In the past, companies only had their own credit cards if they were large enterprises and had consistent numbers of customers, typically department stores who saw millions of people yearly in their stores. Then MasterCard® and VISA® created their own general cards that could be used all over. Banks jumped on this strategy and now, every bank has a MC or Visa with their name and logo all over the card. As the banks’ exposure became more powerful through their branded credit cards, companies like Capital One® and MBNA emerged. And when that happened, it became much easier for other companies to brand their own cards whether they were conglomerates or small businesses. (As a side note, MBNA is the largest supplier of credit card co-branding in the US and Canada.)

Today, department stores have merged their cards with other companies. For example, customers can opt for a plain Sears Card® to be used only at Sears stores, or a Sears® MasterCard® issued by Chase™, that can be used anywhere in the world MC is accepted. Think of the exposure that Sears now has because its card can be used almost everywhere. On top of that, customers rack-up points which are redeemable for goods at the store. So when customers purchase, they are thinking about what they can buy with their rewards. Branding with credit cards coupled with reward systems reinforces the businesses’ names to consumers. The cards are always in their wallets just waiting to promote the various brands.

Even for businesses that are not so large and may not have customers that purchase regularly like at grocery and department stores, they too, can strengthen their brands through credit cards. Credit card companies have set up a mechanism where once their brands are in the system, potential credit card customers can choose which brand they want to carry as their credit card. An excellent example of this strategy is universities. They promote their brands to their alumni and encourage them to apply for credit cards with their names and logos on the face of the cards. Smaller businesses can do the same. Customers are not necessarily shopping at the company or charitable organization represented, but they are promoting the brands, nonetheless.

Further, many businesses that do not meet the requirements for branded credit cards can make use of rewards or points cards. Again, customers carry the cards in their wallets making them 24-7 billboards. Typically, specialty and boutique stores have done well strengthening their brands by offering rewards. Other examples are hair salons and coffee houses. They issue cards with so many spots to stamp and once the cards are full, they can be redeemed for free services or products. Whether the customers use up the cards quickly or in a year from now, the idea that they can get something for free is always in their minds. It keeps the brands in the forefront.

Recently, pre-paid cards have grown to be very popular as well. Celebrities are forming associations with companies to brand their own loadable cards. Much like bank debit cards, customers buy the cards in specific denominations and add more funds as needed. Not only do the celebrities benefit from the branding, but they also receive a cut of the transaction fees, making the cards quite lucrative. And, the cards can generally be used online which makes them very appealing to those who cannot obtain credit cards.

Clearly, it has become a business necessity to use all means of promoting a brand. And today, serious business owners cannot ignore the power of branding their identities through the use of credit cards, rewards-points cards, and pre-paid cards, as these promotional tools have proved to be hugely successful at strengthening brand identity.

One of the key issues with branding that most business owners do not recognize is that branding is a life-long endeavor. If you look at companies that have been around for over one hundred years and even those as young as fifty years, everything they do speaks about their brands. All of their decisions take into account their brands, not only the name of the company, but the brand names of the products. Everything works in tandem to continue the brand that is known to consumers.

What is difficult for new startups is understanding and actually acknowledging the longevity of a brand. Branding is not just about creating a name that some people know. It  is about making decisions that affect the long-term viability of a brand. Most business owners cannot see this far ahead. And that is not a criticism. It is a fact that they are trying to get their businesses up and running and then keep them afloat. Do they really have time for branding? So, the first thing that a brand consultant can do for you is look at the bigger picture.

The branding consultant can spend the time doing the legwork and creating your long-term plan. She can arrange meetings with people that she knows can produce artwork, logos, and other creative material that will be important to your brand. She will organize the bids on projects and make the final short list for your review. So, the second thing that a consultant can do for you is free up your time to work on the meat and potatoes of your business, while understanding that you do need someone working just as hard on your potential brand.

