|
One of The Biggest Branding Mistakes Start Up Business Owners
Make
There s a thread going around in small business
about something called personal branding, and
while it has merit and can certainly give some
people a leg up on the competition,
please don t confuse
personal branding with building a business.
Again, when a person creates a brand that allows
them to stand out, they may be able to charge
more for their services or get higher profile
gigs, but what they ve created is a job. (In
some cases that s the grand payoff of a personal
brand, a better job.)
Now,
we are not against personal branding, it may
offer some people that ability to create the
best job going, but a business is an asset,
something that gets more valuable over time, and
here s the biggie, it can be sold. It is very
difficult to sell a personal brand. Some of the
biggest personal brands you could name on
twitter, right now, would be worth very little
without the person behind the avatar.
It s
really not a right way or wrong way. It s a
strategic choice. Know the consequences of the
choice. The funny thing is, it s actually easier
to build a personal brand online than it is to
build a business brand and that s where some
people get tripped up. It s a balancing act that
must be intentionally orchestrated and gradually
implemented.
Here s what I mean. To get a business started,
you may find it much easier to just be you,
provide great service and let people remark all
over town how you re the next big thing. But, at
some point, you have to take yourself out of the
equation and let the idea of what you ve started
be grown into a brand, if, in fact, you want
this business you created to be worth more than
your book of business this month.
The
first step may be the name of your business
Mr. Smith changed Ron Smith Communications to
Interactive Marketing Corp eight years ago and
went from a guy in New Jersey slinging marketing
to small startups with limited or no budgets to
a company with multiple national corporate
contracts, some with fortune 500 companies, but
the change started with the name. The more
Interactive Marketing is a brand and less Ron
Smith, the more valuable it becomes to the
secret list of companies interested in acquiring
it.
Obviously, creating a business or a brand is not
simply a matter of picking a good name and
packaging it; but it does need to originate from
the idea that a business is likely worthless
unless it can operate without the owner or the
personal brand of the founder. |
