Five More Tips To Develop Your Brand

These additioinal tips are too important to keep you in any suspense beyond yesterday's blog.


5. Conduct a brand assessment. Ask twenty of your customers to name one word that they would use to describe your brand. If your twenty responses all come back different, you need to work on your Consistency. If the large majority of them don't meet the message you were hoping to send, then your Clarity needs improvement.

6. Conduct a SWOT Analysis. A SWOT Analysis is a method often attributed to strategic planning that calls for the analyzer to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats involved with a brand.  With a SWOT Analysis, you can create a detailed and honest assessment of where your brand soars and where it suffers. You can also find key avenues which might grow your brand and, of course, determine potential threats to your brand awareness and uniqueness.

7. Understand your value. There is only one of you. That has value and that has power -- but only if you know your brand value and power. What do you bring to the table that no one else can? Why would someone want to buy your product? What makes you different than everyone else? These are all questions whose anwers belong in your brand consideration.

8. Define your positioning strategy.  When your customers think about your brand, what kind of thoughts do you want them to have? When you have the answer to that question in mind, you're in a position to craft a brand that will reach your target market effectively. Remember, however, that it's important to conduct a brand assessment frequently to ensure that your message is being delivered and received as you intended.

9. Deliver your authentic self. When building brand awareness, you must deliver your authentic self. Be original, be yourself and be honest. The more of your authentic self that you bring to the table, the more successful you will likely become.

By R. Kay Green, IKG Marketing Solutions