Or your products or services, your company or its message. Without a clear program for communication, you just blend in - you become part of the scenery. So you promote, position and advertise. But along the way, communication often gets fragmented. The result is your audiences get inconsistent, sometimes conflicting impressions and information. Or they may miss your message entirely.

We are all excited to tell people about our business, what we do, how it works and the benefits of using our products or services. But it’s equally important to choose the proper words. Speak the language of your audience and not the language of your industry. We tend to speak in industry terms when explaining what we do or have to offer. Start to focus on words that your audience can relate to - words that they understand and can identify with in relation to their own needs.

For those of you who don’t eat, drink and sleep brand strategy like me, let me try to explain it. A brand is not a logo. It’s what people think, feel and believe about a company or product.

Small and Medium Enterprises often face the dilemma of the decision whether to brand or not. Most of the SME's are not aware about the importance of brand-building while others face the constraints related to fiscal resources, poor infrastructure, lack of know-how regarding positioning and promotional strategies etc. Branding has become an essential part of marketing due to increasing globalization. Exports of Small-Scale Industries (SSI) generally comprise of garments, engineering goods, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, leather, plastic products, processed food, gems and jewelry. About 95 percent of the products exported by the SSI are non traditional products. Therefore Brand-building for SME's is an important exercise which should be started as early as possible in order to allow a firm to develop a competitive advantage over other existing firms in the market. Increased competition in the wake of globalization can be tackled by domestic firms through Brand-building.

Everyone knows we are in business to earn money. But what about earning trust and respect? What happened to the good old days when those “things” mattered? Think they don’t today? Well they do. Competition for similar services and products is overwhelming. Clients and prospects now need to rely on the trustworthiness and respect of the companies with which they want to conduct business.

The answer is “very important”. That doesn’t mean that you should be spending lots of money on branding. In fact, most money spent on traditional branding (logo design, brand advertising, brand re-design, etc.) is wasted. However, if you don’t understand your brand, and how it plays in your target market, you’ll be fighting an uphill battle whenever you go out to sell.

Business revolutions once had a bit of continuity to them. The Industrial Revolution lasted for decades, the postindustrial revolution had a solid 20-year run, and even the dot-com revolution persevered for a good five years.

Brand building is not something that can be done overnight. You need to be doing things ethically and be authoritative to for a sufficient period to establish yourself and build your brand name online. A product from a high branded person or firm can get into the market soon rather than a novice supplier. A product from a strong brand brings the brand name first and then the product. For example, Google launches a new product, you will surely try your best to buy that product as Google is one of the most trusted brand on the Internet.

Brand or trademark is the name or symbol associated with the product or service and cause psychological meaning / associations. (Wikipedia). Brand is also a wealth of industries that include intellectual property. Conventionally, brands can be a name, word, phrase, logo, symbol, design, picture, or a combination of two or more elements.

It is a good decision that you made up your mind to proceed and become financially independent. This feels quite good and you are raring with confidence to fulfill your dreams and ambitions. But, did you know that a very high percentage of startups fail and the reasons are quite simple and rectifiable. Let us look at the top seven reasons for startup failures.