Here are four steps to help you develop a winning branding strategy:

Step 1) Evaluate your business and consider your competition. What are your strengths and weaknesses? What aspect of your business are you most proud of? Now think about your competitors. What are their strengths and weaknesses? How do you stack up compared to the competition? Determine what makes your business stand out.

Step 2) Uncover your clients’ perceptions of your business. You may consider your business’s knack for understanding and addressing the needs and goals of your individual clients to be a strength of your business, but do your clients agree? Understanding your clients’ assessment of your business is crucial to the development of an effective branding strategy. Market research will allow you to gain insight into your clients’ perceptions and to begin to develop a strategy that addresses these views. Take advantage of social media – the use of Facebook, Twitter, and other online social exchange sites can be an excellent method of obtaining customer feedback. Offer incentives to clients who respond to surveys on Facebook and tweet questions about your business to encourage discussion of your business’s strengths and opportunities.

Step 3) Develop a branding strategy. Compare your evaluation of the business to client evaluations. Did you both agree that your business’s employees develop relationships with clients that help the business to understand its clients’ needs and to assist clients in achieving their personal goals? Congratulations – you’ve just found your WOW factor! You have exposed your business’s competitive edge and discovered that your clients are taking notice. Now consider your WOW factor in relation to your overall strategic goals. Create a branding strategy that is aligned with the business’s strategic goals and that enhances your WOW factor. Be sure that the personality of your business and images used in branding are congruent.

Step 4) Communicate your brand. You have already defined your business’s brand, so now it’s time to convey the brand message to your clients. Your brand is communicated to clients through personal contact as well as through media and advertising, and ensuring that the business is portrayed consistently throughout all forms of interaction with clients is the key to successful brand implementation.

By developing a branding strategy centered on consistent representation of the business’s WOW factor, businesses of any size can effectively influence public perception of their brand and become memorable in the marketplace.