A powerful, consistent brand is important for two reasons. First, it allows your clients and prospects to understand exactly what you do and why they should purchase from you. Perhaps even more importantly, especially for a busy entrepreneur, is that having a brand identity in place means that you aren't constantly starting from scratch when you market your business. In fact, it will streamline all your activities, from making a sales call to creating a brochure, and make your marketing activities much simpler as well as more effective.
All companies have loose brand identities, but few maximize the potential for their brand to work for them. There are three essentials when establishing a powerful brand that will increase revenues:
1. Write it down - a brand identity is only good when it's used consistently by everyone in your company. You should have a Brand Guidebook that includes graphic standards like the colors to be used and how the logo can be presented and the brand messages that describe your company and its individual products.
2. Clean house - Get rid of or revise any marketing materials that don't reflect your brand identity. The only way identities work is when they are used consistently, so make sure you aren't muddying the water by having multiple messages in the marketplace.
3. Use it! - Make sure that everyone follows your branding structure all the time. It should be second nature for them to speak to customers using the brand messages, and no marketing, from brochures to sales letters to follow-up calls, should ever be created without the brand identity as a starting point.
The power of a strong brand identity can only be realized through consistent repetition. After working with many entrepreneurial companies, we recognize that most have a powerful drive to constantly evolve and change. To manage this desire, we recommend establishing an ongoing list of changes to be made to the brand identity. Throughout the year, people can add suggestions to the list, but they may not make any alterations to the established brand identity unless a critical and fundamental error is discovered.
Once per year, the company can formally revisit its brand identity, consider the items on the list, and make changes as needed. This system makes room for the natural desire to create and dream that is critical in an entrepreneurial organization while still maintaining a singular brand identity, which is critical to marketing success.
