How to Discover Your Brand

For many businesses, discovering their brand can be the most difficult part of the process of marketing. And yet, it is arguably the most important. A brand is an idea that you create in the mind of the customer. Ideally, this idea includes all the qualities that you want them to associate with your product or company. But it’s always possible for a brand to grow and develop in a direction that you hadn’t intended. When branding is unplanned, it can be unpredictable. And at times, it might even become negative.

In order to avoid this, it’s necessary to start branding as soon as possible after you start your business. Make sure that you maintain a certain degree of control over what people think about your company and product. Make sure that the messages you’re sending to your customer via marketing or advertising are really the messages that you want to send. If you feel that a certain marketing campaign is not in line with your vision for your company, then don’t implement it.

Write a Personal Mission Statement

You can write a mission statement because you want to put it up on your website or you can write it just to clarify what your mission is. Having a mission statement is important because it helps you to keep track of what messages you want to send out to your customer. It helps you to discover what your brand is.

Most people have some idea of what they’re planning to do with their companies. For example, you might pride yourself on the quality of your product, your innovation, your personalized customer service etc. Most people want to develop all areas of their company but one or two might be particularly important to them.

For example, we all associate sleekness and great computer graphics with Apple computers. We associate simplicity and elegance with Calvin Klein. We associate practicality with a certain degree of “cool” factor with the Gap.

So think about the things that are particularly important to you, the things that you want to develop in your company. And write them down in a mission statement.

If you wish, you can just make a list of these things rather than writing them as a statement. If you’re only doing the writing for your own personal benefit rather than sharing it with your customers, it doesn’t need to be elegantly written, just functional.

Consult Friends, Family, Business Associates and Marketing Professionals

It’s important to write down your own thoughts about your brand. However, there might be times when you feel stuck. What is it about your product/service which differentiates it from other products or services? You may not be able to put your finger on it.

If this is happening, you can try to get some feedback from others. What do your friends and family think about what you’re trying to do with your business? What about business associates? Do you have a business partner? What’s their take on it? You can even consult your managers or employees; this is especially useful because it will also give you an idea of how they feel about working for your company.

If you’ve tried all this and still haven’t come up with enough, it’s time to turn to a marketing firm. Give them whatever information you have and let them fill in the blanks. Given that a marketing firm is likely to have quite a bit of experience working with various companies and brands, they’ll be able to understand what you’re going for even if you don’t quite understand it yourself.

Contact us for more great ways to discover your brand.

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