Lots of small business owners are intimidated by the thought of marketing their businesses. The buzzwords and flash associated with “marketing” often make embarking on a do-it-yourself marketing effort seem daunting. But don’t let that fear distract you from the goal of educating your customers and potential customers about your business.

In your day-to-day business, you focus on what your customers need and how you can provide them with that.  That is what your marketing should focus on, too. Too many marketing messages focus on the company rather than the customer. So as you craft your marketing strategy and materials, keep the customer top of mind.

Here are some great tips that will help you take that customer-driven attitude and translating it into marketing:

1. Don’t sell. Instead, educate — John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing explains how you can use marketing materials to educate your customers and build trust.
2. Encourage interaction — Small Business Trends Expert Ivana Taylor demonstrates how to create marketing materials that encourage the clients to interact with you.
3. Listen when they do interact — Chanpory Rith of LifeClever outlines how to make sure that your various materials, media and interactions show customers that you are listening when they talk.

Once you’ve mastered that high-level, customer-driven attitude about your marketing, you’re empowered to take the steps to market your business yourself. Here are useful posts on the tactical side of marketing.

1. Free and low-cost tools to spread your marketing message – Angela LoSasso of HP offers a step-by-step walkthrough of ways you can share your customer-driven marketing message, from Twitter to professional-looking DIY templates for business cards, customer kits and more.
2. Lessons Learned From Home-Grown Marketing Collateral — Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends is a marketing expert. But, everyone can learn from their mistakes. Here she shares some lessons she learned from a promotional booklet she made herself and how she improved it.
3. Do’s and Don’ts of DIY design — Chanpory Rith of LifeClever encourages you to DIY … and offers some helpful Do’s and Don’ts.

***

HP Creative Studio makes it easy and cost-effective to do it yourself! Check out resources for making your own business cards and business identity kits, brochures and presentation kits and websites and blogs.

Photo Credit: M on Flickr

If you want to develop a solid brand strategy, there are some things you have to do first.  I want to challenge you to focus on these two elements before you even get started with graphic design.  Before you get started on your website or meet with your website guy, you must wrestle with these elements.  And before you start thinking of all the different concepts for a new logo, wait.  To be honest with you, if you can’t answer these questions, you’re not ready to do anything else.  It’s like sitting down with an interior designer to talk about the color of your drapes before you’ve ever met with an architect.

1. You must know who it is you’re trying to reach. Identify this group demographically and geographically. Pinpoint “psychographics” – know well your customer’s likes, dislikes, and how they live and make decisions.

I formerly worked in a French-speaking country of West Africa. In Benin, the common language of all the various people groups was French. But you can guarantee, even among the well-educated (where French was well-spoken), when conversations turned to passionate arguments or intimate conversations, the Africans would break into their own dialect!  It’s there where you can draw from a well of emotions and you can best articulate your pain.  If we had wanted to, we could have chosen to speak in this common “state” language and we might have made inroads into the psyche of a select few. But we were seeking to impact a large number of people, so we were compelled to go deep.  We could not use an interpreter to communicate our thoughts.  We had to invest the time in learning the specific language of these people.  Soon, we learned not only to speak the local dialect but we learned to live and act as closely mirrored to this group that an American family possibly could.  As a result, I believe we made long-lasting and loyal inroads into the lives of the Aja people.

As a small business marketer, you have no choice.  You don’t even have the option of a seeking a interpreter to bridge the communication between you and your customers.  And for most sophisticated consumers, they don’t have the patience, time or loyalty to wait for you to bring someone in to explain your brand to them.  You cannot afford to sit idly by waiting for your prospect to come to you, to communicate on your terms or to try and figure out what your brand is all about.  This violates a core belief of marketing in a 2.0 world.  You must abandon self-serving communication methods that force your customer to communicate on your terms.

2. Repeatedly articulate clearly your core message. Once you identify the pain/need of your targeted segment, you will want to identify two distinct messages that will help you reach this group.

First, it’s your internal message. “We want to be the #1 choice for (your industry) among (specific demographic). We want to blow away (our competition) by (doing something different than your competition).” This is your rallying cry. It’s posted in your employee break room or on a post-it note next to your computer.   It’s the sign above the tunnel that football teams slap as they hit the field.  Ideally, it tears down individual agendas and puts your entire staff on the same page.  It’s the best way to rally your entire operation as part of the marketing team.

