Your brand is everything: it’s so much more than just aesthetics. It’s not just colors and pics but a way for your customers to actually know you and what you stand for. Branding is constantly bringing together all the assets and elements that make you you and actively shaping the way people perceive you (in this case, your business). To do this well, you need a good strategy.
Understanding Your Brand
Who are you? What are your company’s values, mission, and overall identity? Take the time to define your brand’s core principles and what makes it unique. Consider what your company promises to deliver to its customers, and especially note how you’re different from your competitors. This foundational understanding will guide all your subsequent branding efforts.
Know Your Audience
You know yourself, and that’s great. But now you need to know who’s interested in you. Who will want your product or service? Who is buying it now? Conduct thorough market research to identify who your customers are, what they value, and what motivates their purchasing decisions. You’ll need basic demographic information, such as age, gender, income level, and geographic location, but also some of those psychographic details, like interests, values, and lifestyle.
Craft Your Brand Message
Taking what you know of yourself and your customers, you now want to drill down to the message you want to send. What’s the essence of your brand, and how do you communicate that in a way that speaks directly to your target audience? Your message needs to include these three elements:
- Your brand’s unique value proposition
- The benefits customers can expect from working with you
- An emotional connection between you and them
Consistency is key; be sure this message is reflected across all channels and touchpoints, from your website and social media to advertising and customer service interactions.
Design Your Brand Identity
Your brand identity is the visual and verbal elements, like your logo, color palette, typography, imagery, and the tone of voice you use in anything that has audio. These elements have to be cohesive, but they also need to be reflective of your brand’s personality and values.
A luxury brand might use a sophisticated color scheme and elegant typography, for example, while a fun, youthful brand might opt for bold colors and playful fonts. Mix that up, and you leave customers confused about who you are or find yourself appealing to the wrong demographic entirely.
Build a Strong Online Presence
A strong online presence is a must. Your website should be well-designed, user-friendly, and a good match for your overall brand identity. Social media platforms are also great, as they offer a powerful way to engage with your audience, share your brand message, and build a community around your brand. Just be sure to regularly update your content to keep it fresh and relevant, and always interact with your followers.
Deliver a Consistent Customer Experience
Every interaction a customer has with your brand should make them come away saying, “yes, that’s just what I expect from XYZ Brand.” From the pre-purchase experiences, like advertising and customer service inquiries, all the way to the post-purchase support and follow-up, train your team to put your brand values into all their interactions.
Measure and Adjust Your Strategy
Use analytics tools to track the effectiveness of your efforts, and don’t leave anything else. Remember how important consistency is? Check website traffic, social media engagement, customer feedback, and sales performance. Regularly review this data so you can see right away what’s working and where you need some improvement.
Stay open-minded and ready to adjust your strategy as needed to respond to changing market conditions while keeping your identity clear. If you sense you need to make some changes to your brand identity, that’s fine, but usually these need to be done slowly, a little step at a time. Sudden dramatic changes can confuse your customers and make you seem insincere.
Engage Your Community
Constantly foster connection and belonging among your customers. Encourage user-generated content by inviting customers to share their experiences with your brand on social media. Host events, both online and offline, where your community can interact with your brand and with each other. In short, create a brand community, because that keeps people invested and turns your customers into brand advocates.
Invest in Public Relations
Public relations (PR) can be a powerful tool for brand image, though it can also be expensive. Media outreach, press releases, and event sponsorships can all provide positive coverage that boosts both your reputation and credibility, and through them, you may reach some people who wouldn’t know about you through traditional advertising. Just be careful to do this well. Establish genuine and meaningful relationships with journalists and media outlets that cover your industry and get your brand featured in articles, interviews, and reviews.
Ensure Internal Brand Alignment
Your employees are also ambassadors of your brand, so invest in training and development programs to ensure that your team understands and is committed to your brand’s mission and values. Create a positive company culture that reflects your brand’s identity, and this internal consistency will naturally extend to all their customer interactions.
Monitor Your Brand Health
Don’t just set it and forget it. Monitor your brand’s health constantly so you know your strategy remains effective. Use tools and metrics to assess brand awareness, perception, and loyalty and conduct brand audits to make sure you’ve got the consistency and impact you’re looking for across all touchpoints.
Adapt!
Once you have things in place and running, don’t stop! You need to constantly stay informed about industry trends, what your competitors are up to, and how customer preferences might be changing. Be proactive in adapting your brand as needed, so you’re always relevant and appealing. You want to be a brand that evolves with the times; not one that dies away because it couldn’t change to meet the challenges of the future. Take a lesson from the coffee companies of the 1950s.
These coffee companies didn’t think the new, youthful enthusiasm of a post-world America had any bearing on their market share, nor did they appreciate that young people sick of war were looking for something fresh and new, even in their drinks. Unlike previous generations, this generation didn’t want to be like their parents. They wanted to be their own generation, and soda companies like Coca-Cola, relatively new to the drinks market, branded themselves as the drink for the young, hip, and energetic.
The coffee companies responded by doubling down on their “be a mature adult like your parents” message, advertising coffee as the drink of choice for the mature, the staid….the old. Coca-Cola market share soared, and most of the coffee companies that refused to embrace change are gone now. The few that survived only did because they were so huge, and they never fully recovered: in fact, coffee itself as a drink didn’t fully recover until Starbucks made coffee drinking cool again.
Building, maintaining, and constantly adapting a brand is absolutely a full-time job. If you want to do it right, you have to devote resources to it. ​We can ​bring the expertise you need to get it done: contact us at LovelyPixels now, where we’re passionate about helping businesses grow.
