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Branding For Dummies
Why do consumers pay a premium for a Dell or Hewlett-Packard laptop, when they could get a generic machine with similar features for a lower price? The answer lies in the power of branding. A brand is not just a logo. It is the image your company creates of itself, from your advertising look to your customer interaction style. It makes a promise for your business, and that promise becomes the sticking point for customer loyalty. And that loyalty and trust is why, so to speak, your laptops sell and your competitors’ don’t. Whatever your business is, whether it’s large or small, global or local, Branding For Dummies gives you the nuts and bolts know-how to create, improve, or maintain a brand. This plain-English guide will help you brand everything from products to services to individuals. It gives you step-by-step advice on assembling a top-notch branding team, positioning your brand, handling advertising and promotion, avoiding blunders, and keeping your brand viable, visible, and healthy. You’ll get familiar with branding essentials like: Filled with easy-to-navigate icons, charts, figures, top ten lists, and humor, Branding For Dummies is the straight-up, jargon-free resource for making your brand stand out from the pack—and for positioning your business to reap the ensuing rewards.
384 pages, Paperback
First published December 6, 2006
56 people are currently reading
231 people want to read
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April 17, 2018
Branding For Dummies
2nd Edition
Bill Chiaravalle,
Barbara Findlay Schenck
2015
Comments:
It is an excellent overview book with some sections that narrow in and focus on branding issues. It is a little out of date on social media but that is to be expected in an area that changes monthly.
Overall a very good resource and an excellent starting point for beginners.
4 stars
Lots of notes with spoilers throughout but it is a for Dummies book so all is good!
Notes:
2. Anyone smart enough to want to know about branding is no fool.
Part 1: Getting started with branding
Chapter 1: Putting Brands and Branding in Perspective
What are brands anyway?
• Establish by building trust in one of a kind promise
• Build your brand by living up to the promise
• You strengthen brand by constantly reinforcing your brand
It’s about perception, not the logo
11: Why brands are a big deal
• Unlock profitability
• Prompt consumer selection
• Build name recognition
• Increase the odds of business survival
EN: Branding: Vision + Mission + Platforms + Never ending process = Branding
16: The branding Cycle: Product>>> Position>>> Promise>>> Presentation>>> Persistence >>>Perception
EN: Sometimes branding does not get you a higher price but it does get you a higher volume which can lower your costs and make you more competitive.
17: Assembling your branding team:
• Organizer
• Marketing
• Champions
• Consultants
• Public relations
• Designers
• Agencies
19: Gulp1 How much does it cost…
• 50K to hundreds of thousands
• 2% * 1000K = 20K * 5 = 100K
20: Are you ready to brand?
Chapter 2: Why, What, How and When to Brand
24: Branding to avoid the budget busting commodity trap
• Cast your vision
• Win trust and increase value
What do you want to brand?
• Product
• Service
• Experience – business
• Individual
30: The path from brand essence to esteem
• Do your SOS
o Situation
o Objective
o Strategy
• Build team
• Implement
Steps:
1. Decide what you are going to brand
2. Do your research
3. Position your offering
4. Write your brand definition
5. Develop name, logo and tagline
6. Launch your brand
7. Manage, leverage and protect your brand
8. Keep it current
38: When to rev up your branding efforts
• Launching a business
• Introducing a product
• Turning your gig, consulting or freelancing into a business
• Fund raising for a non-profit
• Taking a business public
• Opening markets or going global
• Raising capital
• Merging with another business
• EN: Planning an exit strategy
Chapter 3: Gearing up to brand or build a better brand
44: You are here: Marking your starting point
46: Knowing and protecting brand assets
• Brand asset analysis worksheet
48: In your dreams! Defining what you want out of branding
Prioritizing your branding goals – see below
53: Crunching numbers: Budgeting realities
55: Committing to the branding process
Aligning your mission, vision, and brand identity
56: Including branding in your business plan
www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/branding
THE BRANDING PROCESS IN 8 STEPS
Branding is the process that aligns the opinions people hold about your brand with the set of thoughts you want them believe and trust. As you develop your brand, follow these steps, in this order:
1. Determine what you’re branding and whether your brand will be your one and only or one of several brands in your organization.
2. Research everything there is to know about your product and the market in which it will compete.
3. Position your brand by defining what makes it unique and how it will slot into an available space in the market and in your customers’ minds.
