By Joanna L. Krotz

Business gets easier when you have a recognizable brand. Think about BMW or Coca-Cola, for example. All you need to do is mention the names and millions of people throughout the world have an immediate perception and expectation of what that company stands for. There's an emotional connection between the customer and the company name.

	TIP: When you take the branded materials you created to a printer, consider submitting your digital documents as PDF files. Printers usually support files in a native application (such as Microsoft Publisher), however customers can often lower their printing costs by converting their materials to the PDF format. Why? Printers have fewer problems with PDF files, and they can identify and fix any problems faster with PDF than with native applications. View this article to read about how to submit your files to meet commercial printing standards.

With a strong brand, you don't have to sell nearly as long or as hard. Customers know what you stand for before the proposal.

Here's how to give your company the kind of brand identity that will help drive sales. Here, too, are tips for customising a brand personality toolkit that will keep that brand alive and growing.

Define Your Personality
A brand is the promise you make to customers combined with the customers' judgement about how well you deliver on that promise. A successful brand becomes an emotional bond that builds customer loyalty. A brand includes your logo, colour scheme, taglines, slogan, design elements and more.

Think of branding as the personality of your enterprise. Define that and the logo and other marketing messages will follow.

To build your brand, begin by thinking through exactly what it is you sell and why customers choose your product or service. Identify the promise you are making to your customers. For instance, you may manufacture vacuum cleaners, but what you're really selling is a better way to clean house. You must also define what makes your product more desirable to the customers you're targeting than that of your competition.

For help in creating logos and taglines, you might meet with one of the many non-profit small business advisory groups. Also gather family advisors, staff or friends to brainstorm about taglines. And don't forget to survey customers. You want to leverage the way they see you.

Use Brand Tools
When you're ready, Publisher 2003 can help you conveniently create the visual look of your brand personality. Publisher can also become the custodian of the brand by assembling all your brand elements into a convenient and cost-effective toolkit that you can use to store your brand elements.

You can start with one of the 45 professionally designed Master Design Sets in Microsoft Office Publisher 2003. Each Master Design Set carries that consistent design look - coordinated colours, fonts and layouts - for commonly used business publications, from newsletters and brochures to flyers, postcards and business cards to e-mail and websites. Use them as they are, change the Colour Scheme or Font Scheme, or customise even more to suit your taste. Publisher templates include a place for key marketing messages and tag lines, company or product logos, graphics, colours, fonts, product trademarks or names and more. You'll find many of the same designs in Microsoft Office Word 2003 and Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003.

You might also want to download new marketing templates from Office Online or hire a design agency that caters to small businesses to create your own unique set of templates in Publisher 2003. That way you and your staff will be able to use and customise as needed, but maintain a consistent brand identity.

Build Recognition
You want the company personality to be easily identifiable at every customer touch point, from word of mouth to final sale. Make sure that every bit of packaging, presentations, communications and marketing speaks with a brand-consistent look and voice.

The same branding should appear on your entire range of advertising and promotional options, not just stationery or sales brochures. That includes press releases, e-mail signatures, trade show displays and booths, store or office signage, banners and highway billboards, print ads, posters and marketing for sponsored or charity events - in other words, everything.

Appoint a Brand Cop
Educate everyone on staff, from assistants to the CFO, about your brand and its tools as well. Otherwise, each employee, including the all-important sales team, could create their own version and confuse your customers. Once you assemble the brand toolkit, every employee can then access it and draw upon whatever is needed.

Even so, over time, logos tend to shape shift. Someone adds a shoreline to the water's edge that floats your sailboat logo. Someone else re-draws the boat so the prow faces into the sun. Pretty soon, your little sailboat is sinking.

To prevent this, appoint a designer or staff member to police the brand toolkit, especially if you work with outside vendors. Keep track of who accesses the toolkit and which consultants or vendors use it for what marketing channels. You want to track all branding appearances and changes.

Brand Power
Many business owners don't bother with branding because they're busy chasing sales, impressing investors or recruiting talent. "Who has time for it?" they say. Yet success comes from differentiating your offerings in the marketplace and rigorously serving your best customers. If you take the time to brand - that is, figure out how to articulate who you are, what you sell and which customers to target - all your marketing efforts become more focused.

Finally, honour what your brand symbolizes. The greatest tagline in the world won't get customers to come back if you don't fulfill your marketing promises.