Building Your Brand, Building Your Business

 Part 1

When you build your brand, you build your business…and then if you are building your business you are building your brand [Thank you James for expanding on this! ]. Your brand is be more than your trade name, logo or website. A company’s brand touches all aspects of a business, from marketing awareness to reputation and referral potential.

The Branding chart provides a breakdown of the key elements involved in branding. Building your brand is your Visual Plan. Building your business is your marketing and Action Plan. Neither Plan can exist without the other, nor can your Brand and business exist on only one element of each plan.

As mentioned, your Brand includes more than your business name, logo, and look and feel. It includes your Visibility, Reputation, and Influence to attract satisfied clients that are happy to give you Referrals. Unlike the linear Visual Plan, you action plan elements are multiplied to reach higher results.

Note the red stars. Online branding includes a website, social media, blogging, forums, video, photo and radio sharing. These are fairly new elements in branding and are quickly becoming a marketing standard as print material has been for years. Influence now plays a role in your action planning since your use of websites, blogs, social media and new media allow for customer interaction.

Branding has become more complex and involved and does not stop at your trade name or logo. Keep this in mind so one does not fall into the “…if you build it, they will come” syndrome of doing nothing once your site it up an running. Continuous updating and content posting and customer interaction will help build your visibility, reputation and influence.