Small Business Branding - Things to Consider

Branding is a term often tossed about the business world that describes how customers and other companies view a certain business. There are some consulting companies that do nothing but help other companies develop their brand in order to help a business grow. However, many owners of small businesses are reluctant to invest in any type of formal branding procedures because it may seem like a waste of money, especially if funding is low.

But small business branding does not have to cost a fortune. In fact, every business has a brand, whether they have paid to develop that brand or not. Your brand begins the moment you make your first sale, and you must work diligently to make sure that your company's reputation only gets better from that point on.

Your company's brand is really a broad overview of how others in the marketplace, including your customers and competitors, view your company. Your brand is composed of many factors, including the quality of your products, the level of customer service you provide, your personal qualifications to sell or develop the product and your commitment to bringing additional high quality products to the market. Other factors include your company mission statement and how well you stick to it, along with how you rank next to other companies.

Another contributing factor in your brand is the appearance of your company's logo. Logos are visual representations that are designed to encompass the core essence of your company and set it apart from other companies. The best logos are instantly recognizable and don't require a great deal of customer analysis in order to understand what it means.

If you run an online business, you can learn a lot about how customers view your company by studying your website traffic over a period of time. You can recognize repeat customers and visitors, while running tests to determine if certain sales or products pull more traffic than others. Another way to build customer loyalty and to improve your small business branding is to offer more value for less money than your competitors or even offer heavily discounted or free products and services.

These are some of the many factors that work together to form your small business brand, and it may feel overwhelming to consider improving your brand. The good news is that not all branding development requires a major overhaul of your company. A good place to start refining your brand is with your company mission.

Chances are you started your company because you felt passionate about offering the product or service that your company sells. What makes your product different or better than other similar products out there? What user experience do you offer that sets your company apart form your competitors? Is your company the top performing company in this niche, or quickly gaining ground on the leader?

These are some of the many questions you can consider when it comes to improving your small business branding. Focus on improving and streamlining each aspect of your company's customer experience and you will be on your way to developing a strong and successful brand for your small business.

For further reference, read on small business branding and visit http://www.smallwebusiness.com/. Plus you can learn many great tips for starting a successful small business.

Brand Discovery Phase – The Most Important First Step Toward a Strong Brand Foundation

In the last few weeks, I had been productively busy participating in the preparation for a brand discovery presentation to a panel of corporate clients. As I was helping to prepare for this presentation, I took note of some things that I wanted to share with you about this important phase in the development of your brand. Many of the exercises and principles for corporate groups, I also apply when working with consultants, trainers, nutritionist, and other small business owners and entrepreneurs.

First, let me give you a little more information about preparing for this brand-changing presentation. As part of this presentation, the preparatory materials included: a PowerPoint presentation, written report outlining the results from the brand discovery, and initial logo identity comprehensive designs.

So, what goes into the brand discovery phase and how can it benefit you to explore this phase in depth for your own business?

Brand Discovery

• Exploration and Finalization of Core Values – Your core values are the core principles that guide you in your business. In everything that you do in your business and everything that you express in your marketing must always link back to this ‘backbone’ of your brand and what you stand for in simplest terms.

• Identification of your short and long-term goals – Know who you (your business) are today, compare it to where you were, and form a vision of what tomorrow (and the coming years) holds. What is your vision for your business in one, five, and ten years?

• Get clear about both your strengths and your weaknesses – To accomplish excellence and stand out, you must understand what your strengths are in your business and what can potentially be holding you back from achieving your goals.

• Ensure that the external perceptions of your business align with the inner perceptions – You may know what you stand for in your business and what you do to bring results to your clients, but are you clearly conveying it? As part of the brand discovery phase, it is important to acquire feedback from your ideal audience, often referred to as your target market. There are multiple ways to do this; as with the brand development of the corporate client I mentioned above, a extensive phone survey was conducted. Other ways of doing this include: online surveys and customized and anonymous email surveys.

• Collect internal and external feedback to create a positioning statement – Also known as your mission statement, your positioning statement is meant to clearly express who are you, what you offer, and for whom in a compelling way.

These are just a few of the main steps you must take within the brand discovery phase. This phase leads you to the next phase in your brand development, the Brand Expression phase. The discovery phase must happen before you can successfully market your business. This phase acts as the foundation for all that you do in your business and the basis of your brand expression.


Prepare to effectively brand your business in 2010. The Brand Development Phase for Networkers, Coaches, Trainers, Solopreneurs, Consultants, Representatives, and other entrepreneurs and small business owners is available beginning in January 2010 through the Unearth Your Brand Excellence Program. The Unearth Your Brand Excellence is a powerful preparatory course to building a brand foundation for your business to set yourself apart from other businesses who seemingly offer the same products and services. In addition, the program is specifically designed to give you the tools to effectively communicate your unique brand promise. Are you ready for brand excellence? Information coming soon at www.lisahromada.com

What Makes Up YOUR Brand?

Your Two-Minute Brand Tip:
What Makes Up YOUR Brand?

Building a strong brand takes time. Even the most successful brands take years to develop…then refine…develop some more…and refine. So, what makes up a brand?

Here is your two-minute tip to building your brand.

