SME Owners: Be Your Own Brand Strategist

By : Segun Akiode

In the early months of 2014, I participated actively in the birthing of two brand image launch – one of which was my pet project and the other is a consulting outfit (name withheld since I’m not paying for advert here ).
However, that aside, I drove the brand image design from the scratch to final design output alongside the creative designer. One thing that made the process stress-free for me was the fact that I had an understanding of what I wanted the brand image to look like. So I ask you now, as an SME Owner are you aware of what a brand is or you have not even started at all?

A place to start is the knowledge that a brand is a “name, term, design, symbol, or combination of these elements, intended to identify and differentiate a product/service offering in the minds of its customers or clients”.

Branding is the single biggest buzzword in marketing today for good reason – Brands pave the way for marketing success.

As an SME Owner you are competing with bigger brands and for you to gain ‘customers mind-share’, you need to have a better perspective of what stronger brands are and the whole branding process.

Brands are promises that consumers believe in. You can only effectively create a brand when you’re ready to make a promise to customers – a promise that you’re absolutely, positively certain you can keep. A brand, in essence, is a promise about who you are and what benefits you deliver. You build your brand by living up to your promise every single time people come into contact with your name, your message, or your business.

Your brand is all about customer perception: many people think that the logo is the brand, but, in fact, the logo is just one representation of the brand. Your brand isn’t how you look or what you say or even what you sell. Your brand is what people believe you stand for.

For example:

    Apple sells computers and innovative phones. It stands for thinking differently.
    Disney sells animated and amusement park family entertainment. It stands for making dreams come true.
    GTBank sells cutting edge financial services driven by technology and customer service. It stands for banking without boundaries.

Your brand lives in consumer minds, so branding is the process of developing consumer beliefs and perceptions that are accurate and in alignment with what you want your brand to be.

When you think branding, think what is the promise and perception that I as an SME Owner hope to communicate to my potential customers.

A Bird’s-eye View of the Branding Process: When it comes to branding, an SME Owner should have a bird’s-eye view of the whole process. Start with studying the figure below:

The Branding Process at A Glance

I would cover the above branding process in another post all together.

-Culled from : http://www.spreadmediang.com