Branding Strategies in Marketing

It’s easy to assume that your clients will refer you—after all they chose to do business with you and we all know you are AH-MAZ-ING! Right?!?!

Yeah, not so much.

Just because your clients chose to do business with you, doesn’t mean they will refer you. That is a fact.

Let’s set client experience expectations

You already know that a customer will share a bad experience with a company at three times the rate of a positive experience. So first a client has to have liked doing business with you—that’s …

While these words are common-place in both the nonprofit sector and the business world, there is often a lot of confusion around what they actually mean. Without clarity, it can be challenging to know if your organization truly knows what it does and even more challenging for the market to understand why they should do business with you or donate to your organization. Remember, a confused mind never buys. So allow me to explain each of these as well as the organization's purpose and core values.…

A strong personal brand can help you convey confidence, build your self-esteem, and position you to stand out from others. It’s about getting clarity about your own skill set, your mindset, and for some, their life purpose. Intentionally investing in your personal brand, can land you a better paying job or make attracting more profitable clients easier. So it really is a worthwhile investment.

Like a professional brand, your name can be a major part of your personal brand. Since your name will …

A while back in one of my first books, I wrote about what I call “Snowflake Syndrome” and it was the hit of the book. That chapter was popular beyond the specific industry that the book was written for. Recently, I have had a few encounters that have reminded me of it and got me thinking that maybe I should expand upon it and release a new book. Maybe…what do you think? 

So just what is Snowflake Syndrome? It’s when a brand believes that it is unique in its market and that the market should go …

At this point, it feels like newsletters have been around forever. I can barely remember a time where I was chatting with clients about creating a branded magazine or traditional newsletter. Yes I know they still exist, but most truly aren’t in need of actually being printed.

Newsletters, like most marketing, go in and out of popularity and are more successful for some businesses and industries than others. Having said that, they have been making a comeback…again. This seems to be a result of t…

Figuring out your brand personality can seem to be impossible. It's like figuring out who you are and what really matters to you as a person. We all struggle (whether we admit it or not) when it comes to figuring out who we really are. It can take years of self-reflection, self-care, and personal discovery only to discover that who we thought we were is not who we actually are…and then begins the process of accepting who we really are. Well, you don’t have that kind of time when it comes to buil…

Ooohhhh me too. Me too. Me too. When a brand so closely resembles another in communications, logo, name, or colors that it causes confusion in the market and to its customers, it is called a copycat brand or as I call it, a “Me Too Brand.”

I once met with this tech company whose whole strategy was to intentionally be a Me Too Brand. Their plan was to confuse the market so they could steal their competitor’s clients. They even went so far as to rename their company. They took the company’s two-w…

…just like everyone else.

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Do you remember watching the Charlie Brown cartoons? In those cartoons, whenever the teacher would respond to one of the kids, we as the audience would hear “wa wa wa wa wa”. Much like what kids hear (or don’t hear) when their parents or teachers tell them to do something. Or, much like us when we read or hear the same buzz words over and over and over and over again! Each year, LinkedIn releases the latest overused buzzwords that it recommends you remove from your profile if you want to stand o…

Have you noticed that naming a brand is one of the hardest aspects of branding? Good brand names have a certain "stickiness" to them. This "stickiness" is what makes them memorable and repeatable. It also makes your competition go, "Damn, I wish we came up with that!" But the wonderment of creating that "stickiness" and identifying the perfect brand name doesn't come the second you tell it to. Instead, it usually takes time, intention, and willingness to consider what you never thought of before…