4. Define your brand by stating what it stands for, what unique benefit it provides, what value it promises to deliver, and the image that will permeate everything from your marketing communications to your product design, business character, and consumer experience.
5. Develop your brand identity, including your brand name, logo, tagline, and other brand signature elements.
6. Launch your brand, internally first and then by announcing it via publicity, social-media advertising, promotions, and presentations.
7. Manage your brand by understanding and leveraging your brand’s value, by protecting your brand through usage rules and legal rights, and by delivering an unfailingly consistent and positive brand experience that creates allegiance among those who represent, choose, and remain loyal to your brand.
8. Monitor, evaluate, and update your brand to keep it relevant and credible in light of changes to your business, your customers, or your marketplace.
3 RULES OF BRANDING
By following a few simple rules, you can successfully brand your small business. As you plan, launch, and manage your branding program, remember and train others to remember these three branding rules:
• Your brand is a promise that must be reinforced every time people come in contact with any facet of your organization.
• Your brand must accurately reflect the core beliefs of your organization, your leadership, and all who deliver your brand experience to consumers.
• Consistency builds brands, so every encounter with your brand — whether with your staff, product, website, marketing communications, news coverage, social media, or other any other form of brand encounter or experience — must consistently convey your brand promise and contribute to your desired brand identity.
ATTRIBUTES OF A GOOD BRAND NAME
Naming your brand is by far the most challenging, momentous, and necessary phase in the process of branding. However, coming up with a good brand name can be tricky. The following list presents qualities of a strong brand name.
• Reflects the character of the brand
• Describes the brand’s offering
• Creates an association with the brand’s promise
• Is easy and pleasant to say
• Is unique and memorable
• Can be claimed and protected legally, as a domain name, and as a social-media username
ECONOMIC BENEFITS OF A STRONG BRAND
Great brands create consumer trust and emotional attachments. As a result, they foster relationships between consumers and products that lead to the following valuable benefits:
• Premium pricing: Consumers pay more for branded items that they believe have higher value and lower risk than lesser-known alternatives.
• Lower cost of sales: Consumers of valued brands make repeat and frequent purchases. As a result, customer-acquisition costs are amortized over a long-term client relationship.
• Lower cost of promotion: Consumers of valued brands become ambassadors who spread positive word-of-mouth at no cost to the brand.
• Higher market share: Valued brands acquire loyal customers who recruit more customers to the brand, increasing the brand’s share of market while reducing customer-development costs and building immunity to competitive attacks.
• Lower employee turnover: Great brands attract passionate employees who pass their enthusiasm to satisfied consumers, who in turn make employees’ jobs more enjoyable, reducing employee turnover as a result.
• Higher stature: Valued brands enjoy a high level of awareness and esteem in the minds of consumers, industry leaders, community leaders, news editors, and financial analysts and investors, which leads to yet higher brand preference and marketplace prominence.
7 SIGNS THAT YOUR BRAND MAY NEED AN UPDATE
Times change, businesses change, consumer interests change, culture changes, and sometimes brands need to change, too. If your brand faces one or more of the events in the following list your brand strength may be at risk and a brand update may be in order:
• Major business changes
• Major market changes
• Change of ownership or leadership
• Rapid market or product line expansion
• Major product, channel, or strategic diversification
• A merger or acquisition
• A brand identity that’s out of step with current market and cultural tastes and trends
http://www.dummies.com/business/marke...
USING YOUR BUSINESS’S BRAND ASSETS TO YOUR ADVANTAGE
You can use your business’s brand assets to your advantage. Before creating or making adjustments to your business’s brand image, know your brand assets — what can contribute to the value of your potential brand. The worksheet in this figure can help you assess your brand assets. As you enter your assessment of each asset, base your answer on your own opinion and on the opinions you collect from those in your company and customer base.
PRIORITIZING THE GOALS OF YOUR BUSINESS’S BRAND
Your business’s brand to-do list of goals must prioritize those brand goals. Determine the priority order of the following brand functions when it comes to what you want to achieve through branding:
• Build awareness. Awareness leads to marketplace dominance and makes selling easier. After you build awareness for your brand, that awareness acts like a proxy for your business. When you can’t be somewhere in person, your brand goes for you, getting you noticed and conveying your core message and business promise on your behalf.