Another advantage of employing a branding consultant is the fact that she has contacts in the industry. Often, she will have worked with other companies and knows who offers the best services or the services that best match your requirements depending on media types and budget. Admittedly, you do want to be careful when agreeing to “packaged deals” because the costs add up rather quickly, but sometimes it is less expensive than continually paying the wrong person to complete your promotional material and your brand’s look.

Additionally, the branding consultant needs to understand the importance of both online and offline branding. Today, a company or product cannot reach brand status without the associated connection or familiarity on the internet. Even a startup who believes his business is offline, the consultant must make him aware of the fact that the internet can help to make a brand’s identity skyrocket dramatically. And because customers expect some sort of digital interaction, it is only prudent to heed the advice.

Finally, the branding consultant can set in motion a specific direction for you. With a concrete plan in place, the consultant will help you stay on track with your branding goals. Instead of just wishing you could do this or that, you will have a solid plan of attack from the proposal presented by the consultant. It becomes a type of to-do list for you and keeps you focused.

For a brand to propel itself into daily consciousness, it should reflect several basic traits. It must take on a personality of its own and exhibit qualities of trust, sincerity, authenticity, staying power, mass appeal, uniqueness, and it must have some meaning of importance to its users. All of these qualities are the mark of an excellent brand. The logo alone and fancy advertising will not make the product a brand. So recognizing that growing a brand is more than visual appeal, let’s examine seven brand management basics.

1. First and foremost, your brand needs a problem and solution statement much like a mission statement. You need to create a problem and in turn show how your product fixes that problem. Your statement must be well-defined, clear-cut, and you must understand the market to which you make your appeal. If your product is a luxury yacht and you are selling the lifestyle, you are not going to find your customers riding on the bus.
2. Your brand must be unique. You cannot appear to copy ideas from other companies. You must be different in appearance, and although you may fix the same problem as another company, your message clearly needs to be your own. Identity is everything when branding.
3. You need to understand the importance of being first at something when your brand is new. This is similar to being unique but if you can say you were first at launching a product, your brand will be the one remembered by consumers.
4. Everything that is associated with your brand must be consistent. The same slogans, the same tag lines, the same logo, and the artwork in your office. Package recognition is crucial. Everyone needs to be on board and “walk the walk”. There is no room for conflicting or confusing messages. There is only one message to communicate. And you cannot change that message. Take the recent example of Starbucks Coffee®. They were a “yuppie-type” establishment serving expensive coffee. Then, to get a larger market share, they launched an instant coffee. What does this say about their brand and what does it do to the message?
5. You need to be credible and sincere. Your target market needs to see that your focus continues and that the brand remains what you said it was. Decreasing quality, changing themes, and gross deviations from the norm will not endear your brand to loyal users. Just think about the “New Coke” debacle and you will instantly understand this basic premise to brand management.
6. You must be persistent, continually researching the target market, understanding existing customer preferences, and even monitoring competitor reaction to your product.
7. You must be solid when talking about the brand. You must have conviction that it will suit your customers’ purposes and that it is the ideal solution. And you must be willing to put that theory to the test. You must deliver.

Indeed, managing your brand is a huge undertaking but it is essential to long-term branding. Success is found from understanding and committing to brand management basics.

Indeed, everyone wants to be or own the newest buzz word or gizmo. Everyone thinks that their ideas are the greatest thing and they can sell billions of “whatever”. And while some of them may be right, a brand can only become a brand if it has sales. Focusing on a brand alone is done at the detriment of revenue. Major corporations have the resources behind them to launch new brands without seriously impacting their structure. But for smaller companies and start-ups, finding a revenue stream is crucial.

A couple points that need to be remembered when addressing issues about branding is that getting a brand really known could take years. Branding is a long-term strategy. It is also not always quantifiable. When bigger companies come knocking with offers to purchase your product or company, you basically know that you have become a brand, but how do you work on marketing your product or service while at the same time trying to develop the brand?

The marketing mix generally includes four key components. Product, price, place and promotion. You need to advertise the right product to the right people at the right price. We can examine how branding fits into all four of these segments of marketing.

