Your customers need to know what makes you better than all the rest? Best price, best quality, best service...You may have some basic ideas about what you are up against with your competition, but you can be assured that your potential customers will know more, even if it's not obvious. Take the guesswork out, apples-to-apples there's always a difference.

A customer's very first impression of a business usually comes from the initial sighting of its logo and whatever message (hook) is attached to the media it appears on. A positive first impression will arouse interest in a product or service and elicit further interaction between the customer and the company, so it's got to be right!

There are plenty of things to see when we look at branding, but there are also lots of behind-the-scenes components that we do not. This short video will give you some idea as to what a branding implementation looks like, including some of the things that most people do not see.

Evolving companies are under constant pressures as they adapt to shrinking budgets, restructuring, new markets, or developing new products. With these changes, it's easy for a company to lose sight of its original vision often resulting in failing quality standards, customer dissatisfaction and brand confusion.

To brand and market your company, product, or service successfully, you need to identify, claim, and defend a unique competitive position in your market(s) - a position that will attract and retain new customers, employees & stakeholders and that is in alignment with the quality of the products you sell or the standard of the services you provide.

As a brand strategy is pushed out by a company, it often adapts to business, competitive and manufacturing pressures that can potentially change or corrupt the desired perception of the brand. A brand audit takes inventory of the state of the brand from mostly external sources in order to identify and fix issues that may be diminishing its strength.

Operating without a marketing plan can put huge pressure's on a business. Resulting in a stressful reactive environment that prematurely depletes budgets, makes it difficult to determine ROI and often produces off-brand messaging.

Whether you own it, are employed by it, or just visiting it, a business is a living entity with human attributes such as personality and even hygiene. How your customers see your business is extremely important - a perceived positive or negative disposition will determine whether a customer will do business with you - or not. Ensure that you are always putting your best boot forward.

A tagline can add clarity and value to a brand, especially if its identity is misunderstood, but it is certainly not an essential component of a brand. In fact, lots of companies couldn't be bothered, and for good reason!