Secondly, your external message is developed. This is not necessarily a mission statement because those tend to be mostly about ourselves and offer non-resonating generalities (”We pledge to the best service and best quality for the best price.”). Instead, try articulating a message that resonates with the pain/need of your target market (”We will offer the fastest oil change for Moms and Dads who would rather spend time with your kids than have to mess with automotive repair.”) When you do this, you generate a host of key words and phrases that resonate with your target market. These are words that include their pain, your specific solution, your differences, and their benefit for choosing you. You will use these in ALL your marketing communication so that these keywords remain associated with your brand.  A disjointed message communicates to your target market that you are similarly confused.  But a strong consistent choice of words (and even in your style and design strategy), you will provide a welcoming environment in which your customer feels like they are involving themselves in something that is orderly, valuable, and strong.  That gives your customer confidence and creates a powerful loyalty that keeps them coming back and turns them into powerful advocates for you on the street.

So if you’ve got your web designer and logo guy on speed dial, put down the phone and make sure you answer these questions first.  As a matter of fact, if your web guy or logo designer doesn’t at least ask you about these two questions, you might consider choosing different people to help you.  It says to me that they are more interested in award-winning design for their own gallery than they are about helping you communicate most effectively with your target market.

***

Randy Vaughn is a Duct Tape Marketing Coach in Fort Worth, Texas.   While Randy fluently speaks English and the African language of the Aja people, he’d be the very first to invite an interpreter to communicate in French.  “I parlez Francais very poorly,” says Vaughn.

I’ve owned my own business. I’ve helped launch and manage two successful dot-coms (Netflix and CNET).  And I currently work for HP (which is ranked #9 in the most recent Fortune 500 listing). So I’ve seen my share of marketing and brand-building efforts — both good and bad.

Here’s one marketing secret I want to share: You don’t need a dime in your marketing budget to successfully launch and build your brand. You simply need the right resources, a bit of time and the commitment to learn, improve, and share.

Free DIY Marketing Resources

The adoption and acceptance of social media is very good news for small business owners. The quality of marketing expertise that’s available via blogs, communities and online conversations is staggering and could cost you thousands of dollars were you to actually pay for it out of pocket (I did when I had a business).  But why would you, if you can get the same expertise for free (or at incredibly affordable rates)?

Your brand’s “story” (the mission statement, logo, brochure, web site) is often the reason customers decide to spend money with you. Start building the brand story for your business by checking out these free resources:

1. Ask an Expert: Top small business marketing experts such as Guy Kawasaki, Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends, and Duct Tape Marketing’s John Jantsch share their expertise, strategy and tips to help you develop and evolve the compelling story of your business . Often, you’ll find them on free webinars, too. (By the way, this Small Business Marketing Guide also offers free marketing webinars .) But take it one step further and reach out directly. These experts love to receive comments, questions and participate in conversations.
2. HP Creative Studio:

This 2009 Webby-Award winning site offers dozens of free, professionally designed templates that you can download, customize, and print for your business within minutes, including: Business cards and Business Identity Kits

• Stationery and Envelopes
• Brochures and Business Forms
• Website and Blog Templates

The HP Creative Studio is also a great asset to find tools, access to discounts, and other DIY and affordable design services (such as Logoworks and Stock Layouts)  that professional marketing agencies use every day.

1. Twitter:

Get expert advice, get opinions and share your expertise with world (or just your neighborhood) – in real time.  Any marketing expert worth their salt is on Twitter, and you get their sage advice for free. Better still, many experts will follow you back and respond to your questions. Even better still, when you’re ready to test drive your new marketing materials, the Twitter universe is a great place to ask for feedback and opinions. (Author and marketer Tara Hunt asked her Twitter followers to rate the jacket design of her new book “The Whuffie Factor,” and she got hundreds of opinions plus free designs in response.) Use the following resources to get started and put Twitter to work for you (I’ve also included links to the resources’ Twitter account):

• How to Use Twitter to Grow Your Business (via @Copyblogger)
• 50 Ideas on using Twitter for Business (by @ChrisBrogan)
• We Follow (@wefollow): This is a user-powered Twitter directory that makes it extremely easy to find people by topic, company or interest. (You’ll find me in WeFollow’s HP category.)

Take the first few steps to launch your brand – there’s a world online ready and willing to help. Including me.

