Five Steps to Building Your Brand—and Building New Business Referrals!

by Michele Lando, June 2009

When people think of you, what do they think? Do you know? Are you getting referrals? The "right" ones? The answers to these questions have everything to do with your personal brand.

Your brand should be drawing people to you. For example, Starbuck’s green logo hails to me when I need a pick-me-up, a computer connection, a quick CD for a gift, or a clean bathroom. Is this a coffee stop or a technology store or a gift shop or a gas station? It’s all of the above for me. It might be none, one, or two of these things to you. The point is, a brand connects to its audience. And its audience(s) has to be clearly identified, understood, and supported. Starbucks started with coffee and clean bathrooms and grew to support technology needs and gifts because they took the time to understand who their audiences are, who their customers were or could be, and created a brand strategy to support their growth and the expansion of their customer set.

The process of designing your brand is the same five steps that any corporation uses to build theirs:

Step 1: Introspection
You need to begin to take a genuine accounting of yourself. What skill sets you come to the table with, what talents you have, what your historical experience is that will help to differentiate you and tell a unique story—one that is authentic and memorable to your audience(s).

Step 2: Competitive Analysis
You need to know who else your prospects/target audiences are considering engaging—the firms, and in a service company, possibly the individuals themselves. Are there others who have specific and unique talents within a particular target segment that is the same as yours? Perhaps they focus on entrepreneurial companies of a certain size or geographical area. Or perhaps they specialize in working with the government sector or healthcare or education or ________ (fill in the blank with your own area of specialization). Once you’ve identified who they are, you need to differentiate yourself to help your target audience choose to work with you, knowing this is the only choice they could consider making.

Step 3: Unique Messaging
How do you position yourself? How do others introduce you? You need to make your message clear and compelling. What do you do? Who do you do it for? And then give them a reason to care—or tell them the benefits, or a story, that exemplifies what they may stand to gain by engaging with you. Think of Volvo—their message is clear. It’s safety! Who are they targeting? Soccer moms with kids. They’ve also recognized that these soccer moms are spending a lot of time on looking good – gyms, liposuction and botox, and you can see their messaging starting to expand to include “sexy.“ A cautionary word:  Stick to what your audience wants you to be. (Social Media is a great way to tap into your markets, see how they think of you, what they are saying and what they want! It’s like focus groups on steroids and with no budget needed! This is true for B2B brands as well as consumer brands). Volvo could cannibalize its own very strong Safety position by playing too strong into Sexy. 

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Step 4: Getting Your Message Out There
You need to be in front of the right target audience with the right message. If you have a service business, perhaps you can speak at your industry associations, or consider on-line networking through Linked In, or write a blog and be seen as a thought leader, or write an article for a trade publication they subscribe to, or network among other advisors they have relationships with to gain introductions. If your business is consumer based with a product, you can consider street teams (depending on your demographic) employing PDA messaging or sponsoring events—online or off. The options are endless. You must select areas for promotion that utilize your best skills and give you the greatest return on your time and efforts.

Step 5: Maintenance
Your brand doesn’t get built once and then go on auto-pilot. Your competition is constantly changing, your target audience and their lifestyle and needs continuously evolve, and new relationships are available and need new introductions constantly. How do you stay fresh and relevant to your audience? What new skills, tools, talents, opportunities do you bring to the table to further the relationships you currently have and remain competitive in light of new opportunities? If people associate Volvo with safety, what do they associate with your brand?

When you take the time to design your brand, exhibit the behaviors that support that brand, and do so consistently, you not only make it easy for others to refer you, you make it easy for people to refer the "right" persons. With enough of those referrals and client relationships, you will then begin to create a consistent demand for you, your products, and your services.

Written by: Michele Lando, president of Skilset Communications, Inc., and author of the internationally acclaimed IndiBrand™ Individual Branding workshop series. To reproduce any portion of this article, you may write or phone 626-792-0032.