How to define your brand

Tim Calkins wrote in his chapter entitled The Challenge of Branding (which appeared in the book Kellogg on Branding that a brand has the power to create customer loyalty and protect companies from competition. This means that it’s critical for you to create a brand for your company that adequately displays what your company does. It’s also vital for your to protect your company brand as this reflects on how your company does business. In this article, we’ll give you some pointers on how you can define your company brand so that it gives the best image of your company.

Defining your brand

Define your business’ objectives

Before you can define your brand, you need to know what your business’ objectives are. This is because your organisation and your brand are closely intertwined. Think of it this way: your brand is a way of describing what the company does, so if you don’t know what your company does you can’t describe it.

Here are some of the questions that you’ll need to answer when defining your company’s objectives:

• What does my business do?
• How does it meet customers’ needs?
• What is the value that I bring to my customers?

Once you’ve answered this, you can start to make your brand fit around your company.

Look at who your target market is

Now that you’ve figured out what your business does, you need to determine who you’re going to be selling your product and/or service to. A business can dot all the I’s and cross all the t’s but unless it has people who are willing and able to buy what you’re selling; you mind as well pack up shop right now.

The best place to start with figuring out who your target market is, is by looking at who your previous customers are. Look at the specific demographics that characterise these people:

• What gender are they?
• How old are they?
• What do they do for a living?

When you have answers to these questions, you can start building a profile of who your target is and start to gain other customers who fit this profile.

Attract the right employees

The fuel of the modern economy is knowledge. In fact, it is said that data and the ability to process this data is going to be as valuable, if not more so, that oil. This means that in order to manipulate this data and draw actionable insights from it you need to have people who will help you to do this. In other words, you need employees.

In order to attract the right employees for your company and brand, you need to project the right image into the market that will ensure that the employees who are attracted to your company are the right fit for you. This image is called the employer brand.

Defining your brand is the first key step towards you building a sustainable business. If you don’t put together this good foundation, you’ll find that your business will collapse as the grounding of your organisation isn’t solid.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

In order to adequately manage this foundation, you need solid brand management skills. You – as a business owner need them – or you need to hire a brand manager to take care of this for you. When you are looking for a brand manager, you need to look no further than someone with a completed Brand Management Course from the Digital School of Marketing. Want to know why? Follow this link to find out.