How to Brand your Business

When you want to brand your business, the first thing you do is to make an honest examination of your product/service. Identify the qualities that you expect to appeal to your target market and emphasize them in your brand making sure to leave out the qualities that might appeal to others, but not necessarily appealing to your target market. If we accept the definition of American Marketing Association that a “brand” is a "name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers", we will then come to terms about how to brand any business we are involved in. Practically, and in a business sense, a "brand" can represent any organization, project, campaign, or cause and can take many forms; including a name, sign, symbol, color scheme, slogan or any combination of a name, sign, symbol, color scheme or slogan. Anything, just anything that distinguishes a business very distinctly from any and all others defines a brand. 


 
Anytime any day, it makes a very good marketing sense to brand your business taking into consideration that an effective brand requires an attention grabbing name, logo, slogan and color scheme among many other very distinct and unique qualities. Specifically, you have no other choice but to do the following as a matter of necessity if you want to brand your business and make any meaningful impact with the business.

Choose a unique name for the business

The name you choose must be sufficiently unique as to identify you and you alone in the entire business world. Any name you choose must in addition be in compliance with the local laws in your clime taking into consideration all Intellectual Property issues so as not to infringe on the exclusive legal rights of others. Because your name is an essential part of your brand, you must endeavor to choose it very carefully. Your choice must as of necessity, convey the positive qualities that make your business so unique as to appeal directly to your target market. 

Create a unique logo for the business

Every marketer must recognize that a logo is a “graphic, a symbol of other design, used to express the identity of a business.” To create a catchy and unique logo, you must let your imagination run wild depending on what you want to create. What is very important here is that your logo must convey succinctly what you want it to convey, that is, your attractive qualities which will appeal to your target audience. At a glance, that message must be decently and uniquely conveyed. If you are unable to create a logo on your own, there are many free or very inexpensive Websites that can help you create your own logo. Very handy is the Google "Free Logo Creator" which you can use freely and easily.

Create a slogan for the business

Creating a slogan could be very tricky indeed because of the dicey nature of English as a universal business language. You must know what you are doing and what you want to covey. A slogan is simply a way of playing around with words to meet the unique needs of your business. A lot of thought must be given to the words you want to use and how you want to use them to convey the qualities of your product/service.  A good slogan must be a short, striking and memorable phrase that conveys your business identity. It must be all words and nothing else, not even graphics or photos. A good slogan must be made entirely of words which can be included in your logo to pass on a business message uniquely and quickly.  

Tips to Create a Good Brand

 To create a successful brand, you must take a bit of background information/ guideposts into consideration in the process. The first thing you do is to make an honest examination of your product/service with a view to clearly identifying the qualities that should appeal to your target market. You then take steps to emphasize them in your brand, making sure to leave out the qualities that might appeal to others, but not necessarily appealing to your target market. If we accept the American Marketing Association’s definition of a brand as a "name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers", you will discover that your brand must as of necessity be completely woven around your product/service for it to make any business impact. That is why your "Brand" must identify your product/service adequately and set it distinctly apart from others. Because, your brand is the first opportunity you have to tell others particularly your potential customers who you really are and what you are offering, adequate care must be taken to see that it performs that function effectively. If not, it is useless.

The next consideration is expectation. Your brand must tell everyone at a glance what to expect from you. What exactly can you do for them in terms of value and how you go about doing it is very important in branding. Can your brand deliver quick and excellent service efficiently and in good time? A good brand must push out and identify with all the qualities that give your product/service value. You may consider higher quality and higher cost or lower but acceptable quality at fairly lower costs. These are some of the things customers want to know about and your brand must help them to know about them. The real reason, your brand is one great way to offer information about yourself or your business in some kind of a short-hand way. Therefore, in designing your brand, you must think and reflect deeply on the kind of questions that people may have about you and your product/service. These questions you must try to address by the way you brand yourself and your business. That is one of things that distinctly set you apart from others. One of the great functions of a good brand!

A good brand not only identifies you, but it identifies the product/service you have to offer. For that reason, it must as of necessity provide the answers to such questions as: What are the strong qualities of your product/service? What sets it apart from others? What makes it appealing? What makes it unique? Why must a buyer go for it? etc, etc. You must note very carefully that, if your brand does not clearly set you apart from the others, it will not be an effective brand. Having an ineffective brand is as good as not having a brand at all.

How Doxxing Threatens Your Small Business

Every day, as the Internet deepens, the lexicon also deepens. That is how Doxxing is suddenly becoming very popular even though it has been around for quite some time. As gleaned from the Internet, “The term Dox or Doxxing is derived from the word “Document.” It originates from the practice of researching information about an individual. Doxxing is often defined as an Internet-based practice of researching and broadcasting personally identifiable information (such as names, addresses, phone numbers, spouse, children, relatives, financial history and much more) about an individual.”

In fact, such information usually forms a total very sensitive package online about any individual. If it gets stolen or falls into wrong hands, such information can be used for real time impersonation or even identity theft. If you own a small business online and somebody steals your identity through Dox packages, that business could easily be taken over (even if temporarily) and misused by using it to perpetrate fraud or scams. That is how dangerous Doxxing can be to your business.

Very commonly online, when it comes to privacy issues, people focus much more on companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and suchlike social media sites. Quite often, that focus often ends up overlooking the real culprits. Many of these social media sites claim to be self censored and boast of being able to secure the personal information of their users. Even if we accept that to be true, many of their users may not be that careful with their personal information. In addition, other persons who post on their sites freely could be reckless with sensitive information when they take full advantage of the fact that many of such social media sites are interactive and very free to use. These careless postings could actually serve as sources which feed the practice of Doxxing and can lead to many different types of assaults on your business.

Now wait for it! Some companies using people-finder websites even now specialize in collecting sensitive information online and selling it to other companies. I bet you can you see the danger in that. Even though Doxxing in its earliest form was meant to gather marketing intelligence information for businesses, criminals have since latched on to it to perpetrate various forms of cyber crimes. That is why it is now a real threat to many small businesses online. Many of such businesses can easily be wiped out completely when hit real hard by cyber criminals.

Any viable remedy? Yes indeed! What to do is simple as ABC. Just protect your personal information online like never before. If you can help it, don’t allow your sensitive personal information online unless you have absolute guarantee that it will be securely protected from predators.