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The Art of Successful BrandingBranding: it's a term that carries great weight in the world of advertising. Successful branding is best illustrated by the world's most prominent corporations, but it's no less important to the small business owner. Your Brand is your identity; it's every single puzzle piece, fitted into the big picture of your company. From your name and logo to your business philosophy and corporate mission; from your advertising campaign message to your design elements; from your products and services; all that is owned, produced, stated, sold and marketed by your company falls under the broad heading of your Brand.What exactly is a “brand?” The term probably originated at a time when when ours was a strictly agricultural society. Ranchers take a branding iron to their cattle, as a way to signify they OWN those cows. Likewise, modern corporations choose a logo to brand their name into the mind of the consumer. Every time you label an ad or website with your company logo; every time you take a political stance on behalf of your corporation, you're putting your brand into effect. And if a brand indicates ownership, then it should be your ultimate mission to dominate, or own, your niche. Brand your company. Own the cow. How do you determine your style of branding? Analyze your audience. Zero in on the group you're trying to reach. Are they male, female, or both? What's the age group and economical level? What are their spending habits, their values? How do they TALK? What are they concerned about? What do they think they NEED? Where will their focus be in six months? And most importantly, how does your marketable product fit into the scheme? If you never really get to know your audience, you can read all the marketing how-to strategies in the world, and it isn't going to mean diddly-squat for your business. It isn't going to help you build your brand. What's the next step? Always, always, always put yourself in their shoes. Jump right into their heads, if you can. Think of your audience during the business-plan conception process. How do they communicate? What do they find visually appealing? Are you marketing to senior citizens? Use bigger fonts, a nostalgic tone, and a morally forthright attitude. Is it the filthy, stinking rich whom you're trying to attract? Save the Crazy Eddie shtick, because money is no object here. Every bit of energy used to promote your brand should be focused toward winning over your key customer. There will be a time when you completely lose sight of who you're trying to attract. This, in turn, dilutes the power of your brand. You'll be in the middle of writing an ad, when suddenly your head is racing with potential buyer types. This happened to me once during my writing stint with a digital media company who sold Santa Claus greetings. In my sales letter, which went on for pages and pages, there was no limit to what Santa could do! He could praise tiny tots for using the potty. He could play matchmaker to a couple of young lovers. He could patch up an argument you had with Aunt Freida in Topeka. All of this was great, but it was really convoluting Who We Were as a company, and our Santa was becoming a Jack Frost of all trades. It was no good! So we went back to square one. And through simple words and a more narrow focus on our original audience of children, we finally captured the Magic of Christmas that we had originally intended to be Our Brand. Reflect your brand in everything you do; from your website design, to your public relations, to how you go about selling your product. Once you've done this, the next step is to create Brand Awareness. This is achieved through consistency. You can dream up the most brilliant ad campaign on the planet, but if you're not consistent about putting it in place, you'll never establish brand recognizability. If the tone of your company is “fun, light and noncontroversial”, steer clear of anti-war demonstrations. If Arial is your font of choice, then don't go switching it up mid-campaign and putting out affiliate program materials using Tahoma. If tongue-in-cheek humor is how you attract attention, don't line your website borders with super-mushy personal ads. Ask yourself: will this resonate with my key customer? And use your logo and company tagline wherever possible—in your email correspondence, on your website, as your letterhead, on your business cards, in your advertising and on your product packaging. Remind people of who you are. Burn your brand into their minds. To some extent, branding is following the herd... emulating respected companies that capture what you'd like to be known for. Still, a wise entrepreneur must never forget that today's success story is tomorrow's dot-com that went under. "What sold" for someone else may not work for your company. Just because Joe Baloney made millions selling with a bilingual circus clown doesn't mean that will work for you... or that anyone's even going to find it remotely interesting in six months. The market changes like the tide, depending on what direction society is going in. Where they were before, which way they're headed, and wherever it's likely they'll end up... socially, economically, ethically, politically, culturally, intellectually, psychologically, philosophically. How will you know that you've branded successfully? When people start listening to you. Not just hearing what you say, but letting you call the shots. You'll know it when people start imitating you, too. You'll start seeing knock-offs of your products and your company image. This may flatter you or it