Personal and team branding:
Branding and marketing innovator and founder and CEO of Branding & Marketing YOU, Donna Rachelson, gives us valuable insight into why branding you, your team and your company properly is so important.
Were all branded, whether we like it or not, and if you dont take responsibility for branding and marketing yourself others will do it for you. This applies to individuals, teams and companies. The most effective organisations are those with a strong brand and with employees who have developed strong personal brands.
Personal branding focuses on your uniqueness or your unique selling proposition (USP), how you position yourself in relation to your colleagues and competitors and how youre able to package yourself in an authentic and noticeable way that makes you stand out.
Theres a strong case for personal branding whether youre an entrepreneur or work in a corporate environment. When one thinks of ones personal banking service or accounting firm, one generally thinks of the personal banker or accountant rather than the institution he or she represents.
Companies most effective employees are those who share the companys brand values, but have also developed and learned to market their own personal brands. This enables these them to be memorable, build great reputations and long lasting, authentic business relationships.
When employees build and market their personal brands, theyre effectively building and marketing the companys brand. People buy into them before they buy into the companys products and services.
Teams within organisations need to develop strong brands too, in order to be able to communicate their full value to the company and its clients. While most companies believing in team building, few have given much thought to the concept of it.
Team brands are born when there are customers to serve, skills to be practiced and value to be created. In these circumstances, certain teams become known for something. Consciously or unconsciously, employees and managers interact with the team every day and they are further cementing its brand position.
A leadership team may become known for being able to make smart decisions quickly and an HR team could be recognised for the ability to select candidates with exceptional leadership potential. Similarly, negative team brands can develop. The executive team might have a reputation for in-fighting, or a specific sales team might be known for incompetence regarding certain company products.
Team branding not only bonds teams together in a much deeper sense than a simple team-building activity, but also unlocks value in the team and benefits the business as a whole. High-performing teams, who brand and market themselves efficiently, can be a companys competitive advantage. In fact, team branding is likely to become a key business issue in the future.
Create a brand for your team
Great brands provide a source of identification and an assurance of quality. They simplify decision making and communicate the value they create for their customers in a concise manner. Great brands make and keep their promises. These characteristics differentiate great brands and cement their leadership credentials.
Powerful team brands are able to clearly communicate what the team does and why its vital to the company. Theyre able to convince others of their value and turn them into brand ambassadors for the team.
To create a team brand, the team needs to have a clear understanding of its target market. Who does it serve? What does it do better than any other similar team? What makes it valuable? And what is distinctive about the way the team does things?
Benefits of branding your team
Effective team branding results in recognition from customers and peers. With recognition comes feedback and insight, which assists in making teams more streamlined and efficient. Recognition turns the spotlight onto the team and the individuals in it. People develop pride in what theyre doing, this in turn increases productivity, quality of work and morale.
The team becomes a trusted source of information and will be sought after. It becomes more relevant and is able to support the broader strategic corporate objectives. Effective teams assist the company in being more competitive in the market. The team moves from a service role to a strategic one.
Guidelines for creating a team brand
Brands live in your customers mind. Its them who create associations with your brand positive and negative. Although brands may market themselves in certain ways, its ultimately the customer who decides how theyre viewed. This is why the best brands spend so much time interacting with their customers and trying to provide them with exceptional experiences.
A teams customers may not be clients in the traditional sense of the word. The customer is anyone who youre providing or selling a service to. For example, an HR teams customers are the departments of the company it services. Their experiences with the HR team shape how that team is perceived.
Five tips for building team brands in your organisation:
1. Teams need to invest in creating positive associations. Make and keep promises. Focus. Do fewer things, but do them better. Cut out the things you do that dont add value.
2. Remember: what you do can probably be done by someone else, so focus instead on how you do it thats the real differentiator.
3. Be the best at what you do. Figure out what you do well and then develop the capabilities to do it brilliantly.
4. Know your audience. You have no brand if youre not relevant to your target market. What you do must tie up with your target markets needs and values.
5. Be seen and heard. Once you have created a brand for your team you need to market it.
