Identify Your Company's Brand

Read this article on branding first…

What words listed below best describe your company or your products/ services?

·         Customer service

·         Established

·         Community service

·         Great deals

·         A name you can trust

·         Industry Expert

·         Reliability

·         Free Shipping

·         Unique products

·         Innovative

·         Experienced

·         Products that last

The list above is nowhere complete. Use it as a starting point. Really think about what you want your company to be known for. Identifying what sets your company a part from others is an important step in identifying your brand.

Many companies make these claims “the best customer service in the industry,” “over 50-years of experience,” etc. For your branding to be effective, you’ve got so do what you say. Some of the claims listed above are easy to back up. You offer free shipping, or you don’t. Others are more difficult to back up, but have a lasting positive effect if you do. Let’s take a look at Ben & Jerry’s as an example.  As you visit their website (http://www.benjerry.com/) you will notice one of their page names is “Activism.” Click on the link to the page and you find out how they’re involved with everything from supporting family farmers to reducing CO2 emissions.  Read Ben &; Jerry’s mission statement and notice how it is part of their branding effort.

After you know what makes your company unique, it’s helpful to see how your completion is branding themselves. First of all, you need to identify your competition. After you have identified them, take a look at their site and see how they are branding themselves. Finding out what you do better than your competition can help you establish your brand.

I looked at some websites to see if I could identify a company’s brand. I Googled “lawn care company” and looked at the page descriptions for the first 2 pages of web results for examples.

World's largest landscaping and lawn care company. Describes residential services, presents special offers, and features extensive lawn care and landscaping ...

We are St. Louis' premier lawn maintenance company. Beautiful Lawns in the St. Louis, MO area. Missouri, Lawn Mowing company, Total lawn maintenance service ...

Industry-leading lawn care & gardening advice. Indoor & outdoor lawn and garden products and services. Great tips on gardening, yard care, landscaping, ...

The Tree Expert Company is one of the oldest and most prestigious tree, shrub, and lawn care companies in North America, we provide a number of ...

Compare these with HIT Web Design’s page description.

HitWebDesign.com
HIT Web Design creates innovative custom web design starting at $199. Providing small to medium businesses with affordable website design and management ...

What are these companies saying about themselves? They are saying “we’re affordable,” “we’re experienced,” “we’re specialists,” “we’re innovative,” “we’re a leader in our industry.”

After you know what you want to say about your company, it’s time to think about how you want to say it.