Setting yourself Apart

"Branding demands commitment; commitment to continual re-invention; striking chords with people to stir their emotions; and commitment to imagination. It is easy to be cynical about such things, much harder to be successful." - Sir Richard Branson, CEO Virgin Group

Your brand is what will lead your company to success. Without a proper strategy in place, your market will not be able to connect with you and your service. This means you could be overlooked, or even completely forgotten.

So, how can your company maintain and update its brand in order to keep the interest of your clients? These 4 steps will help to keep your brand unique and interesting to your markets demands and desires, while setting your company apart from your competition.

1) Tell Your Story

​Everyone has a story, and those stories are unique to the individual and the company. Properly utilizing this step can easily set you apart from your competition, and can effectively pull the attention of your market. How? This is done by making a personal connection with the people you want supporting your business.

Your story is personal to you; however, there will always be aspects of your story that others can connect with and relate to. This is how you brand through telling your story. Express what interested you in starting your business, and how you landed on the product or service you provide. Whether your business started as a dream when you were a child, or if you wanted to escape the corporate world in order to create your own future, there will always be a way of expressing yourself to your clients, and making that personal connection.

2) Be Memorable

As a small business owner, you have to create methods of standing out to your clients in order to be remembered. What makes you different from your competition? How is your product or service different from what others offer that will influence a guest to return to your company? Making your business memorable sounds daunting, at first; however, it doesn't have to be as difficult as it sounds.

Your business can be remembered through a variety of aspects. This can be done through the color scheme you choose for the interior of your company, or even through the designs you choose for you logo. Personally, I like to focus on how I interact with my clients. Approaching your guests and interacting with them as though they were your personal friends or family can set you apart from the competition, and there are not costs associated with this. Take genuine interest in your guests, and they will take genuine interest in you.

​3) Be Consistent

Your guests want to know what to expect from you every time they visit. This creates a sense of comfort, for them; and creates an unspoken invitation for them to return. By maintaining a consistent brand image, your business becomes stable in your industry; and the market begins to understand who you are and what services you provide. Through consistency, you are able to mold the perceptions of your business, and shows a level of stability that other small businesses may not have.

This step can be easily connected to Step #2. Maintaining a consistent brand helps make your company more memorable. Take a moment to think of some major companies in your industry; think about the logos these companies use; consider the perceptions the public has about these companies; and realize they have stayed consistent for years, if not decades. The public knows what to expect from consistent companies, and are able to their services from those of their competitors.

​4) Stay Flexible

This might sound contradictory to Step #3; however, it is an important part of being a small business owner and creating a stable brand. The flexibility suggested in this step doesn't reference the flexibility of your brand. Instead, it means the flexibility of your business. There are rapid changes, in the world of business; and you have to be ready for them. New competitors enter the market on a daily basis; client demands and expectations fluctuate with their personal needs and desires; and how you engage your market can result in exponential growth or seemingly immediate failure.

With being flexible, your company doesn't necessarily have to renovate it's entire image, however. In fact, your business may simply need a face-lift. By maintaining the culture you originally established, your guests will not question your services. Instead, draw their attention with an updated logo, branch out into a new realm of social media presence, or engage your guests with a new product or service that is becoming popular in your market. In the end, remaining flexible and maintaining your current relationships will lead you down a road toward a more successful future.

​​ Branding is the perceived image you put in place for yourself and your business. This image to be a representation of what your guests and market can expect of you. With a strong brand that tells your story, is memorable and consistent, and remains flexible to market fluctuations, your small business will continue to be a competitor in your industry.

Brandon has been focusing his attention on the world of small business since 2007, and admires the strength and dedication it takes for small business owners to mold and grow their dream into something they only ever imagined. The blogs provided on the EC Sales website are created from his personal experiences within the world of small business, and he shares them as a way of offering support and insight into what he thinks makes the best...the best