I was just reading an article written by John Jantsch that he posted on Could Your Brand Stand a Personality Upgrade? on the HP Small Business Marketing Guide. He discussed Small Business branding and encouraged you to work at it much harder by identifying it more clearly to your customer base.
Don’t be a big fat zero: It is pretty scary to brand yourself. You always feel like your limiting yourself and as a result try to be everything to everyone. And as a result your are nothing to no-one. A ZERO! Another alternative is to to leave your customers do it. That perception, is of course probably the most correct one and as I have recommended before go call 10 of them and find out what your brand is. A word of caution is that it is very difficult to change this image and if you so choose to try it is expensive. I have written several posts on this.
But don’t be less then zero: I think the scariest part is leaving the branding to your non-customers. Now, let me do the math. Your customers in your target market is called market share. Your market share more than likely is something less than 50%. Maybe, 5% if you are extremely successful. So, if you have not developed a strong brand, if my math is right, 95% of your target market is defining it for you. So, go read John’s post, I think you need to take hold of it and brand yourself with everything you got before someone else does.