Product – The name of your product or service may be different than your company name. Whether you have one item under the brand’s umbrella or you have fifty items, you need to market your brand and not your company. It is okay for people to recognize the products in the brand and at the same time not know the parent company who manufactures it.

Price – What you charge for your product is going to influence your brand. Take for example luxury vehicles we did on Luxury-Cars.biz. If you sell your high-end car too cheaply, the image will be tarnished if your target market is high-income earners. They do not want to be associated with cheap, luxury cars. But, if your brand or message is “discounted luxury vehicles” that anyone can afford, then the cheaper price point works. Obviously the price of the product needs to correspond with the brand image of the product or more importantly with the target market’s perception of the brand.

Place – How and where your product is distributed refers to the “place” aspect of the marketing mix. Again, the distribution needs to correspond with the message you impart. If your brand talks about being young and hip, then teen retail outlets, magazines, and even shopping mall kiosks might be the right avenue of distribution. Connecting the point-of-sale with the brand is required. You need to be selective when choosing your method of distribution, as it has to express the same image to consumers as the brand does. Buying a Cartier watch in a Five and Dime is not going to cut it!

Promotion – The aspect of advertising can deviate a little in the sense that you can sell to your target market while at the same time building your brand. For instance, you advertise your product in the right venues to make sales, but you also use the brand as sponsorships for events. You might not sell a golf product, but you can certainly sponsor a hole on the course with your brand at a golf tournament.

Unquestionably, branding is not separate and distinct from the components of the marketing mix. The position of branding in the marketing mix is actually a segment of each component.

Does the individual want to make money or be famous? A lot of entrepreneurs really just need and want to make an income. Having a brand is the furthest idea from their minds. Plus, brand marketing is a lot work especially if your service is regional. A plumber doesn’t really care whether someone knows his name 300 miles away from where he lives and conducts business. The basic necessity of earning a wage makes brand marketing unimportant but there are still plenty of people who dream of reaching higher heights which makes it undoubtedly vital.

Brand marketing creates a legacy for one’s heirs and pushes the business into perpetuity. For those individuals who have children and grandchildren to support, successful brand marketing is the key to ensuring the life of the business or product. The brand may become very lucrative and even after the creator or founder is gone, it may continue to support other family members.

Brand marketing can mean a lot of money if bought out. When a product or service develops an identity or personality of its own, it is worth much more as a brand, then when someone is just selling a business that depends solely on herself. If you own a design agency and you create all the designs for clients, you could sell your client list, but the business is not worth much without you. But as a brand, it has intangible value which can be quite appealing to a potential buyer. Even having the license to a brand is profitable.

I think there are still many excellent reasons why brand marketing is still important in the 21^st century, but I can also see why many entrepreneurs do not share the vision. If you look back a hundred years ago at the major companies in existence, the focus of the owners was to have their names on everything. Car manufacturers and retail stores all carried the names of their founders. Joint ventures were named after the two who owned them. Names were brands and it was expected that to be successful, your name had to mean something.

Further, back then, business dictated that your brand had to be the biggest and the best. Everything had to revolve around the owners’ names. Companies had plants and offices in many cities, the more the better. The mindset of earlier entrepreneurs was to control every piece of their operations. To be seen as successful, you had to have large numbers of subsidiary locations. Today, businesses are more inclined to outsource. And in a way, this dilutes the original form of branding. Today’s business owners do not necessarily see the need for their names to be on everything. Cutting costs is the most important factor to the business.

But having said that, it still remains that brand marketing is an important facet of many modern day businesses. For many reasons, CEOs and sole proprietors see the wisdom in developing an image that makes their brand stand out from the crowd. Thus, it means that brand marketing is still important in the 21^st century.

Some of the oldest commercials for investment houses and banks used (and still use today) branding campaigns to push consumer deposits. When trying to get their clients to buy different pension products, the deposit mechanism was second to the lifestyle that the client could enjoy. “Invest your money for thirty years and live like a king when the time comes to retire.” They showed pictures of people lying on beaches in the Caribbean being served fresh fruit and cocktails. The ads portrayed seniors as carefree souls traveling about the world with no worries in sight. The investment was secondary. This is a branding campaign, and it works because people buy into the sales pitch. They imagine themselves on that yacht!

