If you’re only using e-mail marketing (which we’ll get to later) and/or PPC, then you don’t necessarily need to create a big brand.

However, if you’re going to be using the various different methods we’ve discussed here such as SEO and social media marketing, then it can pay to build yourself a brand.

A brand means a logo but it also means a mission statement – or a commitment to the value you’re going to provide. When a brand is handled well, it provides a calling card and a demonstration of intent. This way, any customers who buy from you and have a good experience will be able to identify more of your work and they will thus be more inclined to buy from you again in future.

Brands then are very useful when you plan on selling more than one affiliate product in the same niche. At the same time, if you have any long-term plans to create your own products, then this can also be a good strategy.

Finally, brands inspire trust and they help you to look more professional. Most of the big companies that we’re used to buying from have strong branding and thus we have come to associated brands with quality. If you have a great looking logo that’s present on your website and across all your social media, then this consistent attention to your presentation will help you to build more trust and to generate more sales as a result.

So how do you create your brand?

Creating Your Logo

The first thing to do is to create your logo and to have a business name. Your name will likely come from your niche/industry and will probably be the same as your URL. At the same time, it should be something that makes it clear what you are selling and that is catchy and easy to remember.

From here, you can start creating a logo which will likely include your business name in some capacity. Some other criteria for a good logo include the following:

  • Versatile – Your logo should look good on any website, any product or any colored background
  • Simplicity – The simpler your logo , the better
  • Originality – Avoid anything that is overly derivative or cliché. No lightbulbs and no globes!
  • Attractiveness – It needs to look good!

To come up with a logo that will tick all these boxes, it helps to start with a research stage. Here, you should look up logos from different companies in your niche and you should look up different websites you like and images that relate to your company. Put these images together in a ‘mood board’ or collage (you can even use Pinterest) and then spitball by trying to combine the images and ideas in unique ways. Don’t leave anything out, draw as many logos as you can using the inspiration you’ve accumulated and you should find it leads to a few that are acceptable.

Then, once you have a few designs you find acceptable, take those and survey members of your audience to see which works best. This last stage is very important because your logo design isn’t for you but rather for your visitors.

Once you’ve settled on your logo, you can then go about creating it. You can either do this yourself or outsource it but either way it is critical that you use professional tools – and specifically this means vector software like Adobe Illustrator.

Vector software is software that lets you create ‘vector files’. These are image files that are distinct and unique from BMPs or PNGs (which we call ‘raster files’) because they can be scaled to any size without losing definition. They can also be edited very easily without having to ‘rub anything out’. The reason for this, is that they work differently from raster files. Whereas raster files are essentially pixel maps which tell the computer where to draw each dot to make up the bigger picture, vector files are a series of instructions that tell the computer where to draw each line or curve and what angle/thickness it should be. This means you can zoom in because the rendering software simply knows to follow those same instructions but to draw longer lines. Likewise, this means you can alter the angle of a line, or delete a specific element in the background or foreground.

Should You Create a Personal Brand?

If you read the above instructions and thought it didn’t sound very much like the affiliate marketing you’re familiar with, then that is probably because most affiliate marketers use a personal brand. That is to say that they promote products under their own name rather than a company name. Note that this doesn’t mean you don’t need a logo, but it does become a little less important. Your name in a stylized font or perhaps with a cartoonified image of yourself will likely suffice.

Going this has a number of advantages for an affiliate marketer however. Your audience will likely know that the product you’re selling is not your own and as such there is no need for you to pretend to be a big conglomerate with tons of resources. What you can be as an affiliate with your name as the brand though, is someone your audience feel that they know and that they can trust. This then helps them to be more likely to take your recommendations when you suggest products and services. This allows you to speak in the first person and that in turn can be much more persuasive when you’re trying to sell ‘this exciting new product’. You can use your first hand experiences, testimonials and more and you can build a sense of recognition and familiarity.

Having a personal brand is also very useful for social media and it creates some new opportunities and options. For instance, you can fill your social media with much more personal content – comments about your day for instance or your opinion on things that are in the news. Either of these strategies will fill your social media with more interesting posts that people feel they can engage with and respond to and it it’s also a lot more fun because you can be ‘yourself’.

Some people will also get a bit of a kick out of essentially becoming a very minor internet celebrity. You can become quite well known among your fans to the point where people start recognizing you from your social media or writing you grateful fan mail.

So why wouldn’t you create a personal brand? One reason might be that you don’t like the idea of people knowing who you are. You can always use a pseudonym in this case but unless you’re willing to appear in pictures it might just be easier to go with a brand you’re more detached from.

Likewise, a personal brand makes it much harder for you to branch out into multiple niches. You can have multiple companies all selling different items to different people but if you’re the same person claiming to be an expert on health and claiming to be an expert on SEO then it can raise eyebrows and damage your reputation. Then again, you may opt to have a personal brand and a company name – either in separate areas or focusing on a single subject. Tim Ferriss can be seen as an example of the latter. Tim Ferriss is an author and blogger who created ‘The Four Hour Workweek’. ‘The Four Hour Workweek’ and ‘Four Hour Blog’ have thus become brands but so is Tim in his own right. The same can be said for Pat Flynn and his blog ‘Smart Passive Income’.

Ultimately then, this comes down to the specific strategy that you’re intending to follow and as well as your own personal preference.

Staying On Message

Either way though, once you have a brand, it’s important to stay on message and to maintain the same mission statement and quality throughout. If you have a fitness brand, then you want people to feel secure in the knowledge that they can return to your site or social media channels whenever they want to enjoy fitness related content that focusses on getting results in the most efficient manner/whatever it is that you chose to make your mission statement.

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