Why do you even need a strong brand?

When you're building your business, I like to think of your core business purpose as the backbone, your products and services form the rest of the skeleton and your brand well that's where you add the skin, the features, the hair and the clothes!  That's where your skeleton of a business becomes a real boy! (that one's just for you Pinocchio fans...)

... and it's that becoming real - becoming more like a person that is what makes branding so KEY.  

Us humans are a simple bunch. We are naturally social and our instinct is to seek out like-minded others and form relationships with them ('tribes', if you will). Before deciding whether we want someone to be part of our 'tribe' we'll do a quick risk assessment.  Is this person likely to hurt me or deceive me?  Do they have anything to bring to the party - any particular skill or personality trait that will benefit me? Are they anything like me?  All sounds fairly familiar right?

So the same sort of process happens when we make a decision whether to buy from or work with a business.  Our decision to buy comes from an EMOTIONAL place, rather than a logical one.  Businesses don't tend to make us feel particularly emotional - but people do.

So why is a strong brand important?  It helps people to connect with our business, to bring out an emotional response, to feel a sense of belonging to our 'tribe'...

Following on from that logic, in today's video, I'll chat to you about what elements go together to create a strong brand - or 'business personality' as I refer to it...