It’s time to put your doubts and fears behind you because I’m going to let you in on a little secret – you don’t need to be the top authority on a subject. You just need to know more than the other people who want to learn about it. The problem is that you underestimate what you know because you already know it. What may seem basic to you is brand new and valuable information to someone else. Information that they will often be more than happy to invest in!

Here is a quick little exercise to show you just how much you really know:

1. Find three people who want to learn about your area of expertise, and give them each a free, private one-on-one consultation where they can ask you anything
2. Record the call
3. Listen to the call. Did you notice how you were able to quickly give them the answers they needed with little effort? (note: there are a lot more people like them than people like you)
4. Use their questions and your answers to create your own informational product to sell.
5. Repeat steps 1-4

It’s as simple as that.

Sadly, many people today just don’t understand the true value of a professionally designed logo. This often results in a strictly price-based decision, which leads them to seek out the cheapest designer, or even worse, buy a stock logo. To a cash-strapped business, investing between a few hundred to a few thousand dollars for a professionally designed logo may be impossible, so buying a stock logo for well under $100 may seem like a fantastic alternative. It’s not, and here’s why. Stock logos are sold over and over, so another company can buy the same exact logo – even your competitor. What would that do for your brand? You also won’t be able to trademark or copyright your logo since you don’t own the rights to it. And if that wasn’t enough, most stock logos follow the latest design trends, so while it may look cutting edge and trendy today, it will look dated in a few years.

Effective branding comes from investing in your company’s image. There are no short cuts.

As more of these self-proclaimed logo designers have flooded the market over the last few years, more people have become confused about what they are paying for when they hire a logo designer. People see intricate 3D logos full of flourish and flair and think that’s what they need. They don’t realize that a busy, complex logo is less effective than a simple one.

Many business owners, considering the design of their business identity, forget that they need to put aside many of their personal design preferences and have their firm’s logo created for the target market of the business, rather than themselves. For an effective initiation of the branding efforts of their business, the logo should be unique, simple, memorable, translate to possible one-color needs and work well in all sizes. Software “bells and whistles”: often only muddle the ability of a logo to convey a clear message to the potential customer. Consider the simplicity of recognizable identities such as Nike, Apple, CBS, FedEx and the like when having a company logo produced. A trained and talented identity design professional will be able to distill all of your business’ needs and requirements down to a clean, concise, visually-inviting graphic representation – and the simplest solution may involve a complicated design process. The design of a logo is an investment in the future long-term brand recognition and success of a company.

Jeff Fisher, branding expert, author, speaker and Engineer of Creative Identity for his firm Jeff Fisher LogoMotives

Think about some of the logos that stick out in your mind. Are they complex and intricate or elegantly simple? Which category does your logo fit into? Here are a few examples of simple, yet effective logos:

But will it be enough?

Probably not, because BING has been launched on a shaky foundation. Something that few people outside the search engine industry know is that BING is actually an acronym for But It’s Not Google. It’s pretty weak from a branding perspective to tell people what you aren’t instead of telling them what you are. The bigger flaw, however, is that the brand comes off whiny like a kid who feels their sibling gets more attention than they do.

A powerful brand tells people what a company is all about deep down at their core. It conveys their values and ethics. It tells you what they do and who they serve. No matter how effective their technology may evolve to be, BING fails as a brand, and that will most likely mean that it never achieves the traction it needs to really take off.

Microsoft should kill BING where it lies, start off with a solid brand and go from there. However before doing that, they should probably listen to feedback from users and take a long, hard look at their technology first.

But where did branding come from and why is it so important? The truth is that it’s been around a lot longer than advertising because in a way, it has been critical to the survival of mankind. Our earliest ancestors didn’t have the plush lives that we enjoy today. They had to know what plants were safe to eat and what animals were dangerous or they would live a very short life. They didn’t have time to wait and see if that furry brown creature running in their direction was planning to do them harm or was just happy to see them. They lived difficult lives and had to be able to quickly determine a threat to their safety. They also had to be able to quickly determine what would aid in their survival. This rapid categorization allowed them to make decisions quickly and efficiently. Modern man does the same thing, though the consequenses are generally less severe. When we see a man in a suit, we usually assume that he is relatively safe to talk to, but if we see a man dressed in dark clothes lurking in an alley, most of us would quickly head in the other direction.

So how does this apply to branding? People like to quickly put everything into convenient little categories. When you mention Volvo, the first thing that comes to mind for most people is safety. Google is on the forefront of every one’s mind when talking about search, and Xerox has become ubiquitous with copy machines. The top brands of the world have achieved a dominate position, making them the first companies that people think about when it comes to their core business model, and this all came from early man’s need to rapidly identify threats and opportunities in order to survive. Today, this mindset directly relates to the survival of your business as you face challenging economic times. It’s critical that your consumers can quickly identify with your company, understand exactly what you do and how that benefits them.

If you don’t know how effective your branding is, you need to evaluate that immediately. You can start by looking at your web analytics. If a moderate percentage of visitors are using your brand name to search for your company, then you’re branding is probably on the right track. Another way to evaluate the effectiveness of your brand is to call your existing customers and ask them if they can explain your company in a sentence or two. If not, you’ve got some work to do. You’ll also want to make sure that your brand is consistent across all of your marketing mediums.

Be sure to check back soon for our multi-part series on developing a powerful and consistent brand that will squash your competitors!