Partner Article

If You Only Know 3 Things About Branding – Let It Be These

For a long-time, branding has been a much undervalued and unloved element of a business. However, it’s becoming widely recognised by marketing managers that a business without a clear brand identity is at risk of being wiped out by a younger, savvier competitor.

When a business implements a comprehensive and consistent brand strategy, both its internal and external vision and direction will be reinforced. A strong brand identity does not merely create customers; it transforms both customers and employees into loyal brand advocates that perceive you in the very way you intended with the strategy.

It’s not uncommon to feel overwhelmed at the thought of a rebrand, so to prevent you from feeling like you have entered the creative abyss, I’ve detailed three key areas.

Get to Know Your Audience

Understanding your audience will have a profound impact on your business.

When you began, you began your business, it’s likely that you knew who your target audience are, but it may have ended there. Due to that era of data that we now reside in, it’s possible to take your relationship with your target audience one step further.

Website and social analytics allow you to learn far more about your audience than was previously possible. The reality is, your audiences tastes may have shifted since your business began, or your audience itself has changed and you need to appeal to a new demographic. By researching your audiences age, location jobs and salaries, brand affiliations, you are able to determine a deeper understand of what appeals and resonates with them and alter your brand and marketing messages accordingly.

Richard LeCount from USB4Photographers shares his experience, “We specialise in branded gadgets and have come to notice trends within industry sectors, and when the trends are changing and businesses follow these to remain engaged with their customers. 2 evolutions that we have noticed more than others is the increase in brands shifting to blues and greens as the world becomes more eco-conscious and the simplification of logos; brands are moving away from busy and dated images to ones with cleaner lines, less imagery and a focus font and colour to convey the message”

You can use this information in other ways too, for instance, if your business has a physical store, you can map these customer profiles against your purchase data to give your insight into your current customer base, and how you can tailor your brand to develop further engagement.

Consider Your Imagery Carefully

And by this, I’m largely talking about your businesses logo: branding of course, stretches far beyond a logo – but its a great place to start.

Your logo, along with all visual elements of your brand is a representation of the business; the psychology of a logo is almost never considered but has the ability to invoke an emotional reaction in everyone that comes into contact with it, including your audience and prospects.

The shape, font and colours that you see in the logos of large corporations have not been picked randomly; they have all been carefully considered in order to manipulate consumer perception. For instance, an ethically conscious business would never use sharp angles and bright primary shades in their imagery.

“Shapes and designs have powerful psychological impacts”, explains psychologist Graham Jones. “Much of the way in which we perceive any kind of shape is culturally dependent, which is a problem for businesses”.

Not of course, if they have taken great care in getting to know their audience as previously mentioned.

“Similarly, it depends on gender and personality as well.” Graham continues,” If you look at doodles produced by men, they tend to use more straight lines than women. So, if your product or service is targeted towards one gender, you’d be better off choosing appropriate shapes according to your market.”

So with this in mind, take an objective look at the images used within your business, on marketing material, your website and on packaging – do they reflect the tastes of your audience? If not, perhaps refreshing the images that you use may enable you to align the brand with the audience.

Consistency is Paramount

Mixed messages conveyed through varying marketing avenues will only serve to confuse and alienate your audience, who will become wary of the brand.

Prospect need on average, seven separate ‘touches’ with your brand before they buy into it, and every touch they have needs to reinforce the same message in order to build trust. It’s not an argument of digital vs traditional, both mediums should interconnect through the brand message.

Everything your brand touches should represent your brand, its visions and values. The language and tone that is used in verbal and written communication, company policies, uniforms, social media presence – everything should be recognisable as belonging to your brand.

Don’t neglect internal branding too; employees are as central to the success of your business and customers are. By improving your employee brand, you can improve productivity, staff retention and lower recruitment costs.

Maybe before you delve into your brand, you revisit the purpose and core values of your business. Developing a mission statement means that you have a well-defined and concise declaration of your business strategy. Your mission statement should provide clarity on what the business does, how it does it, who it does it for and what value they bring.

Take American Express as an example –

“At American Express, we have a mission to be the world’s most respected service brand. To do this, we have established a culture that supports our team members, so they provide exceptional service to our customers.”

Having a mission statement urges every task to be carried out the same purpose, and becomes the foundation for your business brand.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Rebecca Moore .