What is the difference between branding and marketing?
A brand is a representation of who you are as a company. It conjures a cohesive image of your mission and goals. Marketing is how you convey that message, and build a deeper awareness to achieve your goals as a business.
Often times, individuals create their own personal brand without even realizing it. Have you ever gone out to look at someone’s feed on Instagram, and noticed that it gave you a particular overall feeling? Let’s say a majority of the photos contained plants and animals, and the dominate color in every photo was green. What types of feelings does that conjure up? That person has effectively curated an image that they want to convey. They have branded themselves.
As social media is something individuals interface with on a consistent basis throughout the day, it only makes sense that a business would utilize this tool to convey their goals through branding.
Here are 4 tips for creating your brand:
1. Get clear on your vision. Before you create your mission statement, before you create a single post, get clear on your vision for your business. What does your business look like in it’s ideal form? What does the physical space look like? How do you collaborate with your team? How do you interact with customers? How much revenue is coming in? Take some time to dream.
2. Clearly state your values as a team for your business. Put your vision into words, and put your words into action. Does your team value innovation and creativity? Then do your actions as a business align with your values?
3. Create a mission statement. Now that you are clear on your values and your vision, you can come up with a mission statement. This is how you ensure that your values and actions are in alignment.
4. How do you want to feel? How do you want your clients and customers to feel? Do you want your spa to evoke feelings of peace and tranquility? Then consider wording and images that would communicate peace and tranquility. If the dominate color in your Instagram feed is red and yellow, then your brand is not congruent with who you are as a business.