“Are you wearing your brand like a beach towel?”

 

When I first started marketing online, I heard a lot about branding. Most of it didn’t make sense. One coach even sneered, “Brand? Schmand.”

A lot of training materials focused on big-name consumer products – sportswear, beer, detergent, and cola drinks.

Let’s take the name of the leading cola company. It usually comes in bright red cans. I don’t have to risk any copyright violations to say the name because I bet you know it already.

But what comes to mind when you hear it? I think of hot summer days, special occasions like Christmas, tingling taste that quenches your thirst like nothing else and long drives across country … and I don’t even like cola drinks.

When researchers study these big brands, they go even deeper. They look at brand personality. They have to invent a personality: after all, when you think about it, cola drinks are just a bunch of liquid chemicals.

Many people think of branding as a sort of beach towel: something to cover what’s there while you’re walking around and maybe get noticed if you’ve got an especially bright one. But sooner or later you have to drop that beach towel and get into the water, which means you gotta have the right stuff, like fitness, muscles, and the ability to stay afloat.

If you can erase that image from your mind, think of branding as a way to differentiate yourself from your competitors. That’s a challenge for many business owners.

“I do the same thing a lot of people do. But I do it differently.”

 

 

So check out my free workbook on branding with stories.

And for an in-depth step by step guide to brand your business with stories, read my Amazon book  Build Your Brand One Story At A Time 

And now I will plunge into the deep end and say something even more bodacious and outrageous and controversial. I will say that being memorable won’t get you more business if you’re an online service. It’s about building the relationship and sending a compelling message through your copy. It’s about being credible.

Disclaimer: Anything about beaches and swimming should be considered as metaphorical only. I avoid beaches and bodies of water and flunked swimming lessons many times over.

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