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Aspiring Webmasters Want To Know, "What Makes A Website Grow?"
It appears that most webmasters have come from the world of advertising. Their website content emphasizes "marketing and promotion". Just to prove my point, do a Google search on "marketing promotion". As I write, Google comes up with "about...
Branding Your Business To Make More Money
Branding your comapny should be the first thing a company does. You have to convince potential customers to buy from you. Very few people have a monopoly like Microsoft or Ebay, Everyone else need to steer business to their company or product. When...
Has Your Design Firm Run Amuck With Your Web Site?
What's happening to good web site design? Somehow we creative types at interactive and traditional ad agencies have run amuck - we're building web sites that may dazzle the senses, but don't really communicate much about our...
Hire the Right Marketing Company
How to hire the right marketing company for your business
Hiring a good marketing firm is critical to the success of any business. Here are some things to look for.
First, it’s important to understand the distinction between a company...
Setting Up Your Dream Home Office Space
One of the great privileges of the direct selling profession is being able to work from home. But with the freedom of your career, also come the challenges. The sink is full of dishes, your son left his crayons on your desk, and the laundry is piled...
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Branding: You are the Brand
Copyright 2005 Daniel Sitter
What's in a brand name? Everything! Think of these brands: Coke, Barbie, Hershey, McDonalds, Madonna, Pepsi, Bono, Microsoft, Kleenex, Xerox, Steven Spielberg, Dell and GM. Did you notice that brands can be things, replicas of people and actual people? Brands are the public perception of a thing or person. Companies work very hard to establish their brand, sometimes failing when they attempt to tie a secondary product into the popular brand name. Does anyone even remember A1 chicken sauce?
The people and companies behind the above brand names are well known. They are established. They have earned the right to be positioned where they are in the public's eye. Are you or your product clearly associated with the solution you seek to provide? What about your product? What about your name? How are you positioned in the marketplace? As an entrepreneur, a small businessperson, you have to be ever so keenly aware of every minute detail and opportunity to brand yourself. You need to be the expert. Your product must solve the problem, and the world needs to know about it. Branding therefore, may be the most important marketing challenge you face as your business plan unfolds.
It's all about public perception. Is Coke the real thing? Does Hershey make the finest chocolate? Does McDonald's offer the best tasting, most nutritious hamburger? Does GM make the finest cars? We have been trained by skilled marketers to make the above associations. We have been conditioned over time to accept the advertising as real, whether we actually believe it or not. Very clever indeed, these markers have been. You cannot afford to be any less convincing in your efforts.
As CEO of your own organization, you will most likely not have the extensive resources that a major company or big name star has. You probably are the marketing department, the advertising department, the sales team, the accountant and so on. As such, you must remain acutely aware of your image, the perception of each and every customer, and to a great extent, the marketplace as a whole. Your position in the marketplace, often dictated by the perceived quality of your products, your celebrity, your reputation for service, your leadership in your field and your consistency will certainly have a great deal to do with the effectiveness of your brand. You are the brand.
As the brand, you must take the position that you will always be under scrutiny, under the microscope. Assume leadership. You may not be the biggest guy in your field, but through leadership you can establish a market presence that will help you to become positioned along with the major
players in your market. Take the lead on local issues or take a stand on a national issue that relates to your product, service and market. Through association, you will be perceived as a market leader, regardless of your size. Attempt to resolve a small problem and associate it with a greater one and you will achieve a level of notoriety, one that you can leverage to increase your brand awareness.
Your company must be credible. That is to say that your products and services must do what you say they will. You must also be credible personally. If you cannot be rightfully associated with your product or service offering, it will be difficult for the public to be receptive to such a contradiction. Honesty and integrity will be assets of great value to you as your marketplace gets to know you.
You must be consistent. You must find your niche, take your stance, establish some position and build from it. If you change every week or every time a new wind blows, people will not take you seriously. They will begin to doubt your leadership and find it difficult to perceive you as a credible source for your goods and services. You will lose whatever market position you have gained and whatever leadership position that you have achieved by wobbling among various directions. The public sees consistency as strength and strength as character. When you are a small company, struggling to grow, the perception of you in the marketplace is a critical factor.
