The Optics of Your Business — Creating a Visual Brand
What is the nucleus of your business? Is it the product or the earning potential? Do you consider your style or your business plan the center piece of your business? The best advice I can give you is to make yourself the nucleus of your business. When it comes down to it, is not just a good idea or a good plan, but the executor and execution of that idea and plan. It depends on the entrepreneur himself or herself to be the visual brand, the ‘optics’ if you will, of your business.
Your Brand Ambassador
As the architect of your idea, you are the ambassador of your idea. Only the entrepreneur can honestly know the business and its benefits and that makes you the seller, the marketer, the mouthpiece, the face, and the life revolving around your idea. The best way to do that is to keep your focus on why you are in business. Scott Levy, author of Tweet Naked, in his article on entrepreneur.com about brand visibility, says it well, “…think about your motives for being in business.” That will allow you to not only be a great ambassador, but an exception ambassador for the business.
Your Eye on the Receiver
Who is at the receiving end of your product or service? The market and the customer are not always the same. The markets may look at you as a supplier as well as a competitor, while the customer engages with you on the value you provide to him or her individually. While you are building a customer, it is essential that you keep you eye on the market that not only houses your customer, but depends on a variety of customers and suppliers. Once you enter the market, you have to watch for the customer and the competition both.
The Optics of your Brand
You have heard of the differentiating factor but as an entrepreneur, you have to figure out the positioning of the business. The intent is to create the right kind of visibility that turns the business into a profitable venture. How are you seen and how do you want to be seen? How do you find a place in the minds of an already overcrowded market and over exposed mind space? This is what will drive your entire marketing activity, customer identification, your own understanding of the need and your unique solution.
To create a visual brand, your personal passion for the idea will be the defining factor. It is about holding the center so well, that you are able to understand, fill and bridge the gaps that go unnoticed, and keep looking at the big picture of the business.
