A brand is a combination of visual aspects such as your logo, fonts, and colors, your messaging, as expressed in your elevator pitch, and the way your business makes people think and feel. It’s important for a brand to be targeted towards your ideal client and evocative in some way so that your brand makes an emotional connection with its audience. It’s also important for your brand to be consistent across all touchpoints, from your business card to your PowerPoint template, right down to your invoices and even the way you answer the phone.
A good brand has its own personality that should be clear to everyone who interacts with it — clients, prospects, employees, vendors, and partners. You should be able to come up with a few key adjectives to describe your brand just the same way that you can describe your friend (trustworthy, fun-loving, cutting edge, etc.). And while brand consistency is definitely key, as with the people you meet, a brand only gets one chance to make a first impression. If it’s not a good one, or if it doesn’t match what you’re selling and causes brand confusion, then your prospects will lose interest and you will lose sales.
