Building your brand - doing it properly

If building a business were easy then everyone would have a booming enterprise. In truth, and as we all know, it takes hard work and determination but there are some things we can do to make our lives easier. In this article I share some of things I would do to help build your business, by working on your brand.

Put simply, branding is the process by which someone knows who we are and what we do and it is what distinguishes us from another business, service or product.

A lot of my connections are in the legal sector (and in the private client space) which means that they are trying to distinguish themselves from other professionals or businesses. We need our clients to understand who we are and what we do. Sometimes, it's not immediately clear from our business name or logo what we do. When writing this article, I thought about tips that would have been useful for me so I've broken this down into 5 easy tips:

1. Build a personal brand. Use LinkedIn to grow connections. Don't hard sell (because no-one likes it) but introduce yourself and your business when the opportunity arises. Build your personal brand by adding value to your audience and sharing knowledge. You can also associate this with your business brand by sharing page posts.
2. Create brand trust. When you're posting on social media, explain and demonstrate how you deliver on brand promises. If you have a tagline that explains what you do, use that in messages and posts. I'm a big fan of business reviews and using these to demonstrate trust. Naturally, you'll want to associate these with your brand.
3. Create brand continuity. This is a really simple one but if you've got multiple platforms, make sure that your audiences on each platform are left in no doubt that all of your platforms belong to your brand/business.
4. Look at your customer experience. Do you go the extra mile? Is it demonstrated? How do you advertise or communicate about what clients can expect? Careful branding gives you the ability to shape expectations.
5. Associate your brand with other trustworthy brands. This can be one way to build your brand quickly by positive association.

5 relatively simple tips but they will certainly help you build your brand! Got any questions, reach out. I'd be happy to help.