***

Angela LoSasso manages HP’s Small Business Wiki and writes for the Small Business Marketing Guide and Small Business Marketing Guide and HP’s Small Business Blog. You can also find her on Twitter.

]]> http://www.smbmarketingguide.com/brand-strategy/diy-marketing-how-to-successfully-launch-your-brand-with-no-money-no-agency-and-no-expertise/feed/ 3 http://www.smbmarketingguide.com/brand-strategy/how-to-listen-to-your-customers/?nucrss=1 http://www.smbmarketingguide.com/brand-strategy/how-to-listen-to-your-customers/#comments Wed, 13 May 2009 13:23:27 +0000 Chanpory Rith http://www.smbmarketingguide.com/?p=863 ]]> Getting customer feedback is vital to learning how well you’re reaching your customers. Sadly, most companies fail miserably to both collect and effectively respond to customer feedback.

Just think about the last time you made a complaint or suggestion to a big company like AT&T or Comcast. Did you get a lame response like “Thank you, we’ll take your feedback under consideration?”

That scripted response is an important lesson for your small business:

It’s not enough to simply say you’re listening. You actually have to mean it. Then, you have to prove it by taking concrete actions to address the feedback.

Here’s how you can better listen to your customers:

1. Collect feedback

First, collect as much feedback as you can. Feedback comes in two forms: direct and indirect.

Direct feedback is what customers are saying about your company directly to you. To encourage direct feedback:

• Make your email address and phone number easy-to-find
• Answer your phone using a live person
• Respond to every real email and voicemail you get
• Provide a blog/forum on your website for customer feedback
• Conduct a focus group or user study about your offerings
• Participate on social networks such as Facebook and Yelp

Indirect feedback is what customers are saying about your company to other people. To learn what others are saying, you can:

• Google yourself
• Check reviews of your company on Yelp
• Read blogs that likely to cover your business
• Monitor your product reviews on Amazon
• Search Twitter for tweets about your business

When collecting feedback, catalog each issue in some form a database. It could be as simple as a journal, a set of index cards, or a spreadsheet. It could also be as complex as a bug-tracking application. Remember, be prepared for criticism and accept them readily. Don’t ignore negative feedback.

2. Process the feedback

Once you collect enough feedback, you’ll start to notice patterns: the same complaints and feedback will appear over and over again. Organize these issues together and create a list of the top concerns. These are your “high priority” issues list and will keep you on focused on the biggest customer issues and problems. Categorize the remaining issues into “medium priority” and “low priority.”

3. Make real changes

Once you have a prioritized list of customer complaints, it’s time to address each issue one by one by making real changes.

Begin with the high priority issues and think back to your company or product positioning statement. Make changes that meet your customers’ needs while staying true to your positioning. Remember, you can’t be all things to all people. Your goal is not to add every feature requested by every customer. Your goal is to improve the overall customer experience of your target audience.

Once you’ve made significant changes, it’s important to communicate them to your customers. They won’t always notice. You can tell them about changes in many forms:

• an email
• a tweet
• a personal phone call
• a blog post
• a web page update

Communicating changes to your customers completes the feedback loop. It shows you’ve listened to their suggestion, considered the problem, and implemented a change to improve the experience.

What does every business have in common? A brand. It might not be the same for everyone, but it is a strategy they all have to employ at some point. Essentially, it will represent every positive, or potentially negative, thought a customer will have about your company.

Of course no business would want their brand to give people a negative impression. But, what do they want it to say? That’s a question that you need to ask yourself. The actual answer will depend on you.

A good brand is nothing without the right strategy and a good strategy is nothing without the right brand. Could you imagine if Google had gone with a different name?

You might not become the next Google, but you still need to put in the time to build a brand that will do what you need. To do that, you will need to define your brand and, ultimately, define yourself. Start by asking yourself a couple questions:

• What is your mission? What do you hope to accomplish with your business?
• What do you want your customer to think when they think of you?
• What is your current reputation?
• What are your benefits? What are your features?

You need to take this moment and learn about your customer base. What are their needs, wants, and habits? Do not assume you already know, go out there and find out.