• Create an emotional connection. If your customers select your offering based largely on how they feel about owning your product or associating with your business, then creating an emotional connection needs to be an important part of your branding strategy.
• Differentiate your product. When customers understand why your offering is different and better than all competing products, they have a clear reason to buy from you, and you have a secure market position.
• Create credibility and trust. In any branding strategy, you absolutely must plan to establish or enhance credibility and trust. Brands, essentially, are reputations that result from promises made and consistently kept. If your brand fails to win on these two counts — if it fails to appear credible or trustworthy — it fails altogether.
• Motivate purchasing. Brands are like great advance teams in that they establish interest, appeal, confidence, preference, and purchase motivation in a customer’s mind before your product ever enters the arena.
Chapter 4: Powering up your personal and one-person business brands
60: taking ownership of your personal brand
63: Mapping your starting point
65: Growing into a personality brand
Part II Building a Brand Step by step
Chapter 5: Profiling and positioning your brand:
76: The marketing muscle of positioning
79: Major positioning strategies
80: Finding your position: The birthplace of your brand
81: Defining your point of difference
92: conducting customer research
Chapter 6: Putting your brand into words
• Vision statement
• Mission statement
Chapter 7: Naming your brand
Don’t change your name unless you have to
Do adjust your name, if necessary, to attune it to changing market place or business conditions
Chapter 8: Designing your logo and tagline:
The face of your brand
• Keep your logo simple
• That can be presented consistently across channels
• Don’t do it yourself
136: What’s in a logo? Increasingly, a name
147: Creating a tagline
Part III: Winning Brand Fans and followers
Chapter 9: Countdown to takeoff: Launching or relaunching your brand
154: Knowing your story, chapter and verse…
• Market position
• Brand promise
• Brand character
• Brand definition
Why are you undertaking this branding effort?
• Build awareness
• Create emotional connection
• Differentiate your offering
• Create or enhance credibility and trust
• Motivate purchases
158: Checking your internal readiness
Telephone
In person arrival
Online arrival
Within your business
Correspondence
Service
Previewing with priority audiences
161: 10, 9, 8…writing your brand-launch marketing plan
163: setting your goals and objectives
Short
Medium
Long
168: Takeoff
Launch internally
Company wide
Externally
Chapter 10: Branding in the digital age
Pulling people to your brand online
172:
People expect to find you online
People expect prompt interaction
People expect to control what they see and when they see it
Capitalizing on the difference between push marketing and pull marketing
Push interrupts
Pull engages
174: Ego surfing to benchmark your Brand’s online footprint
Do you own the all-important first result
Do you dominate the entire first page?
Is there a link to accurate information on first page?
Have you managed to avoid a single negative or brand damaging result on first page?
175: Self sleuth your brand
176: Set your online branding objectives:
Increase awareness
Enhance credibility
Develop engagement and interaction
Generate sales
181: Establish your brand’s digital home base
183: What type of site is right for your brand
Contact site
Brochure site
Support site
Ecommerce site
Mobile site
Expertise
Site from scratch or a template
Blogging friendly
188: Self-promote your site
Chapter 11: Engaging your brand audience online with social media
Getting organized before getting social
190: define objectives
193: Mapping the social media landscape
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
LinkedIn
Pinterest
Google Search
201: Creating and posting content
204: Announcing, repurposing and republishing blog posts
205: Creating and sharing video
Chapter 12: Advertizing, promoting and publicizing your brand
The power of a strong brand image
224: Covering all the public relations bases
Employees or members
Community
Industry associates
Government representatives
Media
Part IV: Caring for your Brand
A brand’s life cycle
Chapter 13: Perfecting your brand experience
Making an organization wide commitment to your brand
236: Writing your branding playbook
Clearly communicate your organization’s mission and vision
Build organization wide understanding for your brand statement
Make your band promise an organization wide commitment
238: Becoming your brand’s MVP
244: Intercepting and overcoming objections
Trust
Preferences
Offering
o Price
o Time
o Risk
Chapter 14: Winning Brand loyalty
Loyalty through customer relationships
254: sparking customer relationships
Igniting customer passion
Nurturing brand loyalists
Increasing accessibility and interaction
Generating buzz
Chapter 15: Valuing and leveraging your brand
Revving up the economic engine
Premium pricing
Lower cost of sales
Lower cost of promotion
Higher market share
