Marketing article: Your Brand is Like a Paint Store

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Your Brand Is Like A Paint Store!

I was helping a friend recently with some of her marketing materials.

She had taken the bold and exciting step of starting her own business. She decided to make her passion into her livelihood and she started her own interior design company.

She loved everything from renovating mansions to painting walls. She had a passion for design and a huge amount of talent.

From a marketing perspective, she thought her only job was to come up with a logo and a name. Mason Heyes Design was born, and with the help of a talented graphic designer, her logo looked fabulous. But there was something missing.

Of course a logo and a name are a priority, “but” I said, ”you wouldn’t design a home without painting the walls would you?”

She looked at me with a quizzical look on her face. She obviously understood the importance of color in the process of design but how it related to my point was not clear to her yet.

“Remember when you designed my house? You made the living area a soothing, sophisticated uplifting color, so that when I was in there, that’s how I felt”.

She was in agreement, but still confused as to where I was going.

“You need a positioning statement,” I said, bringing her back to her marketing materials: “Who are you – and what makes you different?”

She replied with the response almost every new business owner says…

“Customer Service”.

Are You Choosing Blah Grey to Express Who You Are?

I told my friend the boring old phrase of customer service doesn’t tell me (or her customers) anything about what she does differently.

She said, “but no other designer has a positioning statement”.

This was exactly my point.

Everything you do is about how you do things differently. In other words, I said, the color you choose to paint your business reflects how you and everyone who experiences you will feel about your business. Just like the color on your walls.

I recounted how many times in my media sales career I have talked to small business owners and they say:

“No one else does that in my industry so why should I?”

The reason you need a positioning statement is to stand apart from your competition.

Why?

So your future clients know why you’re different. Your potential clients choose to work with you precisely because you are different.

Choosing the Color You Want To Paint Your Business

Your positioning statement requires as much thought as your name and your logo. It is just as important as the color you choose to paint your home because it reflects who you are.

It tells people:
∑ what you do
∑ who you are
∑ what you’ll create
∑ what they’ll experience
∑ how they’ll feel

And it surrounds you wherever you go!

Choose the Color You Think Best Reflects Who You Want To Be

In my fabulous friend’s case, she is a wildly talented interior designer. Her work is Big and Bold and Beautiful. She creates designs that reflect who her clients want to be. Her clients hire her to bring out their inner beauty.

She listens, understands and intuitively designs elements of form and function that seem to express exactly who her clients want to be seen as. Check out www.masonheyes.com, you’ll see what I mean!

In my case, she knew me well enough to know that I would love a sexy, sophisticated fun feeling in my home. And that is exactly what she created for me. I love it!

Here’s Your Assigment (the same one I gave my friend!)

Ruth went away from our brainstorming session to come up with a few words, (3-7 words max) that will always be part of her logo, her name and a her image. These words describe how she wants to be perceived, and stand a part, in her business.

Her positioning statement, the paint color she chooses to live in, will be in all her email correspondence, signage, ads, presentations and thank you cards. It goes everywhere she goes.

Soon it will be on the lips of all her future clients… Ruth Mason Heyes, Big. Bold . And Beautiful Designs.

Go ahead, pick a color, the color you dare to be, and wear it, own it, live it, feel it breathe it, every moment of every day. Be like my friend, find your passion and express yourself. Remember, branding is who you want to be.

Lisa Bagshaw is a Media Maven with over 10 years of media sales experience in radio, television and print advertising. Her love of discovering how businesses tick drives her to help business owners realize their goals and together devise plans to achieve them. Humorous, insightful and smart solutions, Lisa Bagshaw gets results. She can be reached at lisa.bagshaw@shaw.ca