In today’s time, where online businesses emerge everywhere, businessmen like you who worked hard to build your business and brand must be cautious of competitors who are mischievous and use your hard-earned brand name to take advantage of its value.
These unscrupulous fraudsters can always copy anyone’s business name or brand name, including yours. They prefer eating one’s apple-pie rather than baking it themselves. Fortunately, there are ways that you can protect your brand identity by prevention or even after these fraudsters have successfully taken advantage of it. Below are seven guidelines that can strengthen the security of your brand identity, beside getting the help of the best branding agencies in the world.
Social Media Uniqueness
In today’s business competition, if you want dominance and make successful strides in building your brand value and known, your presence must be seen on many social platforms, and your social name must be unique, as well. Doing this in earlier stages will be advantageous against copycats.
One of the most useful things to do is make sure that your social name availability is unique. You can use online tools and sites specifically designed to search for brand names, domain names, and social names. Utilizing these sites will ensure that you will come up with a unique social name.
By doing this sooner or as early as possible, you will have a more definite advantage, particularly in the aspect of social proof, people can now identify which one is real and which is fake. It will give troll competitors a hard time imitating your name, making their efforts inefficient and unsuccessful.
Create Your Domain
Another way to protect your brand identity is to produce a domain name for your brand’s website. It is one of the best methods to protect your brand identity in a very cost-efficient way. Your domain name must be brief, unique, quick to familiarize, or easy to remember.
A good thing to do if you are serious in maintaining your brand identity is to purchase TLD’s or top-level-domains like .org, .com, or .net. Doing this will be a great way to prevent malicious competitors from copying your website because the market knows how to distinguish the real site from the suspicious one.
Acquiring your domain will not just provide reliable protection, this also paves the way to confidently keep spreading brand awareness, producing prospective clients know more about your business and keeping your customers up-to-date with the latest information.
Getting A Trademark
If you are selling products, receiving trademark rights is one of the most vital protections. Although sometimes it will take some time to acquire, having a trademark will enable you to have a legitimate advantage against infringement if some fake identity is trying to undermine your right.
To register a trademark, you must first find out and research if your product’s name is available or if it’s used in a similar variety or classification. Doing your research on the web will be the most efficient thing to do to finalize your product’s name for your trademark.
Suppose your product’s name has previously existed. In that case, you can ask help from a trademark lawyer who has the knowledge and expertise to distinguish if your product is unique enough from the one already existing to authorize the usage of the same name in the market.
Acquiring A Patent
If you are an entrepreneur or businessman who is genuinely creating something groundbreaking and novel, it is essential to safeguard it. Acquiring a patent will give you the power to shield yourself from any brand fakers and identity grabbers on the internet.
There are three kinds of patents that any businessman or entrepreneur can use. But there are two of them which are most regularly utilized. Utility patents are the right one to use if you are an entrepreneur who is an expert in equipment or machinery products.
If you are a businessman who manufactures any products with distinct layouts or unique qualities of design, then a design patent is the kind of patent that you must acquire. Getting yourself with the right patent will be essential factors that will protect your products from any equipment imitators or design copycats.
Copyright Protection
If your business entails website content, original works, advertising materials, videos, music, images, brochures, and the like, getting copyright will be the most appropriate protection you can do to prevent copycats from duplicating your products and marketing materials.
The abilities you can acquire as a copyright owner is that you have the autonomy and control about how the processes of your work and materials are reproduced. You have control over how you want your works to be distributed and how you want it to be publicly present.
By having a copyright owner’s abilities, you have the power to file cases for copyright infringement. It will give you a great advantage if you encounter any copyrights violator who has been taking advantage of you by using your intellectual properties to make profits for their illegal business.
The Strength Of Your Logo
Your logo is an essential visual component of the identity of your brand. It represents your symbol as a brand, and it is most often attached with a “personality trait” that is reflected by your brand’s image.
You must finalize a logo for your brand. Since logos have a massive influence on your brand’s identity, it is quite disadvantageous if you try to modify or change your logo very often. Frequently doing this will confuse your target market; it will also become more vulnerable to fraudulent acts.
A Strong Brand Presence
Another essential way to overpower your fake competitors is to create a strong brand presence. It is one of the best safeguards against imitators since a strong brand presence makes you stand out, the market will somehow overtime develop a trained eye to distinguish the original you from unethical competitors and fakers.
Takeaway
The tips above are excellent guidelines to help you protect your business and brand identity. Always remember that while you’re gaining knowledge of which type of protection you specifically need, it is also essential to apply them as soon as possible to prevent or lessen any long-term problems related to your infringement of rights and identity.