Lower employee turnover
Gaining a competitive advantage
Consumer recognition
Industry recognition
Media
Financial industry
269: Brand equity measuring sticks
274: www.brandchannel.com for equity valuation
285: Cobranding cautions
286: Brand licensing
Steps to follow
1. Build, protect and manage your brand and its esteem
2. Establish licensing guidelines
3. License only to well manager, well respected and well financed companies
4. Limit licensing partners to one or only a few in each product category or geographic area
5. Implement a comprehensive licensee training program
6. Monitor and protect
Chapter 16: Revitalizing your brand with a full or partial makeover
290: Brands grow old too
297: Examining your brand’s health
301: Fixing a broken brand
Part V: Protecting your brand
Think big as you register and protect your name from competitors
Chapter 17: Defending your brand legally and through careful usage
308: Immunizing your brand with Government filings and trademarks
Registering name with local government offices
Obtaining a trademark
Maintaining trademark registration
Shielding your brand from misuse
Chapter 18: Taking action when bad things happen to good brands
324: Be prepared: Planning to dodge brand threats and missteps
Part VI: the part of tens
Chapter 19: Ten signs that your personal brand needs attention
1. You are not making your personal goals
2. You think personal branding sounds self absorbed
3. You can’t say what you are best at
4. Search results for your name are few and far between
5. Links to your name are dated or worse
6. You freeze when it’s time to introduce yourself
7. Your connection invitations get ignored
8. You aren’t sure which to promote: your personal or your business brand
9. You need but do not know how to ask for referrals and recommendations
10. You want more awareness, credibility and recognition in your field
Chapter 20: Ten Branding mistakes and how to avoid them
1. Thinking of branding as a quick fix
2. Starting with a weak brand identity
3. Forgetting the branding rule of one
4. Failing to differentiate
5. Failing to launch your brand with fanfare
6. Failing to protect and defend
7. Believing what you say is more important that what you do
8. Losing brand consistency
9. Asking your brand to stretch too far
10. Ignoring brand aging signs
Chapter 21: Ten Branding truths to remember
1. Branding starts with positioning
2. A brand is a promise well kept
3. Branding happens from the inside out
4. Consistency builds brands
5. People power brands
6. Brands live in consumer’s minds
7. Brand names and logos are like keys that unlock brand images
8. Brand experiences trump brand messages
9. Brands need to start and stay relevant
10. Brands are valuable assets
a. Premium pricing
b. Lower costs of sales and promotions
c. Higher market share
d. Reduced threat of competition
e. Greater employee satisfaction
f. Higher recognition by consumers, industry leaders, media, investors and analysts
#BrandingforDummies
@BillChiaravalle
SOS Branding can show you how branding can:
• Improve margin
• Increase revenue
• Decrease costs
• Help expand current channels
• Develop new channels
• Make business more attractive to investors, funders and partners
• Cost shareholders only pennies on the dollar
• Win/win/win
Why do consumers pay a premium for a Dell or Hewlett-Packard laptop, when they could get a generic machine with similar features for a lower price? The answer lies in the power of branding. A brand is not just a logo. It is the image your company creates of itself, from your advertising look to your customer interaction style. It makes a promise for your business, and that promise becomes the sticking point for customer loyalty. And that loyalty and trust is why, so to speak, your laptops sell and your competitors' don't. Whatever your business is, whether it's large or small, global or local, Branding For Dummies gives you the nuts and bolts know-how to create, improve, or maintain a brand. This plain-English guide will help you brand everything from products to services to individuals. It gives you step-by-step advice on assembling a top-notch branding team, positioning your brand, handling advertising and promotion, avoiding blunders, and keeping your brand viable, visible, and healthy. You'll get familiar with branding essentials like:
Defining your company's identity Developing logos and taglines Launching your brand marketing plan Managing and protecting your brand Fixing a broken brand Making customers loyal brand champions Filled with easy-to-navigate icons, charts, figures, top ten lists, and humor, Branding For Dummies is the straight-up, jargon-free resource for making your brand stand out from the pack--and for positioning your business to reap the ensuing rewards.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8...
2nd Edition
Bill Chiaravalle,
Barbara Findlay Schenck
2015
Comments:
It is an excellent overview book with some sections that narrow in and focus on branding issues. It is a little out of date on social media but that is to be expected in an area that changes monthly.
Overall a very good resource and an excellent starting point for beginners.
