WHAT IS A BRAND?

Your brand is more than just the logo on your letterhead and business cards or your business name. It is your corporate identity. An effective brand tells the world who you are, what you do and how you do it, while at the same time establishing your relevance to and credibility with your prospective customers.

Your brand is also something more ethereal. It is how your business is perceived by its customers. If your brand has a high perceived value, you enjoy many advantages over your competition, especially when it comes to pricing. Why do you think people are prepared to pay stupid money for items of clothing with the initials “CK” on them? Perceived value. Perceived value as a result of very effective brand promotion resulting in very high brand awareness.

Now, I’m not saying we all need to rush out and start creating brands that are going to be recognized the world over. Most of us simply don’t have the time or other resources necessary. What I am suggesting, however, is that it is possible for your brand to dominate your niche.

WHY DO I NEED TO CREATE MY OWN BRAND?

=> Differentiation

We touched on this in the previous section when we looked at what a brand is and how it can be used to increase the perceived value of your products and services. The main reason for creating your own brand is to differentiate yourself from your competition. New websites are a dime a dozen. So are home-based businesses. You need to constantly be looking for ways to set yourself apart from your competition. Your brand can do that for you.

=> More Effective, Efficient Marketing

Another good reason for creating your own brand is to make your sales force (even if that’s a sales force of one – you) more effective and efficient.

Imagine if you didn’t have to spend the first 50% of your time with a new prospect explaining who you are, what you do and how you do it. What if your brand had already communicated that for you? You can spend 100% of your time focusing on sales rather than educating your prospects about your business

Another benefit of branding is that the efforts you expend increasing your brand awareness through promoting and marketing your brand to your target market automatically transfers to your products and services. So, even when you’re advertising your brand, you’re indirectly also marketing your products and services.

HOW DO I CREATE MY OWN BRAND?

OK, so you’re convinced you need to create your own brand. Where on earth do you start?

We saw earlier that your brand needs to say who you are, what you do and how you do it. It needs to do all these things at the same time as establishing your relevance to and building credibilty with your prospective customers. Needless to say, it is absolutely essential, if you are to build your own brand, that *you yourself* have a firm grasp of who you are, what you do and how you do it. If not, you’re going to have the devil’s own time getting that message across to anyone else, let alone establishing your relevance and credibility.

=> Write A Mission Statement

So, let’s start by creating a mission statement. What is the mission of your business? Obviously you’re in business to make a profit. But making a profit is a byproduct of a successful business. Focus instead on how you choose to achieve that profit. What are your core values?

A good place to begin thinking about your mission is to put yourself in the shoes of your customers. Put yourself in their target market. Let’s say your business is web hosting. If you’re in the market for a web host, what things are important to you? Different people will be looking for different benefits but you can bet that they want their website to be accessible to site visitors so reliability will be high on their list. Price is also likely to be high on the list as is 24/7 technical support. What about add-on features such as unlimited email aliases, cgi support and what-not? These things will be highly important to some and less important to others. So focus on the benefits that are likely to be highly relevant to the majority of your target market. Let’s settle for our purposes on reliability, price and technical support.

Your mission statement might read something like this: “I strive to earn a fair return on my investment of time and money by providing affordable webhosting with guaranteed 99% uptime and 24/7 telephone technical support”. That’s a pretty general statement and if you decide to focus on a particular niche of the webhosting market, such as small business, you may want to more narrowly focus on that group in your mission statement.Now that you’ve written your mission statement, you can begin thinking about creating a brand that reinforces and supports your mission. So, getting back to the fundamental questions of who you are, what you do and how you do it, you can now begin to think of your business in these terms. You’re a webhosting provider, you host websites of small businesses and you do that by offering cost-effective webhosting solutions, guaranteed 99% uptime and 24/7 telephone technical support.

When you create your brand, you need to keep the who, what and how firmly in mind but also use the brand to establish your relevance to your target market and build credibility with that market.

Let’s turn now to the nuts and bolts of creating your brand.

=> Describe What You Are Branding

List out your business’s key features and characteristics, your competitive advantages and anything else that sets you apart from your competition.

Using our webhosting example, you’ll focus primarily on the objectives from your mission statement namely, reliable, cost-effective webhosting solutions supported by 24/7 technical support.

