Personal Branding can be the most influential tool for success in your self-marketing toolkit. You can identify, package and sell who you are to build a personal brand that results in business growth, influence, and income.

 
Here are three key things you need to develop a strong personal brand:
1. Get clear on your personal strengths, talents, values, and core area of expertise. Understand how you connect best with people. Consider what your target audience needs and wants, and then identify the value and the experience that you can deliver to meet those needs and wants. Communicate in ways that reach into the hearts and minds of your target audience and connect with their core values and deepest desires.

2. The personal branding process is about having self-awareness of your strengths and talents, and then letting everyone know about your gifts, talents, and experience. It’s about giving a clear impression of who you are, what you value, what you’re committed to, and how you can be counted upon to act. Your branding statement must provide a clear, concise view of your unique set of strengths and tell why you can do it better than anyone else. You need to be able to state clearly and unequivocally why you are different than everyone else, and what services you offer that make you unique and set you ahead of your competition.

3.Consistency is one of the keys to building a strong personal brand. Be aware of being consistent in every interaction you have, both in what you say and how you respond.

Establishing a Professional Brand is absolutely critical to long term, sustainable business growth. In an overcrowded marketplace, if you’re not standing out, then you’re invisible. Branding your products and services will give you an edge over your competition and enhance your value to your target market.

There should be a consistent look and feel to every page of your website.  You want your visitors to know they haven’t actually left your site when they go to another page.
Icons for going back or to the next page, for printing the page or even the icons that line your menu should all follow the same theme as your site as part of your marketing effort. Every aspect of your website should be about your brand. Standing out from the rest is not nearly as important as having others recognize your site. If a visitor travels to other pages and they look different, they may believe they accidentally left your site and then leave it all together.

A simple concept for internet market branding is your logo as an icon. You can then use this as buttons and every time a person has to click, your logo makes an imprint. Obviously it will need to be much smaller than the main logo on your page or other areas to be used as a menu icon, perhaps as small as 16 x 16 pixels, but the reduced image will continue your branding throughout your pages and offer a benefit to your internet marketing effort.

Additionally, with this level of branding throughout your site there will be no doubt in your visitor’s mind where they are. You can even make it so a visitor bookmarking your site will see the icon in his or her favorites, further imprinting the image. Remember, returning visitors often buy more than first time visitors and keeping your image in their minds will aid your internet marketing efforts
With a bit of creativity, you can make it so prospective customers automatically think of you when they see your logo. This is one of the simplest yet most effective branding methods.

You may have heard something about ‘branding’ in regards to marketing, but perhaps you’ve wondered what that means exactly.

Some people think branding is like positioning, but it is different. The main difference is that positioning is a fluid concept. In other words, you can position yourself at different times in different markets as different things. Branding is more set in stone- it’s a hard-core recognition factor.

Branding is more about the following of rules because if you don’t follow those rules, things don’t look the same and people won’t remember you. When you put out your marketing pieces, you want to create a similar look and feel so that people remember you. And you want that similar look and feel on every thing you put out.

The good thing is that you get to make the rules…colors the same, style of lettering the same, logo etc. And there is some flexibility as long as you follow the rules. You can’t go too far out of bounds, but you can change some things within the frame of what others can still recognize.
Branding in your marketing has to make you feel something. A technology company can’t have an old style font – you might not think they were very far advanced.

Branding is just like the old coat of arms that families used to have connected with their name. It would instill respect, fear, and wealth – whatever. Likewise, a country’s flag gets people to feel a certain way about their country.

Think about what message you want to portray. What do you want recipients of your promotion to think about you? What image of your company do you want to put out there? That is your brand. When people see you continually as one thing, they begin to expect the same from you and they get used to you.

Anyone who is going to spend money usually wants to know what the purchase will do for him or her. In fact, 70% of all purchases are made on an emotional level. So for the most part, buyers aren’t concerned about the logical points of the purchase. If they were, the vast majority of us would be driving small, fuel-efficient cars with one-speaker radios.

Think of your brand as a promise … a promise you make to your clients, prospects, employees, and even your vendors. It is necessary that you are able to back it up. You cannot build a successful, long-term brand on unsupported claims and wishful thinking.

To separate you from your competition, your brand — your promise — has to differentiate you from others in the minds of your prospects. This is the reason you cannot use quality, integrity, or price when positioning yourself in your marketplace. So many companies claim to offer these particular characteristics that none of them stand out from the others.

Logos, brochures, advertising and other forms of marketing may, in certain instances, be individual components of a branding campaign, but unless they are part of the system of determining a company’s capabilities, direction, opportunities, and indeed its essence, they cannot–and should not–be referred to as branding. To say that a new logo, for instance, is equivalent to a new brand is to believe that I can compete at Daytona International Speedway by slapping decals all over my car. Even if it ends up looking good, it’s still not ready to — or able to — compete.

What this all boils down to is the fact that every business — including yours — has a brand. The question is whether your brand is being determined by outside factors, or if are you actively building it on your terms.

If your online marketing material stimulates an image in your mind that is just not you, likely you’ve been trying to model your approach after someone else or you’ve been using work produced by someone else without giving them the benefit of knowing you, learning your approach, sharing your ideas and interjecting your personality into the material.

