This past week we had the pleasure of being asked to speak to a group of entrepreneurs part of SMARTstart, a training program that is providing real-world business skills to business start-ups. We were asked to speak about branding and we tried to bring our take to the table and help the group learn more about themselves.

Here are a few tips we provided that we thought would be helpful to all businesses looking to thrive and grow.

10 Tips to Make you a Master of Branding…

1. Have a great product. Is it the best it can be? One of excellence and nothing but outstanding? How can you make it a little bit better?
2. Don’t use jargon in your branding. Keep it simple, speak normally in a bunch of ways.
3. Once you have a mantra and avatar nailed down create a 30-second elevator pitch. Practice it 1,000 times.
4. Spend the time to create a great logo. Hire someone that can craft it for you sharing your vision with the world. At the same time have them craft great business cards for you. Print them on great paper and give them to everyone! Then tell them your elevator pitch at the same time.
5. Tell stories! Paint pictures, compelling stories, human stories about bigger ideals. When you tell people about your business you should be excited about it and people should remember that when they leave.
6. Develop a tone and manner for your brand. Use certain words, descriptors and vocabulary when speaking to clients. Consider the language you use, always.
7. Promote yourself everywhere – shout it from the roof tops. Give people great info, resources, help, time, attention, care and love. Document everything in your journey and share it. Invite people to engage and be a part of it with you.
8. Have a strong online presence! You definitely need some social media presence but people will always take you more seriously if you have a well crafted and thought out website. If it has to be simple to start so that it’s done right then do that.
9. Think BIG and outside of the box.
10. BE BOLD. BE BRAVE. BE PASSIONATE.

We have some other branding tips and content here in our ‘Live your brand dos and don’ts‘ and in ‘Stories we tell to inspire‘.