Brand Strategy

If you were to ask me “What is the one question new marketers ask you the most?” without a doubt it would be regarding brand strategy.

In this day and age, the internet plays a very important roll in how we market our products and services to our potential customers. Some of the best internet tools you can use in your marketing are your own domain name, web site, and branded email.

All too often, I see new marketers fail because they didn’t select the proper branding strategy, or worse yet… They didn’t use any branding at all.

I’m sure you have all received emails, from marketers, that were using an obscure email address from one of the bulk email services (GMail, HotMail, etc…). Did you open any of those emails, I’ll bet not!

If you are going to be marketing your products and services, then you need to consider your branding.How you present your business to your prospects will certainly be impacted if you don’t.

So where do you start… Probably one of the first places we recommend that you begin is with choosing your domain name.

But what domain name should you choose?

Well, the answer to that question all depends on your brand strategy. Are you are going to Branding Yourself or will you be Building A Brand?

Each branding strategy has it’s own benefits and drawbacks, so the one that you choose will depend on your own circumstances. While no one can tell you which strategy is right for you, we can help you to understand the Pro’s and Con’s to each approach.

Armed with the following information, you should be better informed and understand the differences between the two strategies. making the proper decision about your brand strategy requires you to have a good understanding of each so that YOU can make the right decision.

Branding Yourself

The concept of branding yourself is to present YOU, not your product or service.

It’s a common belief that people buy from people. While your customers may like the product or service that you are offering, if they don’t like you, they will buy it from someone else offering the same product or service. Therefore, branding yourself is all about marketing YOU.

Now it should be obvious, if you will be branding you, then your brand strategy should be to put yourself out there in all of your marketing material. There’s no better way to accomplish this than by registering for a domain name composed of your name.

For many of you this may be as simple as searching for a domain name using your own  FirstnameLastname.com format and registering it.

However, if your name is a common name like Sally Smith, you may soon find that the SallySmith.Com domain name is already taken. If that is the case, you may need to be a little more creative and use something like WorkWithSally.Com or SucceedWith Sally.Com.

The main point here is to select a domain name that markets YOU… Remember you are Branding Yourself.

Once you have selected a domain name… Get it registered, put up your website, get your branded email address, and use them in all of your marketing. There is no better method for branding yourself than this one simple method.

Understanding why you would want to brand yourself requires an understanding of the Pro’s and Con’s of this approach. Therefore, we have listed the Pro’s(along with the benefits) as well as the Con’s (with it’s drawbacks) below;

Pro’s

• Easier to Market Yourself – Your marketing can focus on the benefits of doing business with you
• People Buy From People – By building your relationships with people you can strengthen YOUR brand
• Builds Relationships – It’s easier to build relationships because people will be more receptive to you than a corporate brand
• Product and Services – Branding Yourself may make it easier to change your products or services

Con’s

• Transfer of Ownership – It will be harder to sale or transfer your business & marketing if it’s all branded to you
• Partnerships or Corporations – It may be difficult to market under one individual in a partnership or corporation with more than one owner
• Prospects and Customers will be watching YOU – Everything you do will be under scrutiny
• Loss of Anonymity – Once you start marketing, everyone will soon learn who you are

After reading through the Pro’s and Con’s of Branding Yourself you may have noticed that we kept the number of bullets the same. This was intentional, we did not want to sway your opinion by providing more weight to one or the other… Instead, this is an exercise in helping you to build your own list of Pro’s and Con’s and determining if Branding Yourself is the right brand strategy for you.

Building A Brand

I’m sure you have heard of Coke® or Pepsi®… I don’t want to start an argument about which one tastes the best. Instead, I want you to focus on their brands. Both of these companies have done an excellent job of Building a Brand. However, both of these companies also have rather large marketing budgets.

I’m not saying that you couldn’t build a brand too… It’s just that building and marketing a Brand requires a little more of your resources and creativity in your marketing approach.

Consider this, how will you get your brand to stand out from all of the other competing brands? Unless your product or service is exceptional or unique, without a huge marketing budget it may be difficult to get your brand noticed.

There’s really no point of listing out the Pro’s and Con’s of building a brand. For Building a Brand you can just take all of the above Con’s and make them the Pro’s. Likewise, you can take all of the Pro’s and make them the Con’s.

Everything about Building A Brand is the inverse of Branding Yourself!

If you choose to take this approach, do your research and select the proper brand name so that your brand will stand out from similar products or services.

Summary

Take a good hard look at your brand strategy. Decide early on if you will be Branding Yourself or Building A Brand and then create your marketing accordingly. Remember, regardless of the approach you choose only you can make the decision based on your particular circumstances.