Every business has a brand. As a business owner, your job is to try to influence how others feel about your brand. While you can’t control what everyone thinks, you can do your best to communicate your vision. Your brand should reflect your company values, your desired image, your products, and your services. For your brand to be successful, you have to be consistent with your message – what do you want your customers to say about your business, and how do you want to make them feel? The beginning of each new year is the perfect time to recommit to your brand and really push yourself forward!
Be Consistent on Brand Commitment
• Creating a branding statement. Take the time to sit down and really think about what you want your brand to be. Consider your strengths, your target market, how you differ from the competition and (most importantly!) why what you do matters.
• Always asking yourself “why do we do what we do?”. Everyone on your team should come back to your core values every time a decision is being made – big or small.
• Communicating the same message, across the board, every time you do anything. Each phone call, every email, all social media posts, every single newsletter – everything must communicate the same vision, the same ideals.
• Using consistent visuals. Everything you do, everywhere, needs to look exactly the same. Having a recognizable logo, color palette, and tagline helps your audience to immediately recognize work as yours, no matter where they see it.
• Measuring your progress. Part of branding is creating a message that resonates with your audience. One way to know if you are reaching people is to measure your metrics – track how many likes/follows you get on your social media networks each month, count how many interactions you have, or see how many opens your newsletter has. If no one is interacting with you, maybe your brand needs some work.
• Not being afraid to switch it up. Don’t be afraid to alter your methods. If you don’t feel like your current online presence really evokes the feelings you’d like, then switch it up.
Commit to Yourself
Being committed to your brand means constantly evolving to get closer to where you want to be. Remember – your brand is the reason customers keep coming back. It’s not about your prices, the specials that you run, or even your Facebook ad campaigns – it’s because working with you makes them feel good.