Last month, I covered having a fresh site that delivered an encapsulated view of your business at a glance and the reasons to keep your web site updated and use it vs. other advertising avenues. Consequently, I ended up discussing just that very thing in the week after with two clients. I'm glad I got started down this road because most people have just ignored the marketing side of the web, settling for a web site that they rarely visit once up. If you aren't visiting your site to make changes, people won't visit your site to make buying decisions.

 

This time I want to talk about Brand Identity, Brand Recognition and Brand Loyalty and give you a feel for considering these areas of marketing and I'll tie it in with the web.

 

First, Brand Identity is the visible "face" of your business that identify who you are to the customer. For most people with a small business, your brand identity would be your store name, company colors, style and logo. Your brand identity would be a customer knowing who you are at a glance of your name and/or logo and being able to place it to your business. Like the Nike swoosh is immediately recognizable as the brand of Nike. For the average small to medium sized business, building Brand Identity is often overlooked and can be started by making sure all of your marketing materials have:

These are all overlooked for most businesses and very simple to correct. If you want to get them all synced up, start with your web offerings first as the artwork for the rest can be used from your web site.

 

Brand Recognition is where you get a chance to have someone make a choice for your business "brand" over someone elses. Does your logo and tag line tell people that you what you do or does it sit there on paper in Times New Roman type with no communication? People make a choice between two products by recognizing one brand over another by differentitation. For instance, Nike differentiates itself with the tag line "Just Do It" telling you that they are THE company for aggressive footware. I bet you didn't say "Gosh, why didn't he use Asiacs as an example?" You weren't even thinking of them were you? Or Adidas? Ask yourself if you are differentiating yourself to rise above your competition?

 

Brand Loyalty is where you see the bottom line reflection of your marketing efforts. The loyalty a customer displays to your brand i.e. buying your product, is caused by several things that give the customer a preference for your business. Whether that is a feeling of friendship with the salespeople, your knowledge of products, up to date product lines or great customer service brand loyalty drives your repeat business. This causes your competition to work harder and spend more to keep up It also gives you some wiggle room should you deliver a bad product, poor advice or a regretable customer service experience to be able to have the customer realize it wasn't the norm and shouldn't be held against you this time. The greatest loudspeaker for the power of Brand Loyalty is that research shows Brand Loyal customers are less sensitive to pricing.

 

There are simple things you can do with your business to accomplish these goals. Ask yourself these three questions:

 

I was talking to a potential client the other day about how they should be pushing a list of happenings or special events all at one time to their social applications to drive business and create awareness. Preferably on a daily or weekly basis for major events since they have a packed schedule.

 

The ability to push your status updates to all of your social networking sites like Twitter, FaceBook and MySpace and beyond is covered by a great application called HelloTxt. Whether you want to post by eMail, SMS or the HelloTxt web site it will send it to all of your chosen social sites. Just remember that if you use the eMail option, it will publish your eMail signature as well so take that out.

 

Try it out for free at: hellotxt.com . If you are a digital, social butterfly and make lots of status updates, this app could save you tons of time and make you look even more on top of things.