A brilliant example today of a complete branding campaign is Fido cell phones. Most people know that Fido is a dog’s name. And all of the company’s literature, slogans, print ads, website, billboards, and television commercials clearly show a dog. And not just the same dog. They use many breeds because they are making the point that customers are different. Also, by using different dogs, they appeal to a greater number of people. The brand is not associated with one type of dog, therefore, the phone is not stereotyped. Further, the customers are called “Fido Owners”. The logo is the word “fido” sitting beside a yellow doghouse. And when they show someone giving a Fido telephone as a gift, there is no phone in the box, a dog peeks out. Everyone knows you are not giving a dog and that the telephone is the product, but the cell phone is not the focus of the ad. Indeed, this is an excellent example of a branding campaign. Everything ties together in symmetry.

In the beginning, while devising a brand, even before you develop the particular pieces, it is so important to understand how all the pieces meld together. Just to say that something will be a brand is not enough. A branding campaign organizes and manages all the pieces ensuring that there is continuity throughout. A brand cannot become a brand and will not be quickly recognized unless the branding campaign is capable of drawing the same “mental image” from all components of the product including the logo, promotional material, website, packaging, the catch phrases, the message, the posters, sales persons, telephone support people, and anything else the company produces.

Whether you want to brand a series of products under one label, or you are individual branding your own talents, or you have a website that you want to brand, one of the key basics of the branding campaign is to get your ad in front of as many targeted people as possible. Studies have long ago proved that the more often someone sees your product, company name, or personal name, the more receptive they are to do doing business. They feel a familiarity and the trust factor kicks in – and yes, that goes for a dog kennel as much as it does for a website talking about Alcohol Rehab.

Additionally, when choosing a branding strategy you need to look at whether you are better to brand the company, the product, or even yourself. If you are a motivational speaker, for instance, branding yourself makes more sense than branding a book you wrote. How you conduct your seminars, as well as your personality are your unique brand.

If you are a large company with many products, you might brand similar items. Baby care products might be one brand while kitchen cleaners may be another separate brand. But, there are examples of companies whose brand covers more than one niche. Ivory® is one such brand. You can buy personal bars of soap, dish washing liquid, and powder laundry detergent. At the outset, you might wonder who would want to buy skin cream from the same company that sells detergent, but the point is the products are all soap. And the brand promotes the fact that the products are “pure”. And that is how consumers know the brand. As you can see there should be something that ties the products together as a brand.

In the online world, choosing a branding strategy might include how you promote yourself and your website. Do you use social media to help others in a way that shows you are an expert in your field? Do you guest write on other experts’ blogs in order to gain credibility in your field? Interestingly, you can even use keywords to help you brand your website in the search engines. If you need or want to be known for specific traits, those need to be clearly documented in your SEO strategy.

Choosing a branding strategy will also involve the use of a slogan or motto. Will you choose a phrase that says what you are? For example, “heating and air conditioning”. Or will you choose words that describe your image? Something like, “for those that dare to wear pink”. What you decide now will influence how you promote and distribute your product. That tag line will be how your brand is known.

Finally, when choosing a branding strategy, you need to be clear whether the product and its features are the brand or whether the perceived image is the brand. What do you want your brand to say? What do you want users to see and think when they hear your brand name? Most importantly, you should recognize that generally speaking, there is no going back. Once you have set in motion a particular brand, it is unwise to change direction, so choosing a branding strategy should be considered very seriously.

Obviously, there are many ways to brand oneself on the internet. The idea is to keep your name in the forefront, and associate yourself with things that best describe your area of interest or expertise. For example, an accountant can scour reputable business forums and answer questions regarding ledger entries. In addition, many regulars on forums admit to having problems with accounting software. This is a prime opportunity for an accountant to brand herself on the internet.

