Have you ever thought about branding for your company?
If I ask you “what is your brand?” how do you respond?
Is it your logo? Your colors? Your overall “look”?
Brand is a hard thing to nail down, partly because the term means different things to different people. In his book, “The Brand Gap”, Marty Neumeier describes a brand not as a logo, a product, or even an identity.
He describes it simply as this:
A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or organization.
Here’s the secret, you don’t actually get to define your brand, your customers do.
It’s not what you say it is, it’s what they say it is.
You can certainly influence this, and you ARE influencing it whether you like it or not. Every move you make builds a brand for better or for worse.
The question then becomes, are you building your brand the way you want to?
Think about what you want your company to be known for, and get focused on that. Drop products that steer people away from that focus, and build up products, services, and interactions that reinforce your focus – this is one huge part of building a brand.
Get focused, and your customers will begin to see the brand as you want them to. Before you know it, you’ll have a brand that people love and that you’re proud of.