4 stars
Lots of notes with spoilers throughout but it is a for Dummies book so all is good!
Notes:
2. Anyone smart enough to want to know about branding is no fool.
Part 1: Getting started with branding
Chapter 1: Putting Brands and Branding in Perspective
What are brands anyway?
• Establish by building trust in one of a kind promise
• Build your brand by living up to the promise
• You strengthen brand by constantly reinforcing your brand
It’s about perception, not the logo
11: Why brands are a big deal
• Unlock profitability
• Prompt consumer selection
• Build name recognition
• Increase the odds of business survival
EN: Branding: Vision + Mission + Platforms + Never ending process = Branding
16: The branding Cycle: Product>>> Position>>> Promise>>> Presentation>>> Persistence >>>Perception
EN: Sometimes branding does not get you a higher price but it does get you a higher volume which can lower your costs and make you more competitive.
17: Assembling your branding team:
• Organizer
• Marketing
• Champions
• Consultants
• Public relations
• Designers
• Agencies
19: Gulp1 How much does it cost…
• 50K to hundreds of thousands
• 2% * 1000K = 20K * 5 = 100K
20: Are you ready to brand?
Chapter 2: Why, What, How and When to Brand
24: Branding to avoid the budget busting commodity trap
• Cast your vision
• Win trust and increase value
What do you want to brand?
• Product
• Service
• Experience – business
• Individual
30: The path from brand essence to esteem
• Do your SOS
o Situation
o Objective
o Strategy
• Build team
• Implement
Steps:
1. Decide what you are going to brand
2. Do your research
3. Position your offering
4. Write your brand definition
5. Develop name, logo and tagline
6. Launch your brand
7. Manage, leverage and protect your brand
8. Keep it current
38: When to rev up your branding efforts
• Launching a business
• Introducing a product
• Turning your gig, consulting or freelancing into a business
• Fund raising for a non-profit
• Taking a business public
• Opening markets or going global
• Raising capital
• Merging with another business
• EN: Planning an exit strategy
Chapter 3: Gearing up to brand or build a better brand
44: You are here: Marking your starting point
46: Knowing and protecting brand assets
• Brand asset analysis worksheet
48: In your dreams! Defining what you want out of branding
Prioritizing your branding goals – see below
53: Crunching numbers: Budgeting realities
55: Committing to the branding process
Aligning your mission, vision, and brand identity
56: Including branding in your business plan
www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/branding
THE BRANDING PROCESS IN 8 STEPS
Branding is the process that aligns the opinions people hold about your brand with the set of thoughts you want them believe and trust. As you develop your brand, follow these steps, in this order:
1. Determine what you’re branding and whether your brand will be your one and only or one of several brands in your organization.
2. Research everything there is to know about your product and the market in which it will compete.
3. Position your brand by defining what makes it unique and how it will slot into an available space in the market and in your customers’ minds.
4. Define your brand by stating what it stands for, what unique benefit it provides, what value it promises to deliver, and the image that will permeate everything from your marketing communications to your product design, business character, and consumer experience.
5. Develop your brand identity, including your brand name, logo, tagline, and other brand signature elements.
6. Launch your brand, internally first and then by announcing it via publicity, social-media advertising, promotions, and presentations.
7. Manage your brand by understanding and leveraging your brand’s value, by protecting your brand through usage rules and legal rights, and by delivering an unfailingly consistent and positive brand experience that creates allegiance among those who represent, choose, and remain loyal to your brand.
8. Monitor, evaluate, and update your brand to keep it relevant and credible in light of changes to your business, your customers, or your marketplace.
3 RULES OF BRANDING
By following a few simple rules, you can successfully brand your small business. As you plan, launch, and manage your branding program, remember and train others to remember these three branding rules:
• Your brand is a promise that must be reinforced every time people come in contact with any facet of your organization.
• Your brand must accurately reflect the core beliefs of your organization, your leadership, and all who deliver your brand experience to consumers.
• Consistency builds brands, so every encounter with your brand — whether with your staff, product, website, marketing communications, news coverage, social media, or other any other form of brand encounter or experience — must consistently convey your brand promise and contribute to your desired brand identity.
ATTRIBUTES OF A GOOD BRAND NAME
Naming your brand is by far the most challenging, momentous, and necessary phase in the process of branding. However, coming up with a good brand name can be tricky. The following list presents qualities of a strong brand name.
