If you missed part one of this series, be sure to check it out here.
We all know there are some things you just shouldn’t skip over when it comes to building a business that’s profitable. One of those vital elements is your brand. This includes creating it and maintaining it, which is where that branding survival kit can come in handy. In the last post, we covered four essentials necessary for a well-stocked kit. Today, we’ll cover six more.
Precise Brand Messaging
You might call this your brand essence. It’s the core of the story you’re telling, and much like the premise or log line of a book, the message should be able to be distilled down to just a sentence or two to describe it. Think short, clean, and defined with laser sharpness. If you can’t do this on your own, it may behoove you to bring in a second opinion that can help you get it just right.
Key Differentiator
Going hand in hand with messaging is your key differentiator, or what makes your company special and cuts through all the noise. Competition is everywhere, and if you are not standing out from the crowd in some way, you will go unnoticed. An unnoticed brand becomes an unprofitable brand, and that’s just not good business. 
Signature Product or Service
This boils down to knowing your market inside and out. What do your customers want most? How can you serve them what they want in a way that only you can? Whatever that product or service is, make it your signature offer, and center all other products or services around it.
If you offer more than one signature service or product, then it might be a good idea to make a “signature collection” your brand can become known for, and give customers some choices. You know your company best, just make sure you aren’t accidentally turning potential customers away due to product or service overwhelm.
Clear Profit Plan
Ever heard the saying, “Fail to plan, plan to fail?” This is never more true than in business. You don’t have to put an elaborate blueprint in place or hurt your brain when mapping out your goals, but you do need to have something written down that gives you a solid direction to move in.
Then you know when something isn’t working, and you can adjust and tweak direction as you go to make sure you are staying within your profit margins. But… if you don’t know what they are, you can’t exactly stay within them!
Define a Single (KPI) Key Performance Indicator
There are a number of KPI’s that it’s an excellent idea to track, but try to narrow down just one related to your brand. Maybe it is brand awareness, maybe it is your customer’s response to your brand, or maybe it’s measuring your customer’s buying habits and brand loyalty.
Choose at least one and track how your brand stacks up against competitors in this area. If you’re falling short, it’s time to do some tweaking to make sure your message is hitting and resonating with the right people.
Build Your Audience
There are a number of ways to do this, but it’s definitely a key tactic in your brand strategy. You want to grow your circle of influence and build a following of not only customers (customers are always great), but also a small army of raving fans.
After all, who better to have at your side when fighting zombies, right? Or more accurately in this day and age, who better to have by your side fighting the internet trolls. Trolls are people that like to assassinate a brand’s character without provocation, and they will often use the internet and social media to do it. So it’s important to build your audience, so you have people in your corner when stuff like that happens.
You can build your audience by blogging and email marketing. It’s also a great idea to choose one or two social media platforms you are comfortable using (and where your ideal audience is already), and let them be touch points for people to get to know you and your story.
That’s a Wrap
It’s important that you take these all of these tips seriously if you want your brand to survive and thrive. You can’t cut corners. Focus on the suggestions here, master them, and they will help you to grow your brand exponentially.
Oh, and congratulations. You survived the zombie apocalypse.