Your marketing plan should certainly include these concerns as well as the incredible importance of the awareness of your market image. Since you are the brand, few components within your business plan should receive more of your attention than the development of the public's perception of you, your evolving position in the marketplace and the development of your brand image.
About the author:
Daniel Sitter is the author of the breakthrough e-book, Learning For Profit, the revolutionary how-to book providing simple, step-by-step instructions to teach people exactly how to learn new skills faster than ever before. It is what the author calls a skinny book, a new generation of e-book designed for busy people. It’s currently available from c|net’s download.com, the author’s web site http://www.learningforprofit.comand a variety of online book merchants. Mr. Sitter is a contributing writer for several online and traditional publications. His expertise includes sales, marketing, effective learning techniques, self-improvement and general business interests.
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| Brand - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
| The brand, and "branding" and brand equity have become increasingly important ... From the perspective of brand owners, branded products or services also ... |
| en.wikipedia.org |
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| Branding - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
| Livestock branding, the marking of animals to indicate ownership; Human branding, ... Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branding" ... |
| en.wikipedia.org |
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| AllAboutBranding.com : Home |
| Provides resources and opinions on branding. Includes brand development, management and communications. |
| www.allaboutbranding.com |
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| brandchannel.com | branding resource produced by Interbrand | brands |
| An international online exchange and resource about brand marketing and branding. |
| www.brandchannel.com |
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| Branding Company Corporate Branding Internet Brand Identity ... |
| Brand Identity Guru Inc. creates, develops and promotes powerful brands. Our clients enjoy an array of innovative, creative and powerful branding solutions ... |
| www.brandidentityguru.com |
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| Branding Blog |
| Branding and positioning news and opinion. |
| www.brandingblog.com |
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| Branding Asia |
| Free articles, news and columns on branding in Asia. Market research and Asian marketing. |
| www.brandingasia.com |
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| Pages tagged with "branding" on del.icio.us |
| All items tagged branding ??? view popular ... industrie./design and branding consultant specialists./ · save this. by kittim to design branding graphic ... |
| del.icio.us |
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| The Brand Called You |
| Big companies understand the importance of brands. Today, in the Age of the Individual, you have to be your own brand. Here's what it takes to be the CEO of ... |
| www.fastcompany.com |
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| Branding: See what people are saying right now on Technorati |
| See all blog posts tagged with branding on Technorati. |
| www.technorati.com |
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| Mozilla Branding |
| The purpose of this document is to describe mozilla.org's branding strategy during and after the release of what has generally been called Mozilla 1.4. ... |
| www.mozilla.org |
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| What Brand Are You? A branding viral by The Design Conspiracy |
| What Brand Are You? has since been picked out as Site Of The Day by the likes of the Financial Times, Yahoo, USA Today and BBC News, and has received more ... |
| www.whatbrandareyou.com |
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| Julie & Company: Affordable branding, web design, graphic design ... |
| Julie & Company creates stellar branding, integrated marketing, advertising, web design, web development, Flash, trade show booths - all at affordable ... |
| www.julieandcompany.com |
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| Forty Media - Web Design, Web Development, Branding, Great Websites |
| a professional web design agency based in Phoenix, Arizona. |
| www.fortymedia.com |
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| Branding - Yahoo! Small Business |
| Find information to help grow your online business with business plans, Thomas Register, news articles and more. |
| smallbusiness.yahoo.com |
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| Lexicon |
| Lexicon Branding appears on KTVU News; Lexicon Branding creates Ridgeline for Honda, Viiv for Intel, and GameTap for Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. ... |
| www.lexicon-branding.com |
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| Branding and Usability |
| We're finding that a site's usability can dramatically affect branding. ... There are two basic techniques for branding: direct experience and indirect ... |
| www.uie.com |
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| iMedia Connection: Research & Metrics - Branding |
| Majority of marketers feel branding opportunities -- online and offline -- aren't ... IAB case studies prove real-world power of online in branding mix. ... |
| www.imediaconnection.com |
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| Small Business Marketing And Branding |
| Small business marketing and branding advice and how-to guides for small business owners. Learn how to start and grow your own successful business. |
| smallbusinessbranding.com |
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| Beyond Branding |
| Beyond Branding, published in hardcover in 2003 and paperback in 2005, presents innovative business models for the survival of 21st century organizations. |
| www.beyond-branding.com |
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