• Reflects the character of the brand
• Describes the brand’s offering
• Creates an association with the brand’s promise
• Is easy and pleasant to say
• Is unique and memorable
• Can be claimed and protected legally, as a domain name, and as a social-media username
ECONOMIC BENEFITS OF A STRONG BRAND
Great brands create consumer trust and emotional attachments. As a result, they foster relationships between consumers and products that lead to the following valuable benefits:
• Premium pricing: Consumers pay more for branded items that they believe have higher value and lower risk than lesser-known alternatives.
• Lower cost of sales: Consumers of valued brands make repeat and frequent purchases. As a result, customer-acquisition costs are amortized over a long-term client relationship.
• Lower cost of promotion: Consumers of valued brands become ambassadors who spread positive word-of-mouth at no cost to the brand.
• Higher market share: Valued brands acquire loyal customers who recruit more customers to the brand, increasing the brand’s share of market while reducing customer-development costs and building immunity to competitive attacks.
• Lower employee turnover: Great brands attract passionate employees who pass their enthusiasm to satisfied consumers, who in turn make employees’ jobs more enjoyable, reducing employee turnover as a result.
• Higher stature: Valued brands enjoy a high level of awareness and esteem in the minds of consumers, industry leaders, community leaders, news editors, and financial analysts and investors, which leads to yet higher brand preference and marketplace prominence.
7 SIGNS THAT YOUR BRAND MAY NEED AN UPDATE
Times change, businesses change, consumer interests change, culture changes, and sometimes brands need to change, too. If your brand faces one or more of the events in the following list your brand strength may be at risk and a brand update may be in order:
• Major business changes
• Major market changes
• Change of ownership or leadership
• Rapid market or product line expansion
• Major product, channel, or strategic diversification
• A merger or acquisition
• A brand identity that’s out of step with current market and cultural tastes and trends
http://www.dummies.com/business/marke...
USING YOUR BUSINESS’S BRAND ASSETS TO YOUR ADVANTAGE
You can use your business’s brand assets to your advantage. Before creating or making adjustments to your business’s brand image, know your brand assets — what can contribute to the value of your potential brand. The worksheet in this figure can help you assess your brand assets. As you enter your assessment of each asset, base your answer on your own opinion and on the opinions you collect from those in your company and customer base.
PRIORITIZING THE GOALS OF YOUR BUSINESS’S BRAND
Your business’s brand to-do list of goals must prioritize those brand goals. Determine the priority order of the following brand functions when it comes to what you want to achieve through branding:
• Build awareness. Awareness leads to marketplace dominance and makes selling easier. After you build awareness for your brand, that awareness acts like a proxy for your business. When you can’t be somewhere in person, your brand goes for you, getting you noticed and conveying your core message and business promise on your behalf.
• Create an emotional connection. If your customers select your offering based largely on how they feel about owning your product or associating with your business, then creating an emotional connection needs to be an important part of your branding strategy.
• Differentiate your product. When customers understand why your offering is different and better than all competing products, they have a clear reason to buy from you, and you have a secure market position.
• Create credibility and trust. In any branding strategy, you absolutely must plan to establish or enhance credibility and trust. Brands, essentially, are reputations that result from promises made and consistently kept. If your brand fails to win on these two counts — if it fails to appear credible or trustworthy — it fails altogether.
• Motivate purchasing. Brands are like great advance teams in that they establish interest, appeal, confidence, preference, and purchase motivation in a customer’s mind before your product ever enters the arena.
Chapter 4: Powering up your personal and one-person business brands
60: taking ownership of your personal brand
63: Mapping your starting point
65: Growing into a personality brand
Part II Building a Brand Step by step
Chapter 5: Profiling and positioning your brand:
76: The marketing muscle of positioning
79: Major positioning strategies
80: Finding your position: The birthplace of your brand
81: Defining your point of difference
92: conducting customer research
Chapter 6: Putting your brand into words
• Vision statement
• Mission statement
Chapter 7: Naming your brand
Don’t change your name unless you have to
Do adjust your name, if necessary, to attune it to changing market place or business conditions
Chapter 8: Designing your logo and tagline:
The face of your brand
• Keep your logo simple
• That can be presented consistently across channels
• Don’t do it yourself
136: What’s in a logo? Increasingly, a name
147: Creating a tagline
Part III: Winning Brand Fans and followers
Chapter 9: Countdown to takeoff: Launching or relaunching your brand
154: Knowing your story, chapter and verse…
• Market position
• Brand promise
• Brand character
• Brand definition
Why are you undertaking this branding effort?
