Does your home business have an “image”? While you may not think that an image or “brand” matter to a small home business, your clients and customers actually have a perceived image of your and your business whether you’ve actively cultivated it or not. Are you the slacker, working part-time when it feels good business? a do-whatever-it-takes-to-get-the-job-done business? Are you known for your professionalism? Your availability? Your creativity? You might be surprised what the perception of your business is. But, the important thing is, you can control your business image and it may be time for a makeover.
To begin with, you’ll need to take stock in what your current business image is. This can take some pretty candid and honest self-evaluation and it may help to gather some honest feedback from your friends and some close, trusted customers. If you don’t know what people think of you as a business owner or what they think of your business–it is a good exercise in public relations to find out. While you’re finding out where you stand, you should also be thinking about how you’d like your business to be perceived. What sort of image as a service provider, sales person, freelancer or type of other business person do you want to convey and what do you want your business to represent.
After the evaluation and identification work, comes the hard work of rebuilding or establishing your new business image. Don’t expect overnight results, it takes even large corporations with lots of money to spend on branding a long time to accomplish image transformation. In fact, many would tell you that marketing and image branding are tasks that are never really “accomplished.” It is important to send a clear, digestible, and repetitive message to the public and to clients or customers in order to establish and maintain a particular image for a business. You may even want to incorporate a tag line or slogan to your business that represents your business image: “We never close,” “Always ready to help,” “Never miss a deadline,” or whatever it is that you feel conveys the heart and uniqueness of your home business.
Expect a makeover of image to take time and effort, but it can be just one more step on the road to making your home business a big success!