First Steps to Finding Your Brand

No entity is too small to start branding. Whether you are an author publishing your first novel, or an entrepreneur with multi-millionaire investors, you need to be consistently communicating who you are and what you stand for to both present and future customers.

You need to ask yourself:

1. Who is my customer?
2. What are they looking for, and what will they value in my product?
3. Why should people get what they need from me, and not a competitor?
4. What is your mission, and how do you reinforce it?

These three questions are your first steps in building your brand. Ideally you will ask them before you build your company logo, choose your messaging, pick your color scheme, or do any of the other things that tie in to your brand.

After all, your brand is not your logo—it’s not even your product.

Your brand is what customers can consistently expect when they cross paths with you, regardless of the medium. It might be face-to-face, or it might be when they open a package from you. It might be on a website, or it may be when you sponsor an event they attend.

Wherever or however it happens, your brand the emotional response you create in customers or would-be customers.

• Do they smile, or do they become irate and start telling anyone in the vicinity about that one time they were wronged in an unforgivable way?
• Do they crinkle their nose and talk about poor quality, or do they give friends your contact information and claim you’re the best?
• Do they automatically associate a color scheme or phrase to you, or do they wing it when they describe your imaging and messaging?

The composite answers to all of the above questions is your current brand. And if that current brand isn’t working for you, then maybe it’s time to give some thought to reapproaching it.

Your brand is what makes your competitors take you seriously. It’s what makes peers want to be associated with you. It’s the images, colors, and words customers declare to be “yours.” At the end of the day, your brand is the emotional response that makes others want to become a walking billboard for you.

So regardless of your size, it’s time to start asking yourself three simple questions mentioned above:

1. Who is my customer?
2. What are they looking for, and what will they value in my product?
3. Why should people get what they need from me, and not a competitor?

Because it’s never too soon to take a close look at your market, find your place in it, and let people know exactly what they’re going to get if they choose you.