A brand is the total of the experiences your potential customers and customers have with your company. A strong brand establishes trust and credibility. At the same time, it communicates what your company does, how it does it.
The benefits that a strategically defined brand can bring are numerous. Build a strong brand for your company through reading through the tips below.
Define your brand
Review the service or product your business offers, pinpoint the space in the market it occupies and researches the rational and emotive needs and concerns of your customers. Your brand character should connect with your customer base, promote your business and differentiate you in the market.
Consider your company’s driving force
What is its purpose, what does it believe in and who are its brand heroes? These things inform the identity and character for brand communications and can help establish your emotive brand positioning.
Be a Deviant
Big brands are hampered by massive layers of bureaucracy, preventing them from reacting to the ever-changing needs of their customers and being flexible. It can be hard for a company to be daring with their branding because of these layers of decision-makers.
Try your best to carve out your own distinct identity. Several chains are trying to mimic an independent feel to capture some of that market for there is a significant consumer trend towards independent establishments.
Have a good name and logo
Recognition starts with the name of your business, wherein a strong brand is easily recognizable. The name will appear on your business cards, letterhead, website, social networks, promotional materials like ShiledCo Custom Metal Signage, products, and pretty much everywhere in print and online to identify your company or your company’s products and services.
It’s not enough to have a recognizable name. People commonly associate brands with the brand’s logo. As you think about your logo, keep your products/services and audience in mind because you want your logo to reflect your company. A strong logo will help to pull your brand together, and a good logo builds trust.
Target a long-term relationship with your customers
Do not raise expectations that result in broken promises by dressing up your offerings. Create trust with honest branding. Be true to the values that drive the company every day and be clear on your company identity.
Incorporate your brand in customer communication
Every aspect of your business is touched by branding. How you answer your phones, what you or your salespeople wear on sales calls, your email signature is affected by branding.
Branding will help clarify business offerings, so customers are aware precisely what to expect from the product or service. It will also assist in reinforcing business character.
Don’t dilute your brand positioning or lose your pride with indiscriminate discounting. Rather than slashing prices, try offering more.
Find your voice
Content is relevant, but don’t overlook how you say it. Your company’s “voice” is the personality and language you and your employees will use to deliver your branding message and reach your customers.
Your company’s voice should be applied to all written communication and incorporated in the visual imagery of all materials, online and off. Is your brand friendly? Be conversational. Is it ritzy? Be more formal.
Develop a tagline
Capture the essence of your brand through writing a meaningful, memorable and concise statement. Alternatively, to build a coherent identity, aim to make your key messages work together.
Deliver value
Customers won’t refer you to someone else or return to you if you don’t deliver on your brand promise.
Although this is common sense, you’d be surprised how failing to keep promises tarnished the relationships of many small businesses with their customers. Your best source of referrals is happy customers who feel good about your business.
Be consistent
Depending on their audience, many small businesses mistakenly change their messaging. Changing the message of your company can confuse your customers and potential customers.
To build and maintain a strong brand, every aspect of your brand should be as good as your service or product, and you must be consistent in presenting your brand.
You should care about brand consistency because this leads to familiarity, and familiarity leads to trust.
Takeaway
Your brand lives in the images you share, everyday interactions with your customers, the messages you post on your website, the content of your marketing materials, and in your posts on social networks.
A strong brand correlates to a powerful company image. A brand is equal to the identity of a business, and having great branding will contribute significantly to a company’s success.
