Today’s guest article is for all the ‘treps out there.
Although personal branding and company branding are two different things, every Entrepreneur should have knowledge about how to excel in both. Due to the fact that your personal brand is always connected with your businesses, you should always keep in mind about how to increase each, by increasing one brand your automatically helping the other. Here are few tips on how to increase the brand of your company as well as yourself.
Direction
Whether you are currently focused on your personal or business brand, you should always have a general direction you want to take it. Having a vision as how you want the world to see you, will help you understand what it might take to get you there. While every business is different, implementing a branding strategy is key, and the only way to have a good strategy is by knowing exactly what you want. Set up your brand’s goals, visions, potential images, and make sure to have an excellent logo.
Be an Expert in Your Field
It doesn’t matter which industry you’re in, being an expert or hiring experts will give you a much higher chance at success. When consumers hear that your company has experts that can provide them with exactly what they need, they will be much more interested and will probably end up buying your products or services. You can also use your expertise to market content and show the world that you and your company knows exactly what they are doing, giving you more visibility and also attracting people that would otherwise never have heard of your company. There are plenty of ways to prove your expertise within your industry, such as teaching workshops, helping with questions on social networks, and interacting with other like minded people.
First Impressions are Important
The best thing you can do to increase your brand is to make sure you start out with a great first impression. Whether it is your website, your marketing content, or you personally meet a client, having a great first impression will make all the difference of what they think. Once you have established a good connection, it will be much easier to convert them into a sale, or use them to further help your business.
Use as Many Social Networking Sites as Possible
The internet has provided us with a great way to meet people, promote ourselves, and also create an overall image for our brand. With the multiple different social networking site options that we have, it should be fairly simple to get started and set your profiles the exact way you want people to view your company. By taking advantage of these sites, you will be increasing your overall visibility, creating good impressions, connect with your consumers, and have the ability to promote content that will further your overall brand.
Don’t Just Focus on The Products or Services you Provide
A lot of major companies have taught us that by promoting the brand’s opinions and beliefs, they can attract an incredible amount of people to go and look at more information about them. For instance, the Clydesdale commercial that Budweiser played at the Superbowl had absolutely nothing to do with beer, but caught the attention of millions of viewers and gave them an emotional response to the company. If you haven’t already seen the commercial, check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPG7PcI67dE
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Let Your Brand Evolve
After a while the overall brand mission should change and expand with it’s surroundings. The purpose and ultimate goals will be different, so having a new marketing strategy should also be a high priority. Once a brand is established, it can be analyzed to see what it has been doing right, and what could be changed. A lot of the time if a business isn’t thriving, the brand could go in a different direction to help it get to where it needs to be.
Network Within Your Industry
Connecting to other people within your industry can really help you in many different situations. Industry leaders will be able to shed a light on you and also give you access to their audience. Working with them to do guest blogs and other marketing strategies, will increase your visibility and show people that you are an expert in what you do. Even if they are considered as your competitors, there are multiple different tactics that can be mutually beneficial, and will also give you some insight on what they do to be as successful as they are.
Be Unique
There is always going to be other companies that are selling similar services that you are, so you need to find a way to stand out and grab people’s attention. If you provide mediocre content and don’t really offer fresh and new reasons for them to be interested in your company, they will most likely turn to your competitors. Research your competitors and see what they are missing. By marketing differently than other companies within your industry, you will be attracting new customers and also increasing your brand at the same time.
Respond to Negative Feedback
If you run into some reviews that are about you or your company, make sure to defend yourself. With a lot of review sites like Yelp.com, you can make sure that no misinformation or bad situations hinder the future success of your business. If you don’t respond to them, it looks as if you either don’t care about your customers’ opinions or what they are saying is true. Review sites are a large part of the consumer process in finding the right companies to do business with, so don’t let a few bad reviews push away a large amount of potential sales.
There is a countless amount of other branding tips, but hopefully these will get you started. Branding will always be a large aspect of any business, so make sure to spend some time and figure out exactly how to make your dreams come true. To find out about some more tips, take a look at these links.
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Tom writes for www.valuator.com.au – click here to learn more about what your website may be worth and what it may fetch when selling.