1607: Maintaining a Strong Brand by Kate Erickson of EOFire on Business Strategies

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[00:00:30] This is Optimal Work Daily. Maintaining a Strong Brand by Kate Erickson of EOFire.com Yesterday I wrote about building a brand pyramid and included several pieces that make up your brand including attributes, positioning, voice and brand essence. Today I'm going to talk about tips you can use to ensure that you're maintaining a strong brand. Once you've established what your brand is all about, the game begins.

[00:00:57] Part 1. What you have to do for your brand on an ongoing basis. 1. Sell great stuff your customers want. If you start creating products or offering services that your audience doesn't want, then you're not going to go very far. Your brand has to represent value to your audience. If you are not able to provide them something of value, then you're not going to be building a strong brand in the eyes of your audience. 2. Envelop customers with excellent service.

[00:01:25] No one wants to be treated poorly. Treat every single customer like they're your only customer and they will not forget it. Excellent service is a prime trigger that every brand should strive to be remembered by. 3. Build and steward strong relationships.

[00:01:42] Creating a connection between you and your customer is a very important step to making your brand sticky. When you open up and start to build relationships with your customers, they'll start to associate feelings of like and trust with your brand, ensuring that your company is top of mind next time someone brings up a need for a product or service you provide. 4. Demonstrate adherence to core values.

[00:02:05] The core values that you establish for your brand should be ones you and your employees are living every single day. Break your core values and risk losing all trust with those customers who demand the best from your brand. Part 2. What marketing can help with along the way. Surprise! You don't have to do all the work yourself to maintain a strong brand. Marketing can help, if done the right way. 5. Find the why.

[00:02:32] Why should people turn to you instead of your competitors? What are you offering them that they can't find anywhere else? What is your unique selling proposition, and how can you express that through your logo, tagline, or other marketing materials? Your brand has to represent all of these things, and marketing can help. Once you've established the why, then build your marketing campaigns around that idea or theme. 6. Make a promise.

[00:02:56] Marketing gives you the ability to make a promise through your campaigns, in your tagline or theme line. And once it's out in the world via online advertisements or print media buys, you then have the opportunity to fulfill that promise. Apple Computers uses the tagline, Think Different, and with each new release or new gadget they come out with, they're evoking the spirit of Think Different. They've made a promise, and they continue to deliver on it every time they come out with something new. 7. Be consistent.

[00:03:27] You have to build trust, and with trust comes loyalty, with your audience. And the only way you're going to be able to fully succeed at this is by being consistent. Your actions are a direct reflection of your brand. When you check the box for two-day delivery through Amazon, you trust that you're going to get your order in two days. When people trust that your company will do what they say they will do, then they will be loyal to your brand. 8. Listen. The marketplace is in full control of your brand.

[00:03:56] You can follow every single step here and have your brand pyramid mapped out from part one of this mini bootcamp, and you're just feeling all great and stuff with this part two. If the marketplace, your audience, customers, whoever interacts with your brand, doesn't believe that your brand stands for what you say it stands for, they're in control. If this is happening, the marketplace doesn't believe your brand is what you say it is, then something's wrong.

[00:04:21] Either you're making promises or building attributes that are not true, or something is wrong with the processes you have in place, and that is causing your promises to not come through. You should constantly be re-evaluating your brand through interactions with your audience and your customers. If something isn't working, then refocus and find ways to fix it or make it better. 9. Repeat. This is not a one-and-done type of exercise. As stated in part one of this mini-series, I'm very passionate about branding.

[00:04:51] And a brand is not something you can create and just throw up on your website in the form of a logo and theme line. Your brand takes work, and your brand is affected by everything you do in your business every single day. Be smart about how you treat your brand, and don't forget to listen to your audience. Once you get that feedback, you should be jumping right back into the cycle of improving upon the things that need work.

[00:05:17] You just listened to the post titled, Maintaining a Strong Brand, by Kate Erickson of eofire.com. And of course, thank you to the team at eofire for letting us grab articles from their site to share with you. There's a wealth of knowledge on eofire, which, by the way, stands for Entrepreneurs on Fire. John and Kate have resources, a podcast, a blog, of course. And something they do that's really unique, they share their monthly income, which is often over $200,000.

[00:05:46] Again, that's monthly. You can see the breakdown of where that income comes from, plus their expenses and much more. So again, thanks to John and Kate for sharing their knowledge and those reports. Now, if you'd like to hear more podcasts where we narrate blogs for you, search for Optimal Living Daily wherever you're hearing this show. We cover personal development, finance, health, relationships, and more on our other shows. And it's a great way to get articles that cover a bunch of different topics.

[00:06:12] So if you like this format, again, search for Optimal Living Daily to find and subscribe to all of our shows for free. It's greatly appreciated, and of course, it helps to keep all these shows going. But that'll do it for this weekend. Hope you've had a good one, and I'll see you back here tomorrow, as usual, where your optimal life awaits.