Another avenue of personal branding on the web is writing a small bio at the end of articles. Whether you post articles on your own sites, or you submit to article directories, your bio should succinctly tell users who you are and what you offer. Try not to use the bio box as a direct sales tool, but rather to get information out about yourself.

E-books are a super way to promote your brand. While they are not as prestigious “real” printed books, they nevertheless, show people that you are a contender in your field. By giving away useful information, you keep your name out there.

Small things can help your personal branding on the web. For example:

• Create a branding page on your website. This could be your “about” page.
• Do not use the words “about the author”. Use “about so-and-so” – your own name. Make sure the title of the page, that which people see at the very top left of the browser, has your name. You want the search engines to pick up your name, not the word “author”
• Use keywords to describe your area of expertise, your talents, and your name in your SEO efforts. When someone searches “CMA accounting guru”, you want your name to be first.

Personal branding on the web is also significantly cheaper than having to promote yourself through magazines, radio spots, television ads, and promotional agents. You can join Twitter for example, and in a short time have a few loyal followers. Although you might want thousands, remember that these few are probably targeted users. Also, the number is not always significant. It is what you do with these people that counts. If you interact by engaging in productive discussions, even helping and advising these people, it will lead to projects from them. But word of mouth is quite powerful and as long as these people trust you and like you, they will send others to your page.

To conclude, what I find incredibly intriguing about personal branding on the web is that you can make a name for yourself. You have the capability of becoming a celebrity. By conveying “your story”, you can be an authority or leader in your field. There may be others who know more than you but the key is to state who you are and keep pushing that theme. Of course you will want to have some experience in the field, but in the years prior to the internet, you had to be an authority because someone else said you were. If you were quoted in newspapers, or your book received a good review, or you contributed to a major accomplishment for your employer, only then were you considered “somebody”. Unless you were a retired star athlete or someone already known to the public, it was difficult to brand yourself successfully. The web has changed all that.

She deserves it. Her brand is ready for… some profits!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ad agencies usually are contracted by large corporations to develop a consistent or fluid advertising campaign. Print ads may differ depending on the audience of the magazine, but the message is the same. Marketing and ad agencies help you to get your company and brand known. In some cases, they do create logos, slogans, and overall themes, but you really have to be careful when finding the perfect branding agency because you need a team that is capable of taking your product or “mark” to a very high level. And it takes a talented group of people to hone-in on the “intangible” worth of your label.

It is important to remember that a brand is not necessarily a physical item. The product or service is there but the brand stands for much more than the actual item. It might stand for old fashioned values, it might exude luxury, or it may mean trust. Not all ad agencies are qualified to nurture and advance that which they cannot see. This is why you need a true branding agency.

Now let’s look at points of consideration when finding the perfect branding agency.

1. Find out what companies took other entities or brands to exponential levels. Also make sure the branding agency is in tune with modern times. Just because the same company exists that made some of the most iconic brands household names fifty or a hundred years ago does not necessarily mean they have a finger on today’s pulse. Look for recent accomplishments.
2. Don’t assume that because you are very small that a large branding agency will not take your account. They may be interested in something new and may very well have the right person to make your brand successful. Likewise, do not assume that smaller agencies, even individuals, do not have the resources to help you. They might in fact have access to outsourcing that can make your brand a household name.
3. You should not limit your choices by requiring that the branding agency have experience in your field of endeavor. It is the concept that you are looking for, and talented people can learn what they need to do the job.
4. Although your budget will ultimately play an import factor in finding the perfect branding agency, try not to choose a company based solely on the numbers.
5. Brand agencies need to understand the importance of the internet. Whether your potential brand is an online enterprise or you are launching something that is not internet-driven, the branding agency must be able to work with all types of media. A website is particularly important because often in today’s market, it is what makes or breaks your brand. An unprofessional website, a poorly laid-out design, no contact info, and any number of other negative factors will destroy a brand instantly. Potential customers are not forgiving, and within seconds, they develop an opinion based on what they see.

Finally, the perfect branding agency must able to identify your brand: that is to find the intrinsic value, that which is perceived, and then develop it to the point of hysteria or great need in the marketplace.