Once you have formulated the brand you want, it is time to come up with a strategy. You’ll need to get your new brand out into the public eye and here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Logo The right logo can speak volumes about your business. Allow your logo to represent the message you want your brand to send.
• Tagline The perfect tagline will stick in your customers mind long after they stopped reading it. You want a few words or a short sentence that can tell everyone what you want them to know. Allow it to define your brand for you.
• Integrate You have a brand, use it. Infuse your brand into everything you do at your business, everything from the signature you use in your email to the way you answer your phone.
• Theme While change might be good, in general it is how consistent your look remains that will stick in someone’s mind. This could be the colors that are used on the product packaging or website, the overall look and feel, or even how you place your logo on the product.
• Stay on Track If you stray from your brand’s promise, that sparkling appearance you had will start to fade. Although it might need tweaked as time goes on, don’t allow yourself to go completely off course. After all, that is how your customer recognizes you.

Silly isn’t it? But i often see brands and my relationships with them like friendships or acquaintances. Each one has a personality of it own… is constantly evolving… and sometimes totally rubs me the wrong way. But the most important thing is ~ there is no real constant. If the brand is too stagnant, i may outgrow it or get bored and move in. If it moves to fast, i may hate it for one phase, but love it again as it comes closer to my tastes.

Face it ~ we all love a good story ~ some juicy drama ~ our curiosity is insatiable!

In a fascinating post from the Continuum Design Blog about the troubles Harley-Davidson was having regarding its brand, they have a great quote:

Former Starbucks CMO Scott Bedbury said, “A brand is a metaphorical story that’s evolving all the time. This connects with something very deep – a fundamental human appreciation of mythology. People have always needed to make sense of things at a higher level. We all want to think that we’re a piece of something bigger than ourselves. Companies that manifest that sensibility in their employees and consumers invoke something very powerful.”

That being said ~ can you image the tale of your company or product? The story you want to tell? The ending or sequel or future you see it having? What myth would live on forever to tell your origin story?

And personally… can you picture your brand BFF? Or would it be a BBF (best brand friend)?

A good brand is not simply a great logo, or a beautiful brochure, or a cool website. The essence of a good brand is a great customer experience.

My favorite example of a company with a great customer experience—aside from Apple—is Threadless, an online T-shirt store. The T-shirts are fashionable and well-made. But more importantly, the customer experience is memorable, enjoyable, and delightful.

Fostering great customer experiences is much harder to do than creating beautifully-designed marketing materials. Here’s what you can learn from Threadless:

1. Show customers you actually listen
Instead of an after-thought, customer feedback is the backbone of Threadless. Customers submit, vote, and comment on all T-shirt designs. All comments are published publicly and the most highly-rated designs get printed. This process enables customers to actually see that their feedback matters and directly affects the product development.

2. Reward your customers
To encourage participation, Threadless rewards their customers. Those who submit winning designs receive cash and T-shirt credits. Customers who upload photos of themselves wearing Threadless shirts earn credits towards purchases. Customers also earn rewards by submitting winning T-shirt slogans and referring other customers to Threadless.

3. Delight your customers
The best thing about Threadless is that it’s fun. The experience is full of delight:

• Customers feel “cool” because shirts are designed through a grass-roots process.
• The visual design of the website is casual and sprinkled with cute graphics.
• The logo is set in a handwritten script, conveying informality and playfulness.
• Email newsletters are written in a casual and friendly manner, avoiding corporate-speak.

4. Deliver quality
Threadless delivers ensure a high-degree of quality in several ways:

• Design
  The submission and voting process means only the best designs are produced. The visual design of the website is also professional.
• Materials
  Most T-shirts are also printed on the gold standard: American Apparel tees.
• Interaction
  The site is fun, participative, and easy-to-use. It also avoids gimmicks such as animations and sound.

5. Extend slowly
Threadless started small. The founders, Jake Nickell and Jacob DeHart, started the company in 2000 as a hobby and with only $1,000 in seed money. Instead of numerous products with many features, they focused on one product category: T-shirts. They spent 8 years refining the t-shirt buying experience before venturing into new product categories. It wasn’t until 2008 that they extended their business to a secondary offering: poster prints.

Several times a year I get asked the same basic question about how to choose a brand name for your business or a product. The question (or some variation of it) is:

“Is it better to choose a descriptive name, or is it better to make up some unique word that never existed before?”

There are different schools of thought on this question. Let’s look at the pros and cons of each side.

