• Awareness: A strong brand is your lead generator. It gets people to notice you and become aware of what you do. If you build proper awareness, you’ll be top of mind when a customer is ready to make a purchase.

• Trust: A professional appearance builds credibility and trust. People are more likely to
purchase from a business that appears polished and legitimate. Emotional reactions are
hardwired into our brains, and those reactions are very real infuencers.

• Loyalty: By creating consistently high-quality experiences, you will retain current
customers and acquire new ones due to word-of-mouth advertising.

BENEFITS OF A STRONG BRAND
• Premium pricing and more sales: If you’re not a brand, you’re a commodity. By properly distinguishing your brand from the competition and communicating the intangible benefts of your product or service, you no longer have to compete on price
alone. And, with a customer’s ability to search hundreds of stores online in pursuit of the lowest prices, small businesses, more than ever, need to de-emphasize the product or
service and put greater emphasis on their brand.

• Potential for growth: When, and if, you’re ready to expand your business into new markets, you’ll fnd that a strong brand offers a greater opportunity to do so rather than
starting over.

 • Increased business value: When Apple bought Beats Electronics for $3 billion in 2014, one could speculate that it wasn’t because Beats made the best quality headphones
(compared to other high-end products by Sennheiser, Bose and JBL) or had the most subscribers to its music service (525,000 compared to Spotify’s 10 million). A strong
appeal was likely the brand itself, a beautifully designed, well-promoted brand that gave them instant street cred with the Millennial market. It proves that a brand can be more
valuable than the product or service itself.

TIPS TO HELP YOU LIVE YOUR BRAND
1.Develop brand guidelines that easily communicate and remind you and your
employees what your brand is all about.This can be as simple as a one-page document, but should include things such as:
• Mission, vision and values
• Position/tagline
• Logo
• Color palette
• Brand attributes and examples of your voice used in communications
2. If you have employees, make sure you promote your brand internally,  goals aligned with positioning, staff policies and procedures
3. Execute your brand consistently across all media.