How to Brand Yourself or Your Business
So how do you brand yourself? Why all of the fuss about personal branding these days
, especially in network marketing? Why is it so important that you create and promote a brand for yourself? I will attempt to answer these questions in just a few seconds. But let's define exactly what a brand is. Branding is the effort that entities make to distinguish their product or service as something special and worthy of your consideration. A brand is what comes to mind when you think about a certain product. It is a set of ideas, properties, attributes, images, feelings, and thoughts people associate with you or your business. So if I were to mention McDonald's, you might think Golden Arches, Ronald McDonald, or a fast, yet predictable, dining experience. You might even think about a system that produces an identical dining experience whether you're at a McDonald's in Japan or in New York City.So if you're a network marketer or a small business owner, why is it important that you brand yourself? Well for starters, you want to do whatever you can to distinguish or differentiate yourself from your competition. This is especially true in network marketing. With hundreds of thousands of people entering the network marketing industry every week, the competition is growing more intense every day. If you're marketing a nutritional supplement for Company A and there is a similar product over at Company B, why should someone buy your product instead of the Company B product? Or say for example that we are both distributors in Company A, why should someone sign up under you as opposed to signing up under me?
One way for you to distinguish yourself from me is to develop your own Unique Selling Proposition (USP). You can say that your nutritional supplement is better than mine because it contains a patented ingredient. Or you can say that someone would be better off buying from you because you offer a free special bonus with the purchase of the product from you. Or people should sign up under you instead of me because you can help them generate 100 leads per day on autopilot, or because you have a free marketing system they can use that gives them a better chance of success. We could even have the exact same product, with the exact same ingredients but if you were to advertise a property of that product that I don't, that gives you an advantage, or a USP rather, that I don't have.
It is also important to have a consistent message, as well as a consistent look and feel in your marketing materials. You also want your actions and your behavior to be consistent as well, consistently good that is. One way to ensure that your actions and behavior remain consistent is to be yourself! Don't try to act or talk like your upline or another leader in the industry. Don't try to be something that you are not. There are billions of people on this planet and no two are the same. You have some unique qualities as well as unique experiences. Your story is different from everyone else, so let us hear your voice. Establishing a good unique logo helps differentiate you too. Placing photographs and videos of yourself on your sites make you real to people. Remember, people don't join companies, they join people that they like and trust.
However, a good brand is a lot more than words and images. A good brand implies that what you have to offer cannot be easily found elsewhere. So if you're advertising excellent service, you need to provide excellent service. It you offer a guarantee, stand behind your guarantee. In other words, you have to live the brand, not just say it. I heard far too many stories of people joining network marketing companies only to have their upline abandon them instead of helping them get off to a good start. Have you ever bought a product and experienced problems with it, and then have difficulty getting any kind of customer service? You don't want to get a bad reputation or a bad 'brand'. Can you say British Petroleum? It's like that old saying, "you don't get a second chance to make a first impression". You may be able to recruit a large number of people into your opportunity, but if you don't live your brand, you won't be able to retain them.
There are of course a large number of technical things you can do to establish you brand such as creating websites, blogs, landing pages, capture pages, advertising copy, articles, videos, post cards, and on and on and on. I will attempt to address some of these in a future article as these are all important to establishing a viable business and web presence. You certainly do not want to rely on a company replicated website. That is your company's brand, not yours. In that case, you definitely want to create your own website, or preferably a blog. But the most impressive website in the world is no substitute for honesty and virtue. I believe that when it comes to branding, character trumps all. If you provide your customers exceptional value and customer service, keep your word, and stand behind your products and services, then you can have no better brand than that.
How to Brand Yourself or Your Business
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