It doesn’t matter if you’re an individual, a start-up business, or a multi-million dollar corporation, history repeats itself every day regarding your brand. Repeating history plays a vital role in developing and maintaining your brand.

Your “brand” is the personal perception each individual customer experiences every time they interact with your company. An interaction is defined as when a person receives a “touch” from your company. A touch has multiple definitions including, but not limited to, a visit to your website, watching your commercials on television, listening to your radio ads, reading your ads in a magazine or talking with your customer service team.

As in personal relationships, the touch is the most intimate of all interactions. The right sort of touch from a good friend can be remembered for a lifetime. Likewise, a harsh interaction or a rough touch can easily harbor resentment and bitterness for years.

In branding your business, developing the right sort of “touch” with your customers is vital. The first step in creating the right brand image for your company is with a creation story. Everyone loves a story because we all grew up with stories told by family members and friends that warmed our hearts or taught us important lessons.

Building a creation story about your business can touch your customers, employees and investors with powerful images and perceptions about your company. Once you have created your story, you need to ensure that history repeats itself everyday. Your creation story has to be intimately infused into every marketing plan, new product creation, website design and business card you and your employees handout.

Let’s look at an example of business branding with a fictitious company called ABC Health Sports and Consulting. The company was started by a John and Joann Smith, a husband and wife team. John has experience coaching high school basketball for 10 years and Joann has been teaching yoga at the local fitness club for 5 years.

Let’s take a look at some branding components for ABC Health Sports and Consulting:

Creation Story: The company was created by Joann Smith. After years of teaching yoga at a local fitness club, Joann’s students continued to ask her for quick and easy exercise ideas and healthy eating tips that can be used while traveling. In addition, many wanted similar tips that their aging parents could use to remain flexible and energetic. With a hectic daily schedule and with aging parents herself, Joann created a homemade study course that quickly became popular with her students and their parents. This initial success encouraged Joann and John to start ABC Health Sports and Consulting.

New Product Creation: After a few months in business, ABC needed a new product to separate themselves from their competitors. The couple decided to create a new daily exercise tip sheet with healthy eating tips to support an energetic and healthy lifestyle. This new product was in line with the creation story.

Website Design: The ABC website offers online education courses, photos, daily diet ideas and a message board. The message board has multiple categories including aged-based exercise and diet tip needs. The website reinforces the creation story of focusing only on exercise tips and healthy eating habits.

Business Cards: The business cards include the following tagline: “Healthy Diet and Daily Exercise Supports a Healthy Lifestyle” The tagline reinforces the corporate mission.

Instead of staying true to the creation story, the ABC company could have easily introduced a complete array of unrelated products to potentially increase short-term profits by offering exercise socks, motivational posters and magazine subscriptions.

These unrelated additions, would have diluted the brand and caused the company to spend valuable assets and time in these areas.

Staying true to your creation story is vital to strengthening your brand and building a solid leadership role in your niche. Prior to introducing a new product, redesigning your website, or reprinting business cards, re-read your creation story to ensure your brand is repeating history everyday.