Your brand image makes people think in a certain way about you or your business. Having a clearly defined brand image is essential to your long-term success. Here are four basic steps in creating a brand image.

1. Be uniquely valuable
Is very important to be able to define some ways in which you can be uniquely valuable to your customers, and then communicating that unique benefit in a way that’s easy to remember and clearly understandable. The bottom line is that perceived value is what creates loyal customers who will choose your product or service.

2. Stand out from the pack
Differentiate from your competition. Examine your competitors carefully and look for the key selling points and the basic “promises” they make. You’ll need to decide what differentiates your company, product or service from this vast sea of competition. In all, what “promise” will your brand make.

3. Drive your core message home
Ideally this should consist in a single idea, which will become the focus of all your external communications. All your marketing tools should revolve around this central theme.

4. Live up to your promise
Doing all previous steps is hard and you achieve, but they mean absolutely nothing without getting this fourth step done. Brand is about creating and meeting expectations.