Branding Your Business

We all hear about “branding” our businesses,but what does that really mean? Branding is the way you separate your business from the pack. It is how you make your business unique – and desirable – to current clients and prospects.

In this article, I will go through some basic definitions, examples, tools, strategy and actions you can use to establish your brand as a professional pet sitter. Action

What is Branding?

One of my favorite definitions of branding comes from Marty Neumeier, The Brand Gap, who said, “A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service or organization.”

It’s a person’s gut feeling because brands are defined by individuals, not companies, markets or the public. It’s a gut feeling because people are emotional, intuitive beings. In other words, it’s not what you say it is, but rather what your clients – and their pets – say it is!

But why is branding so important? It is important because it serves to accomplish many things that contribute to your success:

• Branding differentiates you from your competition.
• It provides a visual identity for your business.
• People have too many choices and too little time and branding helps put the odds in your favor when the choice is made.
• People tend to base their buying choices on trust and branding begins to establish a “dialogue of trust” with clients.

For example....

Do you own a camera? There are more than 100 brands of cameras on the market, so how did you decide which one to buy? If you’re like most consumers, trust had something to do with it. Here’s another definition for you: Trust = Reliability + Delight. If you have both elements – the reliability and the delight – a client’s trust is within your reach and your brand is on its way to becoming established and recognized.

© Copyright 2010 by Pet Sitters International. All rights reserved. For reprint permission for this article, contact EllenPrice@petsit.com.

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