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High-Concept Branding™ 101 for Small Businesses

by Jennifer McCay

[Excerpted from my in-depth branding guide for small businesses, The High-Concept Brand Bible™: Think Big, Find Your Focus and Achieve Small Business Success]

		Every single time you communicate with your prospects -- that includes everything from phone calls to invoices to your e-mails and promotional materials to how you deliver your products or services -- you are sending them a message about who you are and what your brand stands for. And it's vitally important that you send them the right signals. Initially, you want your prospects to see and, yes, feel that you anticipate their needs and offer them something special. In essence, from the moment you make contact or a prospect encounters your business, you should be showing your savvy at whatever you do ... in the way that best meets your prospect's needs.

To this end, I have established several High-Concept Branding Principles to help you establish your own brand (4 of which I am including here in this article for the sake of brevity).

High-Concept Branding Principle #1

Your brand is the sum total of all of the impressions your company sends to your prospects and clients over the course of your relationship with them. When you brand yourself properly, you create the right signals to send your prospects to help them get past their doubts and start trusting you.

From your brand, your prospects and clients can see in a matter of moments what you stand for -- whether you operate a business with employees or simply want to brand yourself as a solo entrepreneur.

Think of it this way: When you think of Oprah or Madonna, you immediately have an image in mind, don't you?

Or take the cable TV show "South Park." Although at first glance, you might think it's a kid's show, within 30 seconds of watching, you can see that this cartoon is for adults only and wicked fun for folks with an irreverent sense of humor -- or a major turnoff if it's not your thing.

See how just saying the name "South Park" gives you an instant feeling? Same with "Madonna" or "Oprah" or any number of other well-branded household names. You immediately grasp what's being discussed and have a sense of what the company or individual stands for.

High-Concept Branding Principle #2

Your High-Concept Brand solves problems for your prospects -- showing them that you have theonly answer to their needs and desires.

Consider this: From the moment you encounter well-branded individuals or companies, large or small, (or yes, even TV shows, books like Harry Potter, and so forth) you know what's what.

You know what you will experience, the type of story or item or service you will receive and you know what level of quality and even the emotional feeling you will get when you deal with these people or firms. And that means they have done an excellent job refining their own brands to enable you to have that instant impression.

A good brand does all that work for you, the prospective client who needs to know right away if you should tune in or tune out.

High-Concept Branding Principle #3

People like to categorize the things they see, the people they meet and the vendors they do business with -- and a High-Concept Brand takes care of that for them. It's not that people necessarily want to overgeneralize, but it's an ingrained trait in our brains so that we can make sense of the world around us.

By simplifying the message you send your prospects and clients (in other words, by branding your small business effectively using the High-Concept Branding system), you allow them to place you in the right category!

To use some marketing terms you may be familiar with, your brand helps define your USP, or Unique Selling Proposition (the qualities about your company that set it apart). By figuring out what makes you special, you can use your strongest assets to pack power into your marketing message.

Furthermore, brands show where you stand in relation to the competition in the market, also known as your positioning. In other words, brands help your prospects determine whether you have something to offer them that they cannot get anywhere else, so you want to get your brand right.

Do you communicate the problems you solve for your prospects clearly and effectively? If your prospects don't know what it is you really do, what you're capable of, what your small business can offer them that no one else can, why would a prospect have a reason to get to know you beyond their initial confusion?

The High-Concept Brand difference

This system, which we use when helping all of our clients with their own brand strategies, as well as for our own ventures, is called High-Concept Branding.

Why High-Concept? Although it may seem like a strange place for a marketing idea to originate, my inspiration for the idea of "High-Concept" came from the movies.

The folks in Hollywood are always on the lookout for movie ideas that are special, instantly understandable and appeal to a specific target group. And when they find an idea that can be explained in a sentence or less, they call that winning script "high-concept."

High-Concept Branding Principle #4

When you create a winning marketing approach that gives an instant positive impression, is unique, has appeal for the right people and can be implemented in every aspect of your business, that's your High-Concept Brand.

It's the theme or foundation for the rest of your marketing, and you'll be repeating it in some form or fashion for many years to come, so it's pretty important.

The bottom line is this:

By branding your business, you are saying that you want to take charge of the way in which your prospects experience your company, yourself, what have you -- so that you can control the outcome.

If you aren't aware of how you come across to your prospects, if you haven't branded your business effectively, you are being branded by your clients and prospects, like it or not. And if that impression isn't what you think, you're losing money, plain and simple.

You must plan to succeed -- it's that simple. And a High-Concept Brand is the giant first step in climbing the mountain of success.

Editor's Note: In this article I have explained several of the key principles critical to the "health" of your brand because I absolutely want your business to be a success. But getting your brand just right is hard if you don't have a system in mind as you go.

In The High-Concept Brand Bible™ home study course, I go into far more detail about the full branding process, teaching you Avenue East's practical, step-by-step method for developing a powerful High-Concept Brand™ for your small business and systematically applying it so that you can quickly reap the rewards.

About the Author:
Are you a coach, consultant or other solo service professional who's struggling to grow your business? Jennifer McCay helps independent professionals turn their expertise into marketing success stories using the best of the best tactics that worked for her big business clients! To get your FREE subscription to her Avenues to Marketing Success Newsletter, head to http://AvenueEast.com

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