Instead of looking for inspiration through numerous (10 ways to waste your time) pages, and skimming vague suggestions on how you should increase your brand awareness, let us save your time and provide you with some precise instructions, strict guidelines and proven methods that helped many successful companies and small business entrepreneurs.
In the following article you will get the chance to read about branding, and branding strategies, from the perspective of some of the most successful company holders, and we will provide you with short elaborations and explanations as well. Read this article only if you are already aware how much branding is important, we won’t bother you with going through statistics and facts, instead we will just sum up everything in one simple sentence: You need Branding! If you have that sweet logo and a positive message you want to send out to the public about your business and quality service or product, let’s do this.
Who Said What & How You Should Understand It
Name: Jeff Bezos, Amazon
Said: Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.
Good guy Jeff made the phrase “if you don’t take care of your business reputation someone else will,” which we all know and love, simple enough for everyone to understand. The conclusion is to always send a positive message. You probably already have a business Facebook page, Twitter and a website, and you took care about brand positioning online. The only thing that you should know now is to keep your business non-personal, but treat it as you would your personal reputation. This means that you always have to respond positively, you should always share encouraging posts and never, never get involved in any type of conflict. Even if you receive a negative, obviously provoking comment, don’t let yourself get aggravated. Online communities provide transparency, and you can’t afford negative reputation. We’ve simply entered an era where every type of advertisement is not a good type of advertisement.
Name: Malcolm Forbes, Forbes
Said: Too many people overvalue what they are not, and undervalue what they are.
The answer is simple as this: stop caring about expanding your target audience and concentrate on your main target. Let everybody know you are here. Sponsor events, invest in billboards and make your store stand out, and whatever your line of work is you should find a company like Clothing Planet, and print out your logo in high quality on promotional shirts and products. Digital awareness maybe is an important chunk of your advertisement, but a lot of your potential consumers are still walking down the street and you can’t afford to lose their attention. Even if your business is entirely online based, you should have promotional products and share them through your website. Wherever you can find your target audience, know that you should be in the back, holding a sign: “look at me.” Or have your logo clear and standing out, which would probably be more effective.
Name: Warren Buffet, King of Investments
Said: Your brand had better be delivering something special, or it’s not going to get the business.
You have that promotional products, shirts, mugs etc.? Good, give them away like they don’t mean anything to you, and watch how those will mean everything for your business. Every person that visits your profile online should know that you have something special for them, and make it stand out so they can see it, or hide it in a plain site so they could feel like they’ve discovered something (but don’t actually hide it, of course). What Warren said is that you need a unique selling proposition, and this is how you will be certain that people will talk about you, and the majority of your customers will do business with you only after someone proposes them to do so. Mouth to mouth advocacy did expand trough online comments and reviews, but every customer counts and you should make every single one of them returning to your store and place of business.
You want your clients, consumers, friends and online visitors to talk about you, post about you and every sentence they pronounce or write should be a positive one. It takes time, but all great things do. Keep increasing your brand awareness and it will show results.