So, what’s the solution?

The solution to this dilemma is to be yourself and let your personality show through in your online marketing materials.

If you are writing a blog entry in the midst of a snowstorm and it is “a bit nippy outside” don’t hesitate to say so. When you let your personality shine your image will be your own, not one you have crafted that will change from day to day depending upon what you have read most recently.
There’s lots of talk about branding in regard to online marketing. The basic principles of branding are to decide on the image you wish to portray and what message you want to drive home.

While some people could write a book on how to brand your business, there are really only a handful of factors to consider – your image, your purpose and your message. The purpose of a brand is to craft something that will stick in the minds of people and help them to remember your business.

Creating and building a strong brand does not have to compromise your personality. The only real decision is whether you want to be casual or professional. In the world of online marketing, retaining your personality and your identity will go far in branding your business. You’ll be much happier with the long-term effects of your online marketing if you don’t try to be someone you are not. Be yourself and have fun.

Everyone’s heard of a company called Kraft. “Hey, those are the cheese people.” Yep. For years, Kraft and cheese were one and the same. It was an example of branding with a position competitors would have been hard-pressed to wear down had company brass been content in their cheesiness. They weren’t. Like many companies blessed with strong brands, Kraft began to think their brand name was invincible and that any product introduced under its banner would dominate their markets simply because of its name. So, Kraft began offering jams, jellies and mayonnaise among other things.

The numerical truth about Kraft’s brand extension strategy:
Ohio-based Smucker’s owns 35% of the jams and jellies market. Kraft has 9%. Hellman’s mayonnaise has 42% of the mayo market. Kraft has 18%. The plan for equal domination didn’t quite work out as planned. Despite its dominance in the cheese market, Kraft was relegated to bit player status in these other categories. Their strategy of trying to leverage a great brand name into being all things to all people resulted in few real winning products.

People who wish to expand into other product areas need to do so by using a strong brand identity as the foundation of its marketing strategy. Either that or create new product lines that somehow relate to your old product line, such as cheese companies putting out a line of pre-made cheese and cracker snacks. What Ritz did with Mini Ritz sandwiches, Kraft could have easily done by focusing the product’s marketing slant on the cheese in the cracker.

Over the long term, as your brand becomes synonymous with a specific kind of product or service, more people will turn to you for that product or service…and continue to do so because they believe they’re getting quality only a specialist can provide.

A jack-of-all-trades really is master of none. So if you are a master, or wish to become one, do it. Be it. Just no to everyone.

Brand Identity is a promise. Whether that promise involves product quality, service, price or a million other things variables.

 
A strong brand identity can place a business above its competition all by itself. But having a brand that’s strong takes time, money and effort to grow. It’s not as easy as just creating a logo or writing a tagline. Brand identity is the reason you give your customer to pick you instead of your competition.

Successful re-branding involves “evolution,” not “revolution.” You must make an impact on upon your existing customers that your new brand is just a new and improved version of the same you. It’s vital to not get too extreme with a re-branding effort because you could end up destroying delicate emotional ties and customer loyalty.

Having a brand identity that resonates with your market is imperative, but not at the expense of the people within your company. They need to not only get it, but also be your brand’s most ardent ambassadors. Do your employees believe in your company? Do they feel like they have a vested stake in its success? Companies with solid brand identities can say yes to these questions. Can yours? If not, here’s some things you can do:

1. Get every aspect of your company on the same page. Get all your departments talking to each other and understanding each other.

 
2. Give everyone a common understanding of the company, its mission and their part in it. They should feel like they have ownership-even if they don’t.

3. Reinforce brand values and behaviors. Constantly promote these fundamentals until they’re second nature.

Your employees will ultimately determine your success or failure. You, as leadership, must earn it. But once you do, you’ll have a company that is full of happy, motivated successful brand ambassadors.

Think of your brand in terms of what the customer gains when it is viewed by each of his or her five senses-hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling and touching. In a nutshell your brand is the result of everything your prospects senses can pick up on about you.

It’s the image you present at all times. From the company’s logo and color scheme all the way to the manner in which your employees dress. Think of what your colors portray.  Are they giving the message you want to give?
It’s what your prospects hear from and about you. From what they hear about you in the media to how your customer service team handles incoming complaints. Are former customers likely to speak kindly about you?  Are you and your employees pleasant when you speak?

It’s the feeling your prospect gets in all their dealings with you. From their satisfied or unsatisfied interaction with you to the relationship building activities you carry out. Do customers and prospective customers feel they can trust you?  Do they feel your honesty?

It’s the pleasant or unpleasant scents that get associated with you covering everywhere from the scent of your product or facility, to even your employees. Do customers get a scent of cleanliness? 
And lastly it’s also the tastes that get associated with you. From the taste of your product (if it’s a product meant to be tasted) to the quality of coffee or tea you serve.

Your brand encompasses everything about you. Hence you can see why it’s important to always put your best foot forward. Bottom line, branding is essential to establishing your identity in the marketplace and consistency is the key to effective doing that. Take time to examine with your senses what message you are giving your customers.