may annoy you, but when it happens, it's your cue to lead the pack in a new direction. That's how to stay on top of the Branding Game. The day that you find yourself functioning as a real, live spokesman for a group of individuals, is the day you've achieved Brand Recognition. The day that you make the front page news headlines is the day you've become a household name. But a word to the wise: once your brand achieves true power, someone will try and take you down. Remind them that you own this cow. Copyright 2005 Dina Giolitto. All rights reserved. About the author: Dina Giolitto is a New-Jersey based Copywriting Consultant with nine years' industry experience. Her current focus is web content and web marketing for a multitude of products and services although the bulk of her experience lies in retail for big-name companies like Toys"R"Us. Visit http://www.wordfeeder.comfor rates and samples. Circulated by Article Emporium 10 Proven Ways to Multiply Your Sales 10 Proven Methods To Multiply Your Sales 1. When you make your first sale, follow-up with the customer. You could follow-up with a "thank you" email and include an advertisement for other products you sell. You could follow-up every few months. ... 9 Ways to Make Money On-line Are you making money hand over fist with your website? If you are then you don't need to bother reading this article because it is not for you. If you are like most of us your website sales are slow and unpredictable and you need to think of new ways to make money online without ta... Affiliate's Guide For Success. Affiliate work is a rewarding work at home profession. There are hundreds of companies and small businesses that will pay you a commission for selling their top selling products. There are 2 main ingredients for success. Successful affiliates learn networking te... Content Desk Virtual Publishing Empire - Cashing In On What More Than One Billion Surfers Want Most Today, more than one billion* people surf the Internet. And that number is growing. So is the amount of revenue being generated online. For example, online advertising expenditures are targeted to reach an estimated $11.6 billion by 2010, according to a forecast from Forre... Finding Keywords Straight From The Bank... Copyright 2005 Kurma Group I still remember the day I read about this strategy in an excellent newsletter and was blown away. I went straight to my computer and started using what I learned and I was amazed at how much money I made! I had found golden keywords strai... Swotting for success Copyright 2004 Dave Collins Not so long ago, I impressed the daylights out of a friend, by showing him his face on my PC's screen. As I tapped away at the minus key, the picture slowly zoomed-out, revealing that it was a picture of the two of us, and it soon became clear whe... The Art of Successful Branding Branding: it's a term that carries great weight in the world of advertising. Successful branding is best illustrated by the world's most prominent corporations, but it's no less important to the small business owner. Your Brand is your identity; it's every single puzzle piece, fitt... Why All Your Marketing Efforts Have Come To Nothing Copyright 2004 Mal Keenan How often have you responded to email from those in your downlines asking for advice on how best to run their online businesses and finding it increasingly frustrating that things JUST aren't working out as planned? I myself see the same... Online Shopping – Whatever you want! Everyone's talking about online shopping. With the convenience of the Internet, people from all across the globe can practically shop anywhere, anytime and anyplace, all from the comfort of their own home. Opening a new door to a worldwide marketplace, consumers from around the wor... Have You Sold Your Internal Customers? Copyright 2004 John Jantsch You can make the sale. You know your core message. You know your target market inside out, right? But if you have even one employee than you've got another sales job to do. Everyone in your organization must also be sold on the dream you ... Blogs And Your Work From Home Internet Business As a work from home internet business entrepreneur you have several really good tools on the internet you can take advantage of in order to build your work from home business. A blog is just one of those tools that you ... Search Engine Optimization for Beginners Copyright 2004 Jack Humphrey If you are confused about terms like "search engine optimization" or having a "search engine friendly" site, then listen up! I am here to help. Depending on how long you have had, or considered having, a website online, you have heard t... Stop wasting your time.... Copyright 2005 Richard Grady One of the things that almost all online entrepreneurs are guilty of is wasting time. Running your own business on the Internet usually means you will be working from home. This means that you have no boss watching what you are up to and no sta... How To Crank Out Killer Web Copy That Sucks In Money Like Crazy! Part 2 Copyright 2005 Quick Turn Marketing International, Ltd. ====================================== KILLER CONCEPT 6 Tell 'em Before You Sell 'em ====================================== The essence of this concept is the promise of a reward just for reading the con... Reselling Resold Resale Rights What the heck am I talking about? Let me tell you that this will be one of my ‘Chilli Pepper' articles, it's HOT and very controversial. If you've spent anything more than 5 minutes in the Internet Marketing world, you will most probably come across something call...
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