How to Build an Amazing Brand

It’s time to talk about your brand.

You just learned that existing associations that people have made in the past can predispose them toward one decision over another at the subconscious level.

Branding is the art of aligning with and directing people’s emotions and opinions on the conscious and subconscious levels.

Your brand is not how you view your company; it’s how outsiders view your company. A truly amazing brand sits at the intersection of its incomparable advantage and what its customers care about.

Your brand should attract and appeal to your ideal customers, so if you’re choosing your color palette and symbols based solely on your personal preferences, you could be in trouble.

There is a ton of material written about brand and branding—much of it, of course, from the B2C point of view. And much of what you read will only add to any confusion rather than reduce it. Thus, my goal for today is twofold.

First, I want to convince you of the absolutely critical, nonnegotiable importance of branding without writing a whole book on the topic. Secondly, I’d like to distill the conversation of branding into something practical and actionable for you to employ.

Great brands don’t get built or reinvented overnight, but you must be intentional about the process.

The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second-best time to plant a tree is now —Chinese proverb

Branding is science, art, messaging, culture, and customer experience wrapped into one communication strategy, and in the B2B world, it is wildly undervalued, which means it holds a world of opportunity. As buyers’ choices get more complex, your actual message needs to become more human.

Technology has bred a more intense need for a personal touch, and this makes branding more important than ever before in the B2B world. Your first impression is a lasting impression.

Before you spend more money on promotion, make sure your core brand and message will impress and resonate. Your brand must have appeal and intentionally communicate to your target market to help them understand you and prefer you over your competition at the gut level.

The word brand or branding has at times become synonymous with marketing in general. It’s true that your brand is overlaid against everything you do, but the semantics can get complicated, so I’ve organized this discussion around the practical application of brand principles.

The American Marketing Association defines a brand as “a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s goods or service as distinct from those of other sellers.”

The International Organization for Standardization further explains that a brand assists in creating “distinctive images and associations in the minds of stakeholders, thereby generating economic benefit/values.”

Thus, your brand is not just your logo and color scheme.

It is instead what people believe about you when they engage with anything representing your organization.

Branding is the art of aligning what you want people to think about your company with what people actually do think about your company. And vice versa. —Jay Baer

Branding is how you show up in the world. It’s how people feel about you, so it’s a never-ending, always-evolving aspect of marketing and competition. You can’t rest on your laurels, because minds change, experiences change, and markets change.

Your brand works for you or against you on the subconscious level because the brain processes vast amounts of data, with the primary source being visual information, which the brain processes and organizes in a fraction of a second.

As the saying goes, seeing is believing. What visuals are you using to provide that critical first impression, and what emotional signals do your visual communications trigger?

Does your branding have a polish that is appealing, or does it look homemade or old? Are you conveying professionalism and capability, or does your brand appear dated or mom-and-pop, suggesting that you’re small, you don’t innovate, or you don’t keep up with the times?

If you are in an industry with very strong brands, how are you standing out? Could those in the market consistently choose words that clearly name your position and corporate personality?

If someone were to match your name to a competitor’s logo, would it be ridiculous or not even noticeable?

The point I’m trying to make is that every single communication choice you make tells a story.

Not making a choice (i.e., not investing in your brand) is still making a choice. Your lack of attention to this matter might communicate that you are apathetic or pay no attention to detail.

Make no mistake: people will draw conclusions based on how you choose to communicate, and these conclusions are what they’ll use to form their comparisons between you and your competition.

No matter how diligently your salespeople prospect, hustle, and follow up, they are at a huge disadvantage if the brand doesn’t communicate excellence when they aren’t in the room.

The best doesn’t always win; the best at removing fear does. Solid branding removes fear because it demonstrates intentionality, competence, and allure. As for myself, I prefer to be the master of my destiny and communicate strength rather than wait around for scraps or missed opportunities left over by my competition.

Do yourself a favor and make it easy for the market to trust you.

Stack the cards in your favor. The achievements of a great brand are as follows:

? awareness

? trust

? belief

? memorability

? desire

? reputation

? likability

? belonging

? loyalty

? consistency

So how do you build an amazing brand?

I organize the elements of your brand into three groups: (1) brand strategy, (2) brand identity, and (3) brand experience. We will dig into these more next week.

A lot of content written on branding bleeds into the distribution of your brand, but really, those are your customer-acquisition tactics.

How, not where, you execute them is what matters when talking about your brand.