• Build awareness
• Create emotional connection
• Differentiate your offering
• Create or enhance credibility and trust
• Motivate purchases
158: Checking your internal readiness
Telephone
In person arrival
Online arrival
Within your business
Correspondence
Service
Previewing with priority audiences
161: 10, 9, 8…writing your brand-launch marketing plan
163: setting your goals and objectives
Short
Medium
Long
168: Takeoff
Launch internally
Company wide
Externally
Chapter 10: Branding in the digital age
Pulling people to your brand online
172:
People expect to find you online
People expect prompt interaction
People expect to control what they see and when they see it
Capitalizing on the difference between push marketing and pull marketing
Push interrupts
Pull engages
174: Ego surfing to benchmark your Brand’s online footprint
Do you own the all-important first result
Do you dominate the entire first page?
Is there a link to accurate information on first page?
Have you managed to avoid a single negative or brand damaging result on first page?
175: Self sleuth your brand
176: Set your online branding objectives:
Increase awareness
Enhance credibility
Develop engagement and interaction
Generate sales
181: Establish your brand’s digital home base
183: What type of site is right for your brand
Contact site
Brochure site
Support site
Ecommerce site
Mobile site
Expertise
Site from scratch or a template
Blogging friendly
188: Self-promote your site
Chapter 11: Engaging your brand audience online with social media
Getting organized before getting social
190: define objectives
193: Mapping the social media landscape
Google Search
201: Creating and posting content
204: Announcing, repurposing and republishing blog posts
205: Creating and sharing video
Chapter 12: Advertizing, promoting and publicizing your brand
The power of a strong brand image
224: Covering all the public relations bases
Employees or members
Community
Industry associates
Government representatives
Media
Part IV: Caring for your Brand
A brand’s life cycle
Chapter 13: Perfecting your brand experience
Making an organization wide commitment to your brand
236: Writing your branding playbook
Clearly communicate your organization’s mission and vision
Build organization wide understanding for your brand statement
Make your band promise an organization wide commitment
238: Becoming your brand’s MVP
244: Intercepting and overcoming objections
Trust
Preferences
Offering
o Price
o Time
o Risk
Chapter 14: Winning Brand loyalty
Loyalty through customer relationships
254: sparking customer relationships
Igniting customer passion
Nurturing brand loyalists
Increasing accessibility and interaction
Generating buzz
Chapter 15: Valuing and leveraging your brand
Revving up the economic engine
Premium pricing
Lower cost of sales
Lower cost of promotion
Higher market share
Lower employee turnover
Gaining a competitive advantage
Consumer recognition
Industry recognition
Media
Financial industry
269: Brand equity measuring sticks
274: www.brandchannel.com for equity valuation
285: Cobranding cautions
286: Brand licensing
Steps to follow
1. Build, protect and manage your brand and its esteem
2. Establish licensing guidelines
3. License only to well manager, well respected and well financed companies
4. Limit licensing partners to one or only a few in each product category or geographic area
5. Implement a comprehensive licensee training program
6. Monitor and protect
Chapter 16: Revitalizing your brand with a full or partial makeover
290: Brands grow old too
297: Examining your brand’s health
301: Fixing a broken brand
Part V: Protecting your brand
Think big as you register and protect your name from competitors
Chapter 17: Defending your brand legally and through careful usage
308: Immunizing your brand with Government filings and trademarks
Registering name with local government offices
Obtaining a trademark
Maintaining trademark registration
Shielding your brand from misuse
Chapter 18: Taking action when bad things happen to good brands
324: Be prepared: Planning to dodge brand threats and missteps
Part VI: the part of tens
Chapter 19: Ten signs that your personal brand needs attention
1. You are not making your personal goals
2. You think personal branding sounds self absorbed
3. You can’t say what you are best at
4. Search results for your name are few and far between
5. Links to your name are dated or worse
6. You freeze when it’s time to introduce yourself
7. Your connection invitations get ignored
8. You aren’t sure which to promote: your personal or your business brand
9. You need but do not know how to ask for referrals and recommendations
10. You want more awareness, credibility and recognition in your field
Chapter 20: Ten Branding mistakes and how to avoid them
1. Thinking of branding as a quick fix
2. Starting with a weak brand identity
3. Forgetting the branding rule of one
4. Failing to differentiate
5. Failing to launch your brand with fanfare
6. Failing to protect and defend
