It’s strange to talk of the brand less ordinary as the brand that shares and prides itself on it’s own story. But it’s true.
Online, you don’t get the opportunity to look your customer in the eye. It changes how you communicate. You’re granted the freedom to be something you’re not.
The multiple regional telephone numbers you present on your website that all route to one mobile phone.
The talk of ‘we’ when it’s really only ‘you’.
The boastful logos that represent a client list.
Embellishment to make your business appeal to your dream client.
Why fake it? Be genuine. You have two options.
You either present your business where you are right now or where you want to get to.
Sharing your vision is important. It guides your brand and how you present your business. Your job is to make it connect with your prospective client.
Remember, there’s a gulf of difference between sharing the vision and faking the present.
When you fake the present you’re not telling your own story. You enter the world of make believe.
If my work isn’t taken seriously as I have no office, no support staff or no brochure to ‘pop in the post’, that’s just fine. The relationship would never work.
If your business spans a wide range of activity then get people comfortable with what you do (just like Breakfast of Champions do:
and grab your reader with what you actually do:
and leave them considering what could be achieved.
BEING EVERYONE
A ‘Social Media Trainer’ encouraged his LinkedIn connections to use the Adwords keyword planner to find the most popular ‘term’ to describe their work and to use that as the headline in their own profile.
What awful advice. To bundle your work under one generic label with the hope that you’ll be ‘seen’ in the search results. Along with hundreds or thousands more following the same misleading advice.
BEING SOMEONE
It’s your brand. Multinational. Startup. Thriving business. You own a brand. You can only shape the way your brand is seen. Your brand is open to interpretation, the good and the not so good. You can’t fix that. You don’t want to fix that.
Don’t be concerned by your label. For your business, or yourself. Do you think the ‘Internet Marketing Expert’ with 6 months experience wins the major projects?
There comes a point where what you say leads to what I believe. The label has no influence at that point.
The best thing you can make me believe is that I can believe in you. What your business can provide for me.
So focus on what you achieve. The process. The guts. Lead with what you help achieve. Just be yourselves. That’s who I’ll buy into and who I’ll buy from.
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