Branding is an important aspect for any business or industry. But when you’re a New York event planner, your brand might be even more critical to your success. Because your job is to create memorable experiences, develop great client relationships, and immerse yourself in the people business, your brand has to especially resonate with your audience.
Your brand, its identity, and its performance should align with your story and mission. It’s more than just a logo or a tagline. Your brand should invoke a feeling, perception, and recognition. Here’s how event planners can go about evaluating their brands and ways to make improvements for the best results.
Understanding What Type of Branding Is Right for You
There are several different types of brands out there. And each requires a unique strategy. As you assess yours, first look to identify what brand type you’ve adopted and explore further to validate you’re in the right brand arena.
Personal Branding: Is your company defined by you, your name, or your likeness?
Product Branding: Are you promoting a specific deliverable as an event planner?
Corporate Branding: Is your brand more of a company title philosophy or company culture that speaks to clients and employees alike?
Service Branding: Does your brand primarily solve a problem or focus more on customer service?
Co-Branding: Is your brand affiliated with another brand in any way?
Online Branding: Does your brand dominate a particular online event space or niche audience marketplace?
No-Brand Marketing: Is your brand less exposed, almost in a minimalist capacity, whereby your event planning services just speak for themselves?
Even if you feel your New York event planning brand has characteristics of more than one of these brand types, it’s still best to validate your current brand positioning to then determine what improvements make the most sense to explore.
Imagine Your Brand Has Characteristics of a Real-Life Person
A brand is officially an intangible image, reputation, or perception of your company. It’s what helps customers identify your event planning services. Since developing and managing something intangible poses a challenge, it might be helpful to think of your brand as a living person with certain characteristics.
Your brand should have a distinct:
- Visual Identity – A unique look or visual design
- Voice – Any company messaging should maintain the same voice, tone, and style of delivery
- Value – When others encounter your brand, they should immediately be cognizant of a particular value you offer
- Personality – A unique identity that inspires feelings among your core audience
Start with Your Story
When you first started your career as a New York event planner, you were likely inspired and motivated by something personal or professionally important to you. A mission statement or “why” statement behind what your business seeks to do should be the biography of your brand. In doing so, your brand will always be aligned with an authentic purpose. And it will always be adaptable to business changes you make along the way.
What Emotional Impact Does Your Brand Make?
Talk to your existing and past clients. What do they say about you and your event planning experience? Sift through the responses and look for keys that point to emotional reactions. Some of the ways your brand is emotionally impacting your clients might include:
- Relief
- Comfort
- Creativity
- Inspiration
- Fun
- Happiness
- Reliable
With those responses in mind, compare them to what five or ten words you might use to best describe your event planning business. If they’re in alignment, your brand’s identity is on point. If your customers are experiencing something different than you had originally intended, you can make adjustments accordingly.
Know the Key Problem Your Event Planning Business Can Solve
There are plenty of event planners in New York City. So, when you analyze your brand identity, brand equity, and brand performance, you’ll need to make sure it supports your unique differentiator. What problem are you precisely positioned to solve? Sure, you offer a variety of event planning services. But what is your superpower as an event planning expert? Some of your colleagues might specialize in social events like weddings or bat mitzvahs. Others might coordinate only for corporate events. Your niche specialty could lie within your vendor connections, influencer status, or ability to book high-profile entertainment. Whatever problem you’re uniquely qualified to solve, make sure your brand supports and represents it well.
How to Fine-Tune Your Brand’s Position
As you evaluate your brand positioning, you can turn to these solutions to help improve its impact for branding success.
- Conduct a “Values Check” on your messaging. What are you saying to the world, how are you saying it, and is it netting the desired response?
- Great images can support and promote your core brand identity.
- Be consistent and loyal to your brand in every message, social media post, email, or invitation you put out there. Messaging should always sound as if the same “person” is talking.
- Taglines can change, so long as they’re short and serve as a pillar of your brand identity.
- Stay visible. Your brand must be everywhere you are, including every event you plan, every New York engagement you attend, and with every message you broadcast.
- Work with, not against, others in your industry. You have colleagues, not rivals. Together, you can share and support each other publicly to advance the success of the events industry as a whole. When brands work together, everyone wins.
- Be the best you can be. When your brand is a direct reflection of your strengths and expertise, you’ll always be able to experience branding success in correlation with your business success.
Consider these strategies for branding success and schedule a brand review annually to make sure you’re still putting your best foot forward. The Event Planner Expo 2022 will be a great chance to learn more business strategies like branding. Get your tickets today!
Grow your business, gain insights, and make valuable partnerships, by becoming an exhibitor at The Event Planner Expo 2022 and 10-Year Anniversary Celebration!
