Small Business Marketing Kit For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Building a Powerful Brand

Your small business will probably never have a globally recognized “power brand” simply because you don’t have (and for that matter don’t need) the marketing muscle that would fuel that level of awareness.

Adding horsepower to your brand

Branding expert Liz Goodgold knows what it takes to power up a brand. She’s done it for herself and for her business, Red Fire Branding (www.redfirebranding.com ). The result: features on more than 500 media outlets, including ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNBC, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.

Her branding advice includes these steps:

1. Set a goal and follow your passion.

2. Start your brand-building effort by developing a core competency.

3. Find and leverage your “cool quotient,” the aspect of you or your business that’s unique, memorable, and interview-worthy.

If you’re not sure about your “cool quotient,” Goodgold recommends duplicating the successes of huge brands to build your own branding success story. As examples, she turns to celebrities in this five-question brand-strength quiz:

Do you have street cred? Do you have depth in your field and knowledge of key trends? Are you continuously improving your expertise and offerings? Becoming a brand without any core competency places you in the category of Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian.

Do you have je ne sais quoi? Simon Cowell might call it the “X Factor”: ...