Building your business brand

Posted by David Critchley PM | on Tue, 17/08/2010 - 13:45 1413

Creating a strong brand helps to generate a buzz around your business and retain client loyalty. David Critchley offers some handy hints to get you started.

Company branding can be a bit of a business opinion splitter. On one side of the coin, branding features pretty low down on the average "to do" list, especially when times are tough. After all, how much thought can you really put into a logo, a business philosophy, or a marketing strategy when the primary focus needs to be on driving the day-to-day business and making sure your customers are happy?

On the flip side, creating a brand that your customers learn to love and keep coming back to can be one of the most rewarding things you'll ever do for your business – just ask any one of the many successful companies out there that have built an entire business model around the brand. Because, at the end of the day, a brand is about much more than just a cleverly designed logo or website, it's a packaged representation of everything your business offers.

In today's never-more-connected world, in which customer comments can reach thousands of your prospects and competitors at the click of a button and one disgruntled person can tear strips from your business via a microblog, brand is more important than ever. Building it, controlling it and refining it can be the difference between the dictionary definitions of branding; one being to "impress indelibly", another being "a mark of disgrace".

Unfortunately, as those business brand champions will also tell you, life isn't quite as simple as heading down to your friendly high street brand management consultancy and slapping a few thousand pound notes on the table.

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