Tips for Strengthening a Growing Business Brand

When you give life to a new business, you're also giving life to a brand. When you interview job candidates, the way you make hiring decisions supports or negates your brand. Regardless of whether you've strategically crafted your brand, your customer service, content, employees and products all help define it. If they're all saying different things, then you have a brand problem.

Don't freak out just yet.

Creating and managing your brand can be very simple. It starts with the people in your organization. Usually that's the first thing organizations forget. The key is to keep it clear, keep it consistent and keep it alive. While you're building out your team, you must make sure that everyone understands the brand completely or nothing will be seamless.

Here's a simple list of steps to help solidify your brand, basics first:

1. Understand the value of a brand. Before you start honing a brand around your organization, you must first value its weight among your company. A brand isn't your logo, slogan or any other tactical piece of your business. Your brand is your value system, your culture and your tone. It's the way you approach marketing communication. Most of all, it's ingrained in each of your employees. It's within them that your brand will be carried out.

2. Define your audience. Your customers shouldn't solely define what your company stands for, but without them your company wouldn't survive. In order to tackle this in a strategic manner, you'll need to understand who your key target audience is. You can do this by conducting a customer survey, scheduling interviews, or posting something on your brand's social pages asking for feedback. Figure out why people like or dislike the products you sell. Get a better understanding of what keeps people coming back to your business; know what disengages them.