Branding is more than just designs, it’s how you interact with your clients and how much effort you put into your services. From the logo on your business cards to the posts on your blog or Facebook page, it’s the image that you project to your clients. Why is that image important? It’s the first interaction a potential client has with your company. It’s about creating credibility and maintaining trust with your current and prospective clients.

To help illustrate these ideas, I developed the Branding PowerBand. It ties together the different aspects we should all consider when trying to establish a brand.

Your mechanic can tell you that your car’s powerband is the range at which it’s providing you the most power. Your Branding PowerBand is the range at which your company’s consistent and focused branding efforts are working the most effectively and powerfully for you. The ultimate goal is to create as much client trust in your company as possible. Gaining that trust benefits your company in every almost every aspect, from getting more sales to attractive higher quality employee talent.

The initial effort is creating your identity, which is your company’s message. It’s your company’s philosophy, knowing your product, your customers, and who you really are. In its simplest form your identity it is your logo, business cards and the message you associate with them. It has the steepest curve because often it’s the most difficult task when establishing your business. It is the foundation where the rest of your brand is built. You may know what you want to sell or what field you are in but do you know who you are as a business? Ask yourself, “What makes you better than anyone else? Are those fantastic qualities that you have, coming through in everything that represents you?”

The next range of the Branding PowerBand is your marketing and advertising designs. This includes your promotional material, product packaging, and ad campaigns.

After that is your web presence including your domain name, website, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, and online advertisements.

From there you take your brand and continuously build upon it by creating relationships with people and solidifying your brand by being an expert in your field. This includes reaching out to people through e-mail newsletters, blogs and social media networks.

To really make your brand powerful you need to stand back and view all of these things as a whole. It’s about creating a consistent message that engenders trust with your current and new clients.

The designs representing you should be more than just using templates and clip art. If you wouldn’t accept anything but the highest level of quality for what you do for your clients, why should the image for your company be any different? Everything you do in your business is a reflection your quality of work. If you are not presenting yourself in the most meaningful and high quality way possible what does that say about your business?

Here are some questions to ask yourself to see if they may need to review their branding:

• Can you say that the clients you are getting regularly are your ideal clients? If not, you may have a branding issue and need to rethink your message to get the clients that you want.
• What does you or your products have that makes it better and different? If it doesn’t light up you and your client’s eyes you may need to review your branding.

All of us should be thinking about the bigger picture and long term plan. The Internet and social media has created a huge opportunity to create incredible brand equity by blogging about what you love and establishing your expertise. You don’t have to wait until you are successful to form your brand. Start thinking like a large brand at the beginning and you’ll be surprised at how ahead of the game you’ll be.

In the end, the services PowerBand Graphics provides are more than just designs. It’s a relationship that I want to create with people to help their businesses compete at a higher level. Anyone can have branding, but creating truly powerful branding means more than just a logo.