DESCRIPTIVE NAME

A descriptive name is something like “Mary’s Bakery” or “Toledo Plumbing.” Names like these have several advantages:

• Inexpensive to convey what business you are in — You don’t have to spend a lot of money on advertising to establish a brand identity that the public will come to know and recognize for the line of business you are in. With a name like “Smith’s Towing,” for instance, people will know exactly what your company does based on the name alone.

• Easy to think up — You don’t typically need to go through the expense of hiring a brand naming consultant. For a small business on a tight budget, a naming consultant may be out of reach, and the task of thinking up a unique name on your own too daunting. No wonder so many small businesses opt for simplicity, choosing something like “Sally’s Candies” or a similar descriptive name.

• Easier to get found in the search engines – If your business name is Toledo Plumbing, you already have a natural advantage for getting found when someone searches for Toledo plumbing companies.

But of course you have to weigh these advantages against the negatives of using a descriptive name — and there are indeed some downsides.

• Descriptive names may seem unexciting — This may not be a big concern if it’s a plumbing business — after all, people don’t necessarily expect a plumber to have an exciting name. On the other hand a beauty salon or a clothing boutique or a jewelry line or a Web 2.0 business may be a different story.  There, the creativeness of the brand name could make or break the business. Would Google have been nearly as memorable or intriguing had it been called “Sergei’s Search Engine”?

• Tougher to establish customer benefits — When someone is searching in the phone book or in Google Local for a vendor, how do they know that Marietta Plumbing is better than Joe’s Plumbing at unclogging drains?  Or that it is friendlier or faster? Can they tell what sets the business apart? One way to counter this is to use a tag line.  “Service in one hour” or “We unclog drains with a smile” or some other tag line can help differentiate the business, even if the name doesn’t.

UNIQUE COINED NAME

Now let’s take a look at using a newly-coined word or phrase for your brand. Using a unique, made-up word or phrase to name your business has its advantages:

• Made-up words set your brand apart — Think of some of the Web 2.0 business names:  YouTube,  TechCrunch, Squidoo,  Gizmodo.  Those words did not exist until they were made up by the brand owner — they are as unique as you can get.  They are distinctive and usually easy to remember.

• Flexible enough for strategic business changes — If your business is named Mary’s Bakery, but later on you decide to open a deli or develop a line of mail order gift baskets, you may find your name is too limiting. Whereas, something like “Toodleberry’s” does not limit you to a single line of business.

• Easier to trademark — With a name you’ve coined, you don’t have to worry about it being so generic or descriptive that the trademark examiner refuses to pass it on the grounds that it would prevent others from using normal words in everyday parlance or just is not unique enough.  In general, made-up words are easier to trademark.

• Easier to get the matching domain name — Many descriptive dot-com domain names are long gone (remember — the dot com extension is the most desirable here in the United States because that is what most people trying to find a website naturally type in).   It could be next to impossible to get the matching domain for a descriptive business name at this point.  Or you may be reduced to purchasing it on the secondary market, and paying 5 or 6 figures for it.  Worse if another company already is using that domain, they could end up siphoning off traffic that was otherwise meant for your site, or at the very least confusing the public. These days, if you want to get an exact domain name, you’ll have a much better shot if it’s for a word you just made up last week.

Of course, made-up names have their challenges, too. For instance, made-up words can require big bucks to develop brand recognition among the public for what your business does.

MORE THAN WORDS

No matter which route you go – descriptive name or unique made-up word – don’t stop with just the words. Remember that the choice of fonts, colors and graphical elements used with the words can subtly change the impression you convey with a logo.

Sales professionals will tell you that people buy based on emotions.  Emotion is therefore an important element in a brand. Ask yourself about your logo, how does it make one feel?  Happy?  Energetic?  Playful?  Comforted? Confident?  Emotion can be conveyed through the use of colors and fonts and graphical images, in addition to the words used.

Also, some of the disadvantages of a descriptive brand can be overcome with fresh, exciting, interesting colors and graphics to go along with the words in a logo.  You can make an otherwise ordinary sounding name be more interesting by how it appears in the logo.

The opposite is also true.  Drab colors or ponderous fonts or cheesy cheap graphics can cause even the most catchy coined name to miss the mark.  Make sure the colors and fonts and graphics do justice to the care taken to create your name in the first place.

Your brand name will likely be with you for a long time.  Make sure it suits your business needs.