• Explore and determine your core values and mission. What do you stand for in your business? Successful brands take a stand.
• Have a compelling story to tell. Why did you start your business? Some people start their business because they were seeking a better quality of life and health, so they found a business where they can enjoy optimum health and quality of life. Sharing your story helps make a connection with your ideal audience.
• Logo mark or word-mark. A logo is a graphic representation or symbol for a company name or product, often uniquely designed for immediate recognition. A word-mark is a logo created from type, such as FEDEX and Oprah.
• Clear, compelling tagline. Does every brand need a tagline? A tagline is useful to conveying what your brand is all about in a few words. The intention is to immediately connect and attract your ideal audience. A tagline is highly recommended, even if you are just personal branding yourself to apply to jobs.
• Build credibility and trust through consistent use of your visual and verbal brand messaging. This includes your colors, typography, images, logo, tagline, etc. Keeping these elements consistent through all of your brand communications is what helps build credibility, recognition, and makes your brand memorable.
• Communication style and reputation with your internal and external clients and vendors. Every interaction that you have online and offline contribute to your brand development. When building your brand, you always want to ensure that you are communicating in the way that you want your brand to be known.
• Build your professional biography and resume. An updated biography and resume is not just used for landing a job, it’s also utilized to attract clients and quality partners.

How does your brand compare?

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Article featured in the Hromada Brand Newsletter. Subscribe with Lisa Hromada at www.lisahromada.com and get a free e-book gift*

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Is your brand not up to par? We are about the change all that!
Rev-up for brand distinction beginning in 2010!

The Unearth Your Brand Excellence program is expected to arrive by the New Year. The Unearth Your Brand Excellence is a powerful preparatory course to building a brand foundation for your business to set you apart from competitors who seemingly offer the same products and services. In addition, the program is specifically designed to give you the tools to effectively communicate your unique brand promise. Are you ready for brand excellence?

Check out www.lisahromada.com for details coming soon

Power Up Your Brand: 4 Turbo-Charged Reasons to Brand Your Biz in 2010

Branding is a hot topic; When I attend networking events and introduce myself, I usually have at least a few people who come up to me at the end of the event to ask me what branding is all about, how it can benefit them, and what I do specifically as it relates to what they want to achieve professionally.

They often express that they want more people coming to their website, generate more sales, be able to express what they do without rambling on, and well...make more money. And those clients with whom I have worked in these networking groups to develop their brand have had tremendous positive feedback and noticed a significant difference in the success of their business.

So, how can branding yourself help you to achieve what you want?

First, a brief history of branding might help us get started on understanding why it is used. The term brand is defined as marking an object by burning into the surface indicating identity or ownership. Branding goes back thousands of years. Ranchers branded their cattle and potters branded their pottery and porcelain. As the concept of branding evolved throughout history, people began to associate branded items with certain characteristics and levels of quality, value, security, and honesty. Today, brands continue to play a fundamental role in expressing these same qualities and much more.

As a Personal Brand Strategist, I wholeheartedly believe that you need a strong brand to succeed in your business and stand out among all others offering seemingly similar products and services.


Here are four turbo-charged reasons to brand your biz to achieve more success in 2010:

1. Accelerate Your Market Valuation - The process of determining the value of a business's assets is not always dependent solely on the product (tangible asset), but the perceived value of the product through the emotional connection that is made with its brand (intangible asset). The market valuation of the majority of large corporations comes not from their tangible assets, but from the strength of their brand.

2. Attract and Preserve Quality Partners, Vendors, and Employees - Don't we all want to do business and be associated with strong brands? Think of the last time that you updated your resume to apply for a job or wrote up a proposal to bid for a large client project; we all want to list lavish experience with respected and well-known brands. It boosts our credibility and shines a light on our own professional brand. When you build a strong brand, others want to be a part of that.

3. Expand your product and services offerings - "The Global Superbrand" as he is called, Donald Trump exemplifies the meaning of a personal brand. From Trump real estate, television shows, hotels, and entertainment, to jewelry, books, vodka and even spring water, Trump's highly-recognized and well-established brand allows for easy access to successfully expand his product and service lines.

4. Charge more for the value of your brand - In a number of neuroscience marketing studies, it's been shown that people are willing to spend more for a branded product than a non-branded (generic) product. And don't we? Take Nike for instance: Ever think about why you'll pay more for a Nike or Adidas brand athletic gear, when there are multiple other comparable options at a portion of the price?

There is a strong sense of credibility, trust, and importance that accompanies a well-crafted brand, and it's not just for big corporations. Everything is branded; including you...you just may not know it yet.
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What's Lisa Up To In 2010?

Are you waiting to grow your business until the "right moment?"

That moment is here...and it's now.

The reason?
As a Personal Brand Strategist & Designer, I will be sharing my exclusive set of brand tips, secrets, and actions steps with you throughout 2010!

Who says branding yourself has to cost tens of thousands of dollars? Let the *big brands do that.

For years, I have been directly involved with an abundant array of marketing campaigns and brand development projects for corporations and now I am preparing to bring my techniques to you!

Consider the following high-yields programs, products, and celebrated services coming throughout 2010:

Services: Incomparable design packages you won't find with anyone else (including the majority of design agencies!)

Products: Take the guesswork out of brand marketing by immediately accessing resources, blueprints, guides and workbooks.

Programs: Expert advice, little-known techniques and a wealth of information await you in my 2010 programs. You may just achieve the remarkable and measurable results that you desire, beyond your expectations.

Workshops: Customized workshops created to build and enhance your company's image and find the balance and success that you desire.

All the tools you need to succeed and stand out!

My goal is to make 2010 purposeful and profitable for you as you create your power in the marketplace.

http://www.lisahromada.com for more information