=> Identify and Describe Your Target Market

Decide whether you want to target lthe entire webhosting community or only a segment of it such as small business websites. Describe your market.

=> List Names that Suggest the Key Elements from Your Mission Statement

The key elements from your mission statement were reliability, cost-effectiveness and customer service. List names that are suggestive of these elements. Let’s use Reliable Webhosting for our example. (I don’t claim to be a creative genius.)

Don’t limit yourself to real words, though. A coined name with no obvious meaning is a perfectly legitimate name provided it conveys something about your business. You will find coined names easier to trademark and secure domain names for too – a definite plus!

=> List Tag Lines that Reinforce Your Mission Statement

We’ll use: “Outstanding reliability and technical support at a price your small business can afford”. I know, I know. You can do much better, I’m sure.

HOW SHOULD I USE MY BRAND?

=> Create a Logo for Your Brand

Your logo is NOT your brand but your logo should allow your brand to be instantly recognized by those familiar with it. To this extent, your logo helps create and reinforce brand awareness.

The logo you create should be able to be used consistently in a variety of different media. It should be suitable for corporate letterhead and business cards, as well as for your website and corporate signage (if any). You do NOT want a confusing mishmash of logos and banners and heaven knows what else. Everything you produce needs to use the same, consistent style of logo so that, over time, your logo becomes synonymous with your brand. Instant recognition is what you’re going for here, so don’t dilute it by using several different logos for different purposes.

=> Consistent Usage of Company Name, Logo and Tag Line

Going back to our webhosting example, putting the brand name and tagline together, the physical manifestation of your brand will be:

RELIABLE WEBHOSTING Outstanding reliability and technical support at a price your small business can afford.
To establish brand awareness, this branding needs to be used consistently and frequently in everything your produce, whether that be letters to clients, business cards, brochures, quotations, invoices, advertising, promotion, on your website, on the front door of your principal place of business and on your products. And don’t forget to be consistent in your use of color schemes. These can be powerful brand reinforcers.

=> Marketing and Promotion of Your Brand

Once you’ve created your brand, you need to market and promote it, in addition to your products and services. This is how you establish your credibility and relevance to your target market. You can hopefully see why your brand needs to be suggestive of your mission statement. If, at the same time as you’re selling your products and services you also push your brand, your brand becomes synonymous with your products and services. And vice versa.

A properly descriptive brand and high brand awareness amongst your target market will allow you to more easily introduce a wider range of products and services when they’re developed without having to start by again selling who you are, what you do and how you do it first. Your brand has already presold YOU. Your job then is to sell your products and services.

Companion products:
The brand extension is a companion product is probably the most common. The idea is perhaps the benefits of complementary products is increasing. The consumer has two products together and provide opportunities for the introduction of brand extension.

Franchise customers:
A vendor offers a range of products to meet the needs of a particular meet. For example, a business can be a variety of products to launch, for example, children attend kindergarten. The goal here is not the customer, but their different needs.

The experience of the company:
Brand extensions often come in the form of the introduction of different categories of products with a common name but is based on a common set of knowledge. This strategy is particularly true for countries in Japanese.

Brand Price:
Many brands to achieve the distinction as one attribute, profit or function that is associated with the brand. In such situations, the company can return to work to launch various products that are money essentially with that distinction. For example, the coconut diet can parachute in mind the customer experience at the time. This would run the company the possibility of Marico a variety of agricultural products of this distinction.
The image or reputation:
A brand extension can lead a walk through independent product groups, based on exclusive use of a brand or prestige. The exclusive brand or prestige attaches great expansion possibilities. This is especially true for designers and artist brands.
Umbrella brand This is also the type A all the branded products. A brand is a premium brand, which appears in a number of products they may each have brand images. Companies must record a short term incentive to reduce quality and cost, because consumers will only observe quality ex post. Video con range of appliances – air conditioners, refrigerators, televisions, washing machines, etc., Phillips also has a wide range of devices under the Phillips brand blender, iron, television, etc.

Brand also got the size of the economy. Invest in a brand is less expensive than trying to build a series of marks. Using a common name for a variety of products, owns the trademark on their investments. Therefore, the umbrella brand of work is an economic strategy. With an umbrella brand to enter new markets (Tata further boost the passenger car market) allows considerable savings. It offers the advantages of new products for brand awareness, partnerships and good will now.

