Do you know how to brand your business or yourself? In the age of social media, it’s more important than ever to have a strong brand. But what does branding actually mean? In this blog post, we’ll take a look at how you can create an identity for your business by developing your company’s personality and voice!
As a business owner, branding may not be your number one priority. But with the right brand strategy, you can create a strong foundation for your company that will help you reach new heights. Find out how to build the perfect brand through by watching this video.
How to Brand Your Business or Yourself – Branding Strategy Basics
From the video: How to brand yourself? In today’s video, I am going share with you guys how to stand out in the marketplace. I am going to talk to you about how to ensure that people remember you and more importantly remember your name when they’re trying to solve the problem that you solve in your business.
Branding is really about creating a mental movie around the problem that the customer has and thinking of you. So whatever challenge they have in their life, when they encounter that they think of your company and I’m gonna talk to you guys actually how to really extract that from you.
I have been building companies now for 17 years. I am on my sixth company and with everyone I have sat down with branding specialists, I have worked with positioning people with the best marketers to really just understand what makes a great brand and how to incorporate that into your business, you know.
Not too long ago, I was actually contacted by my sister-in-law and she is a real estate agent and she wanted to ask me – “Dan how do you think about branding?” Cause she’s heard me talk about this with so many different people. I said here is the deal, buy some food come over to dinner, bring the kids, and we’ll sit down and chat about your brand.
I’ll walk you through my framework for doing that and at the end of it she looked at me and she said “where did you come up with this,” and I’m like it’s just years of studying it, of being such a student around really what makes companies stand out in the marketplace and that’s why I want to shoot this video so that I can share it with you guys all at home.
1. What Are Your Beliefs and Values?
So, the first thing you need to understand is your values. Every person has values, they have a belief system that drives every decision they make, the way they operate, the way they act in the world. You have them and the question to ask is you know, if you have kids or just your loved ones and it was the end of your days, and you can only share 5 to 10 beliefs or values, what would they be?
That is powerful stuff, because when you can get down to the core of what makes you tick, how you operate, or kind of the things you have learned throughout your life that is what is going to change everything and getting to that foundational level of values is step number one.
You can’t build a brand from that. I don’t believe you can manufacture a brand, it is extracted from the soul of the entrepreneur. So this is the first step, is to just figure out what do you believe in, what are your values and write them down, five to 10 maybe seven, get that list.
2. Who is Your Core Customer?
The second step is to really understand who’s your core customer and here is the way I look at it: who would you love to do business with? And the trick is not only love, but actually that has money, because those are two parts you need to ensure you have.
The way I do that is ask people, who is a customer that you had over the last few months that you absolutely adored, that you love that if you had a thousand of those people that you would just be pumped to go to work everyday, because that is the fallacy is business is, yes it is about solving a problem you are passionate about, but the truth is, you also have to choose your customers.
‘Cause if you work for the wrong type of customer and you don’t like them, or you know that they are stingy, or they’re rude, whatever they are, you’re gonna hate your day. So, choosing that core customer that you love and that has money, is the second step in naming them.
So I just say okay whoever that customer when I asked you who have you really enjoy working with recently, just put their name to that core customer identity. Once you have that, you’ve got the foundation, the values, then you talk about the core customer.
This is the perfect person I would love to serve in my business.
3. What Valuable Offer Can You Provide Them?
Then the third aspect is what is your irresistible offer, right? What are you going to do that is going to make you stand out in the marketplace? What are you willing to offer? What guarantee? Some people call it a risk reversal.
Like thinking about from their position, if it is a major investment, like buying a house or if it is something even as simple as like what place should I bring my dog to get manicured. Those are decisions that they are going to have hesitations around and you need to create an irresistible offer so that thing that is going to make them want to reach out to you, that also meets and attracts the core customer.
Those two things need to work together but a lot of people are using education. I was recently talking to a friend that runs a large sales organization and they explained to me that recently, they do air purification, they have this machine for air purification and what they did was changed and renamed their whole sales team to air quality specialists.
Alright not sales people, air quality specialists and what they offer is a free air assessment to let you know if you are up to code, so that’s an irresistible offer.
If I had a big apartment building or a commercial building, I needed to know the air quality, I am going to call the air quality specialist. Have them come in, do the assessment, and then let them, let me kind of hear from them what they recommend and I think that is the way you need to think about the irresistible offer.
But you get those three things, you figure out what drives you, your values that foundation, you identify and you focus in on that customer that you would absolutely love to serve. Then figure out some kind of offer that you can present to them from their point of view that is irresistible.
That is how you build a brand that people love. That is how you ensure they don’t forget your name and that you are remarkable in your market.
