There is a lot of discussion on the internet about branding, personal branding, and having a brand. As a result there is also a lot of confusion.
I want to set a few matters straight.
A brand is much more than a logo. More than the colors you choose for your print materials and website. It’s the experience the customer has while working with you, shopping in your store, dining in your restaurant.
It’s who you are, what you’re about, what you stand for and what you value most.
When you are clear about those core pieces at the heart of your brand, everything else becomes SO easy.
- It’s easy to know what networking group to join.
- It’s easy to know if that publication is a worthwhile investment in your advertising budget.
- It’s easy to choose the clients with whom you want to work.
- It’s easy to talk about – and therefore sell – your business offers.
Logos, websites, business cards, brochures are just tactics. They’re tools in your kit you can put to work when called upon.
The experience – the emotional connection with the client – is the brand coming to life. It’s the creation of pleasure or the relief from pain. It’s the one thing that you have to offer that no one else can.
Which is why it’s so important to have that clarity. It’s like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. When you know what the picture should look like, then it’s easier to put the right pieces in the right places.
Not having that clarity leaves you in a state of “corporate identity crisis”. You fly by the seat of your pants, flitting from one thing to the next without a sense of direction. When you have clarity, and you’re willing to stick to it no matter what, you will see business accelerate with ease.
Case Study: Grassroots Marketing + Brand Design
(It’s my blog. I can do that.)
I started my business under a name I came up with while working in a document production company, where I did little real design work but a lot of forms design and training modules. I called it mouse-jockey.com, because I felt that I’d spent so many years whipping a mouse around a desktop to cross the 5:00 finish line.
Mistake #1. I named the business for the very thing I didn’t want to do. I ended up doing a lot of forms and training manuals.
Mistake #2. I named my business something I had to ‘translate’ so people would understand what it was I did. And when it came out sounding like I did everything short of cleaning toilets, it didn’t meet with much enthusiasm.
Mistake #3. I took everything and anything that came my way. Because I was (a) hungry for income – any income – but bigger than that, (b) I lacked clarity about what my business was about, what I wanted from my business.
When you have to work that hard to sell your services, explain what you do, convince people to buy, naturally, the revenues aren’t there to support you. And when 2008-2009 rolled around, well, you know what happened… things got ugly.
Fast forward to the day it all changed. I pondered my future on the back deck of my house, savouring a hot cup of coffee, and clearing my head. My deck overlooks a farm implement dealer lot. (Gotta love rural Alberta!) Watching the equipment moving about the lot reminded me of my paternal grandfather, who came to Canada as a toddler, grew up on the homestead, started his family on the farm, sold for International Harvester… and my father, who enjoyed working with farmers and auction marts, who wanted to be a farmer until polio paralyzed his leg and changed his future. I thought of my maternal grandfather who also started a new life in Canada, raising 10 children on the farm,… and my own childhood, summers on my uncle’s farm milking cows, catching barn cats and climbing hay bales.
I reflected back on my family history and thought… “Why not just carry on the family tradition? Focus on the rural business, the small town entrepreneur. Bring all that big city boardroom experience to them. They’re right here. And they need my help. Just do better for them, and quit trying to be something you’re not.”
I re-branded to Grassroots Marketing + Brand Design. I never fussed over a ‘logo’, I just set some clean text and used a cool brush technique in Photoshop for a border to use on a website and print collateral. But before I could print brochures, before I even got my new website up, something shifted dramatically. Inside of four months of rebranding, I got my first 5-figure contract… an amount nearing half of what I earned in all of 2009.
I’ve spent the last two years getting out of the mindset of ‘omigod, what if there’s not enough?’ and moving into one of ‘omigod, this is growing into a real business, and I need to restructure EVERYTHING.’
It’s a nice problem to have.
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