One explanation is that brand extensions brand is a form of economies of scale, because it saves the cost of creating a new brand. Brands have an intrinsic value (the state or not) and therefore a “public good” in that most products are sold under the same brand, plus the total value created. Another perspective on brand extensions is that) in a world where consumers about the characteristics of products are not safe (because of the horizontal and vertical differentiation, brands can play an informational role. The mark is the uncertainty about the properties of a new product, which increases the value should be reduced if consumers are sensitive to risk. Given these factors, we can say that the mark is a superior strategy when there are significant overlaps between the amount the buyer of products from different companies. This result extends the notion of extending well known brand and umbrella brand are only successful when the roof a good match between the different products in one.

The greatest risk is associated with the brand that many of these products have the same common name, a debacle in a product category can affect the products of common identity. Branding approval is a modified version of the mark twice. Thus, the main trademark and brand name of the company is forced to a subordinate position. The umbrella brand will play an indirect role in the transmission of certain organizations shared services basis. It is only applied for authorization of the trademark. In general, the brand is going for themselves.

The brands are supported include the listed company. Kit Kat gives the signal that a part of Nestle milk and dairy products is an expression belongs to Cadbury. Cinthol stresses that communication is a product of Godrej. While these brands have their unique image, somewhere in the image of the Manufacturers Association is also involved. Approval marks a balance between the roof and brand. In the case of Cadbury and Nestle brands have their own position and image. Cadbury, Nestle and support brands since the increase in the transfer of certain properties or associations, the confidence of customers. Trademarks identified by their distinguished names.

P & G has a fan of the brand product strategy. P & G ’s baby care, cosmetics, feminine hygiene products, health care, fabric care, home care, food and beverages, etc. P & G has been an ardent supporter of the brand product. Trademarks are Alones stand, do not even know the people they all have a common root in P & G shares, the corporation is not a common identity. For example, a company behind the brand of products is a risk in a better position in areas unrelated to the activity without control in a joint. Another advantage is a brand in a unique position and a segment LED, the company is able to cover a spectrum of markets by means of several brands. The disadvantages of branded products are primarily due to costs. Custom is the image of a costly exercise. Only companies that have deep pockets and staying power too long can adopt this strategy.

This is the type “A hallmark of many products. Sometimes a brand starts with a different approach, for example, Lakmé (” radiant beauty) Winter Care Lotion. The brand appeals to a different market segment, and how to know which method of brand value. The central idea is that links the brand with the consumer group. Now, customers are often not satisfied with the product, which offers brand. Instead, I take an additional product to go with the concept of the brand or the application will, for example, wants to pass a user Lakme all products, beauty, beauty lotion, deep cleansing cream, lipstick , nail polish, eye makeup, etc. The strategy of the online brand shows how well maintained the brand can extend to a number of similar products under a common concept. This strategy seeks to enter the customer, instead of entering the market. Its purpose is to meet additional requirements around a fundamental need to be. Brands starting line with a product, but later extended to a number of complementary products. The product line for your brand identity principal. Marketing products as a line harnesses the power of brand marketing rather than selling a single brand. Colgate has a range of dental care products. Colgate Total, Colgate Colgate Gel toothpaste and toothbrushes different.

Brand extensions, which are a popular way of introducing new products to market under the label “A kind of brand, all products are the strategies. In a typical brand extension, a well known brand is a new product in a category, with or without relationship used to capitalize on the main brand. The familiarity of consumers with the current director of the brand collect aid entry of new products on the market and contributes to the brand extension to new market segments quickly. Brand extensions come in two different ways: horizontally and vertically. In a situation where the horizontal extension of trademark is a brand name for the introduction of new products in the classroom or an associated product or an entirely new product category is applied to the company. An extension of the vertical mark, however, is introducing a brand extension. In the same category as the products of major brands but at a different price and quality. In a situation where the expansion is vertical, a sign of the second or descriptor is usually introduced with the leading brand in order to show the link between brand extensions and core brand (eg, Marriott Hotels, Courtyard by Marriott). Although a brand extension aids in the creation of an acceptance of new products, the new product with a known brand or company name links is also the danger of diluting the brand’s core equity or harmful to the ozone layer, which are incorporated in the basic mark has. A brand extension could cause inappropriate damage to associations that can be very difficult to overcome for a company. Different types of brand extensions are as follows