Have you ever thought about the message your brand is sending?  First let me help you understand that your brand is more than just your logo.  Your Brand includes everything your company is about, your logotype, your services or products, the quality of your customer service, you as the business owner, your employees, even the look of your office.  Your brand is the emotional relationship your company has with its customers; a successful brand logotype can even elicit feelings and responses from its users.

secured payday loans

“A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or company.”
Marty Neumeier – The Brand Gap

Now that we have a better understanding of what exactly a brand is we can now discuss the importance of narrowing the focus of your brand to ensure its success.  A powerful brand specializes in a specific type of service or product.  An example of some powerful Brands is Rolls-Royce, Nike, Starbucks, Petsmart, Apple, Microsoft, Intel…. Etc.  Each of these companies’ popularity is based on the fact that they focus on one type of service or product.

Many companies start up thinking they need to be a one stop for their clientele.  They see larger corporations expanding their brands and start-ups think they can do the same.  Well… slow your roll a bit… you don’t have the millions larger corporations have and most successful companies didn’t start out being one stop shops.  It is better to be well known for a particular service or product than to expand your  brand and be known for nothing.  Specialization is the key.

When you narrow the focus of the products and services you offer you allow your Brand to specialize and become really good at what it does.  Think about Xerox for a second.  Xerox is known for making copy machines; their brand is so focused and has become so well known that the company name, “Xerox”, has become a noun.  How often have you called a copier a “Xerox Machine” or used the phrase, “Can I get a Xerox of that document?”, even when the actual machine being used was not the Xerox Brand.  Now that is a powerful brand.  The same can be said for Starbucks, Porche, and Subway.

The goal of any Brand should be to dominate its category, is your brand successfully dominating is category?