Pinkberry frozen yogurt has been spotted in the hands of famous people from Paris Hilton to Mike Tyson; it’s appeared in television shows like “Saturday Night Live” and within celebrity gossip magazines like Us Weekly and People. How did a frozen yogurt company achieve such pop culture street cred in such a short span of time? Rockstar branding.

Yolanda Santosa is the creative director of Pinkberry, and was recently profiled by Fast Company. Under her tutelage, Pinkberry has grown from one store into seventy, and its popularity has inspired dozens of copycat frozen yogurt franchises. Each store boasts sterile, retro-futuristic white decor, $500 Philippe Starck chairs and minimalist Alessi kitchen tools in place of tchotchkes. The combination makes every Pinkberry experience significantly more upscale than your typical frozen yogurt shop.

Santosa has also contributed to Pinkberry’s rockstar status in non-aesthetic areas. The term frozen yogurt is meaningless at Pinkberry; instead, it’s called swirly goodness. Die-hard Pinkberry fans aren’t regulars, but Pinkberry Groupies, who attend regular promotional events held by Pinkberry in which complimentary frozen yogurt is served up to boost loyalty for the brand. A Pinkberry MySpace page paints the franchise as a 20-year-old Capricorn whose mood is amused. Such moves distinguish Pinkberry fans from the populace; the Pinkberry brand has thereby become an aspect of its consumer’s identity, inspiring brand addiction.

In this Web 2.0, user-generated, Open-Source, social-networking world, it’s so easy to forget that just because something can be done doesn’t mean it should be done. All branding, no matter whether it’s on a billboard, blog, website, or Twitter, should adhere to these simple principles. Here are nine keys to the art of branding.

1. Seize the high ground. Great branding positions your company along the lines of doing good, empowering people, increasing efficiency, and fostering creativity. There’s nothing about screwing the competition or making a lot of money. Think about it: When have you ever bought a product to hurt its competition?
2. Create one message. Volvo stands for safety. Toyota stands for value. Audi stand for four-wheel drive. Ferrari stands for sexiness. You should be so lucky that your brand stands for one thing. Trying to make it stand for more is futile, stupid, and downright dangerous. Apple will never stand for corporate computing, for example, no matter how hard it tries.
3. Speak English. Not so much English per se, but speak without jargonese. Your, and your employee’s, fluency with technology terms and acronyms doesn’t transfer to the rest of the world. At most, people walk into Best Buy wanting a HDTV; how many come in asking for 1080i with HDMI connectors?
4. Strive for humanness. People relate to brands in “warm and fuzzy” social terms: does it make me feel happy, safe, secure, cool, or sexy? Brands thrive along emotional parameters and not bits, bytes, and dpi. For all the steel, rubber, and glass that a Harley Davidson represents, the brand comes down to being powerful and cool.
5. Apply the opposite test. Most companies describe their products or services as if they have the sole marketing message out there. “Our gizmo is fast, secure, and easy to use” they say. It’s as if every competitor is saying, “Our gizmo is slow, hackable, and hard to use.” Therefore, take the opposite test: Is what you’re saying the opposite of what your competition is saying? If not, you’re both saying the same thing, and your branding isn’t effective.
6. Cascade the message. Let’s just say that you have created the ultimate branding message. Hallelujah, your work is done, right? Nope, not at all. Obviously, you have to spread the word, but you have to cascade it too starting from the CEO all the way down to the the summer hire in the mail room. And don’t forget your board of directors.
7. Focus on PR and word of mouth, not advertising. Many companies don’t have much money to advertise these days, but advertising isn’t the most effective way to establish a brand. Truly, branding starts with the quality of what you make. Then PR, word of mouth, and other less formal and cheaper channels (like Twitter) take over.
8. Examine the bounce back. After you’ve cascaded the message and spread it externally too, listen to what bounces back because people might not have heard, understood, and accepted what you said. You may think that your brand stands for sexy, but if people still think it stands for safe, your branding isn’t working.
9. Flow with the go. Ultimately, your customers, not you, decide what your brand stands for so when you get the bounce back, consider altering your branding. (Or, if you have an established brand, returning to your roots.) You may tweak some of the parameters of what your brand stands for, but ultimately it’s the one thing that customers have decided, so take that and run with it.

There you go: nine simple practices to improve your branding. I hope these tips help you change the world because that’s what a good brand does.

Photo credit: takacsi75