What is Your Brand?
This is a crucial question to answer and, as a business owner, it must inform everything you do regarding your business endeavors, from your identity to your marketing and your customer service.
Business branding is the design, creation, presentation, and maintenance of a distinct, unique identity for your business. It includes everything from your chosen color palette to your logo, personality, voice and tone, value and ethos, mission, visual image, company culture, and reputation.
Whether you’re a sole trader, a small business, or a large international brand, branding underpins absolutely everything you do.
Perception is everything – and as such, there is a lot you need to consider in terms of your branding. Hiring the right branding agency for your company is a great way to optimize your branding efforts and results, and it is highly recommended that you do so.
Defining Your Brand
Your brand and its strategic application need to be designed and implemented on the basis of your target audience. These are your ideal, most likely customers and the most receptive prospects among a crowded pool of consumers.
To achieve this, you need to know who your ideal customer is and deeply understand them and their motivations for patronizing your business.
You also need to be able to clearly define your business brand in terms of its qualities and purpose, its place in the market and point of difference/unique offering, and its areas of opportunity. You must also consider its growth potential and future direction. All these considerations combine to dictate and support your brand itself.
Branding Strategy
An effective branding strategy requires commitment and a certain level of expertise – and a professional branding agency is staffed by people with the experience, talent, and insight to work with you to achieve this on your behalf. It’s not, however, impossible to go it alone – but there are some things you need to understand first.
Foremost, know that marketing is not the same as branding. Branding, however, should play an intrinsic part in your overall approach to marketing your business, product, or service. (Many branding agencies operate under the umbrellas of wider marketing agencies, and marketing agencies commonly provide branding services.)
Branding strategies need to:
· Mirror your business, product, and/or service
· Communicate a strong first impression.
· Convey your unique offering.
· Show what sets you apart from your competitors.
· Influence how consumers relate to your brand.
Everything you do as a business should align with your brand and branding efforts. This is an enormous topic in itself!
Brand identity needs to inform everything you do as a business – including website design and content, marketing and advertising, social media posting, blog creation, your newsletters and videos, packaging and customer care, personal correspondence and consumer interactions, and public relations activities.
Your brand identity, branding, product or service offering, and targets or prospects must align seamlessly – whether it be fun and youthful, elegant and sophisticated, modern and dynamic, serious and trustworthy, colorful and carefree, serene and calming, exclusive and luxurious, or accessible and affordable. There is a place for everyone, and you must understand and define where your brand fits and implement it to comply.
Change it Up!
Even the most traditional of industries and products or services can benefit from a fresh, innovative approach to branding! Embark on a mobile marketing campaign to get your brand out there; explore how video marketing can be used in your branding strategy; start blogging to support your brand and make it even more valuable to your customers. These are just a few ideas – but the sky – and your imagination – are the only limits!
Or get even better results, exploit the advantages of team-thinking and expertise, and work with a branding agency to up your game in the business world.
