In addition to what you’ll find in this book’s 300-plus pages, you can also access the Branding For Dummies Cheat Sheet at www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/branding. It contains at-a-glance guidance and additional information you can put to work as you develop your brand and branding program.
Plus, we’ve posted some more useful material at www.dummies.com/extras/branding, including a bonus Part of Tens list featuring traits common to the world’s greatest global brands and articles that summarize important and easy-to-reference advice from each of the parts in this book.
True to the For Dummies format, you can start this book on any page. Every portion of the book is a self-standing component, which means that you don’t have to read sequentially from cover-to-cover to make sense of the content. (If you have time and the inclination to read every word on every page, start-to-finish, however, we’d love nothing more!)
If you’re new to the field of branding, count on Chapter 1 for a good overview of the contents of the entire book as well as a crash-course on the topic, language, and process of branding. If you’re in a hurry because you’re facing a crucial branding issue or wrestling with a branding problem, the table of contents or index guides you straight to the advice you need. If you already have a branding program but want to polish the luster of your brand or even do some rapid brand repair, skip to Parts IV and V.
For now, get started by using this book from start-to-finish or by cherry-picking the contents. So long as you end up with a clear brand identity that you project consistently in your market, your approach will have worked. So turn the page – and start branding!
Part I
Getting Started with Branding
In this part …
✔ Get clear about what brands are, why they’re such a big deal, how they power success, and what it takes to build the brand image you want for your business, your product, your organization, or yourself.
✔ Familiarize yourself with clear-cut definitions of branding terminology and learn the differences between brands and commodities, including what it takes to move your offerings into the coveted brand category and far from the budget-breaking realm of generic contenders.
✔ Follow proven steps for building your brand from essence to esteem. Zero in on your brand vision, get real about your current brand identity and awareness level, assess your strongest brand assets, set your branding goals, make your branding to-do list, and assemble the resources you need build, manage and protect your brand – including your branding budget and your all-important brand-building team.
✔ Get the lowdown on how to power up your personal brand and – if you’re a freelancer, consultant or one-person business owner – your solo-business brand as well.
Chapter 1
Putting Brands and Branding in Perspective
In This Chapter
▶ Orienting yourself to what brands are all about
▶ Understanding the power of branding
▶ Committing the necessary people, resources, and time to build a brand
Maybe you’re gearing up to brand a new business or a product. Maybe you have an established brand and it’s time to undertake some brand updates or brand extensions. Maybe your brand needs repair. Or maybe you’re planning for a minor-to-major overhaul or the drastic move of a full-fledged rebranding.
Perhaps you simply want to come up to speed – in a hurry – on the whole topic of branding and how to do it best. Or, maybe you aren’t quite sure whether or not you even have a brand, but you’re pretty sure you need one and you want to know which steps you should take to end up with the brand you set out to build.
You’ve chosen the right book. Of the thousands of resources out there on the topics of brands and branding, you’ve opened the one that’s branded with the For Dummies promise: Making Everything Easier.
The primary job of branding is to transform a complex message into simple and clear communication. This chapter gets you going with a simple and clear overview of the reasons brands matter, branding steps to follow, and how the brand value you develop far exceeds the time and effort you invest.
When people encounter your name, they conjure up impressions and memories that determine their beliefs about you. Their notions may be the result of direct dealings with you or your organization or they may stem from web-search results, good or bad publicity, word-of-mouth, online reviews and ratings, or any other mentions that plant thoughts about you in their minds.
People may have a deep well of perceptions about you, or your slate in their minds may be nearly clear of any impressions whatsoever. Regardless of whether the beliefs people hold about you are many or few, good or bad, or accurate or inaccurate, they comprise the image of your brand, influencing how customers think and buy. Branding is the route to making sure that your brand image in the minds of others is perfectly aligned with the brand image you want them to have.
Brands are promises. More complete definitions follow, but as you venture into the world of branding, keep those three words and these three truths in mind:
✔ You establish your brand by building trust in a one-of-a-kind promise. Your promise conveys who you are, what you stand for, and what unique and meaningful benefits you deliver.
✔ You build your brand by living up to your promise every time people come into contact with you, your name, your message, or your business. It makes no difference whether that contact is through a web search, your website, social media, advertising, publicity, word of mouth, the buying experience, customer service, billings, returns, or any other form of communication. Every encounter affects how others perceive your brand.
✔
Building brands takes focus, passion, persistence, and diligence. Plus, brand building requires effort and commitment. The payoff, and it’s a big one, is that strong brands power personal and business success. The following sections shed light on what brands do and why they’re