a retail brand consultant and you have been asked to provide a comprehensive brand audit and analysis retail brand in term of customers preception and experience