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Brands are like wardrobe choices. You need to be honest about who your trying to attract, what your natural style is and the story your trying to tell. In order to make your company stand out, you must do more than just offer a product or service, you must develop a brand. A simple business is a “plain suite” hanging in a closet that you pull out every so often to wear out to a fancy dinner. A BRAND is a “flashy suite” that makes you feel like a million bucks. You want to wear it every day! Here are 5 valuable ways to discover your brand and develop it into a flashy suite that everyone wants to wear:

1. Figure out who you want to be when you grow up
Don’t just think short term, but you really have to invest some thought and love into finding out who you want to grow into. The logo design your cousin slapped together for you just to get your business launched isn’t going to necessarily fit your business in 5 years. Determining your goals will help determine your brand feel and voice. Do you need to be fashionable? Are you wanting to portray an aggressive image or are you sweet talking your prospects into a relationship with you? All these questions need to be considered in the development stage of your brand. Determine the end before you even start and you’ll already be ahead of the game.

2. Determine what differentiates yourself
What do you do best that no one else can do? What will people experience with you that they can’t get anywhere else? Your unique value in the market place will be what sets you apart from your competition and will be the brand identifier your customers are looking for when they are ready to buy. You need to figure out firstly, what benefit do you offer people? Secondly, who are those people and thirdly, how you solve those people’s problems differently than others in your marketplace. Without answering these questions you might have a business, but you don’t have a brand. 

3. What is your story?
Big brands understand this concept like the back of their hands. People love to hear stories and will connect with your brand through the story it tells. Think of your business from a “VH-1 behind the music” vantage point. Every story has a beginning, a middle point, tension, suspense, hero’s and villains. Who are the hero’s in your story? What were the challenges you had to overcome in order to get to the place you are today? How have you determined to overcome that adversity? Talking this out with someone else will be helpful. The story you craft about your business will help your customers connect with you and remember you. A business without a story is boring, generic and will be crushed by the competition eventually. 

4. What is your business/company culture? 
Discovering your company culture will help you discover your brand. If you are a laid back, introverted plumbing company that has a pit-bull as a mascot, you’re probably sending the wrong message to your audience and they will end up being disconnected and confused. Sometimes others see ourselves better than we can describe our business so asking others to select adjectives or words to describe your business will be helpful in developing a honest, authentic brand culture that is consistent with real life. Your audience is never wrong and the perception they have about your business is the one that will stick.

5. Create a brand statement. 
From all the information that you’ve compiled and the thought you’ve put into your brand, distill it down to a brand statement. This must be narrowed down to one or two sentences to make it easy to remember. Also, keep in mind there can be two ways of presenting a brand statement, boring or exciting. You can take all the wonderful information you’ve just discovered about your company and craft a vanilla, boring brand statement. To actually generate interest, you must get creative and create a brand statement that will be compelling to your prospects. 

Implement these 5 brand strategy techniques and you will be on your way to rocking that velvet suite or dress you have in your closet. Your business is so awesome anyway! Why not take your business to the next level by instead of just staying mediocre, pushing an actual brand that customers will become raving fans for? Once you actually have a brand that customers interact with, you will have the ability to create customers for life who are loyal. What business wouldn’t want that?