7. Believing what you say is more important that what you do
8. Losing brand consistency
9. Asking your brand to stretch too far
10. Ignoring brand aging signs
Chapter 21: Ten Branding truths to remember
1. Branding starts with positioning
2. A brand is a promise well kept
3. Branding happens from the inside out
4. Consistency builds brands
5. People power brands
6. Brands live in consumer’s minds
7. Brand names and logos are like keys that unlock brand images
8. Brand experiences trump brand messages
9. Brands need to start and stay relevant
10. Brands are valuable assets
a. Premium pricing
b. Lower costs of sales and promotions
c. Higher market share
d. Reduced threat of competition
e. Greater employee satisfaction
f. Higher recognition by consumers, industry leaders, media, investors and analysts
#BrandingforDummies
@BillChiaravalle
SOS Branding can show you how branding can:
• Improve margin
• Increase revenue
• Decrease costs
• Help expand current channels
• Develop new channels
• Make business more attractive to investors, funders and partners
• Cost shareholders only pennies on the dollar
• Win/win/win
Why do consumers pay a premium for a Dell or Hewlett-Packard laptop, when they could get a generic machine with similar features for a lower price? The answer lies in the power of branding. A brand is not just a logo. It is the image your company creates of itself, from your advertising look to your customer interaction style. It makes a promise for your business, and that promise becomes the sticking point for customer loyalty. And that loyalty and trust is why, so to speak, your laptops sell and your competitors' don't. Whatever your business is, whether it's large or small, global or local, Branding For Dummies gives you the nuts and bolts know-how to create, improve, or maintain a brand. This plain-English guide will help you brand everything from products to services to individuals. It gives you step-by-step advice on assembling a top-notch branding team, positioning your brand, handling advertising and promotion, avoiding blunders, and keeping your brand viable, visible, and healthy. You'll get familiar with branding essentials like:
Defining your company's identity Developing logos and taglines Launching your brand marketing plan Managing and protecting your brand Fixing a broken brand Making customers loyal brand champions Filled with easy-to-navigate icons, charts, figures, top ten lists, and humor, Branding For Dummies is the straight-up, jargon-free resource for making your brand stand out from the pack--and for positioning your business to reap the ensuing rewards.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8...
February 20, 2013
This was an excellent source on the topic of branding. A brand is what other people think of you. Whether you're a company, a country, a movement, or a person, this book can introduce you to well thought-out ideals on how to improve the image you want to project. This text should be looked at as one would a textbook. Adequate notes should be taken, and regular rereading a must. A scholarly mindset is also a plus.
March 10, 2018
Didn't know anything about branding, this book served as a good introduction to the topic. Using relatively simple English, no excessively difficult terminology - I'm happy.
September 15, 2018
Good tips, a lot of them ;)
This is definitely helpful book for anybody interested in own business, promotion, etc.
This is definitely helpful book for anybody interested in own business, promotion, etc.
January 24, 2020
I mean it is what it is - needs some updating tbh but still has useful info!
August 27, 2013
Despite the goofy exterior, this is a great overview of the entire process of branding, with lots of practical advice from an experienced brand consultant. I read it to fill a few lingering gaps from my education, which is in visual design (example: When is it advisable for a company to use a symbol in its logo instead of just a wordmark?), to give me a better grasp of the broader business context for executing the visual parts of branding, and to provide a standardized vocabulary and structure for discussing the process with business owners/clients.
July 18, 2014
Very helpful to a novice like me--plain English, lots of worksheets to get thoughts on paper. I expected crass commercialism and was prepared to hold my nose while trying to get enough info to help me work with a nonprofit that needs branding. Instead they kept emphasizing that your brand is your promise to your customers! That fits with MY values!!
October 7, 2016
pretty average book on branding. if you want to learn how to be great at branding and business strategy, just pick up a book by Al Ries and Jack Trout. Their style of writing is amazingly easy to follow and understand.
December 17, 2009
Good book for marketers.
October 23, 2011
A good introduction or refresher on the cornerstone of marketing. Highly recommended for starting entrepreneurs.
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