Brand: 7 pointers to create a powerful brand.
If you’re serious about business growth then you seriously need to consider your brand and what you’re saying to the market – because image is nothing, today it’s all about how you’re perceived. Brand is mentioned a lot in conversations about business growth and there’s a lot to get your head around – a lot more than meets the eye.
If you’re researching brand, wondering if brand is right for your business or you’re feeling overwhelmed by the whole ‘brand’ world and how it applies to business growth then you’re not alone. It’s hard to know where to start – but it does start with you. Begin with this question: how do you want to be perceived in the marketplace?
Answer this question and you’ll be off to a good start. That being said, here are a few handy pointers I’ve worked up to change your perception, get you thinking differently about what you want your brand to say and, more to the point, get you on the right path to ‘Be your brand’ and ‘Be on brand’:
- #1: Be authentic: if you’re not it’ll show through in all your communications. People still buy people despite recent tech advances. You need to show and demonstrate authenticity more so these days – saying you’re authentic just isn’t enough unfortunately. Ask how are you being authentic with your brand?
- #2: Be a unique brand voice: a distinct voice can provide a distinct difference in the market and increase your brand engagement and awareness. Your brand voice is an extension and expression of the brand personality and helps with positioning. Think how can you develop a unique voice? How do you your customers want to be communicated too?
- #3: Understand your customers’ world and their pain. Be the one to ease their pain. How does your offering uniquely solve this problem for your customer?
- #4: Be memorable: make the best first impression in business – develop a memorable visual design that helps you stand out and captures the essence of your brand.
- #5: Be succinct: create a memorable name or slogan that clearly expresses your mission and purpose. Attention spans are shorter than ever. Be short, sharp and sweet in your brand names, taglines and communications messages for easy customer recall, repetition and redistribution.
- #6: Always be helping: a well known sales mantra here but a big brand mantra I’m borrowing for my private brand book of secrets. Empower your customers with the knowledge and advice they need. Whether that’s through blogs, workshops, public speaking, developing content, videos etc… With consistent effort you’ll be seen as the expert in the field. Can’t do everything? Don’t stress. Be of help in your own way. Stick to one marketing channel you know of that your customer frequents and go from there.
- #7: Be your customer: define your brands’ ideal customer and get to know them better than they know themselves. Insights are your goals. Build the brand around these. With those insights make your customer the hero of your brand story to ensure your brand deeply resonates with them. Placing your customer centrally in your brand helps to attract your right customer and psychologically empowers them to relate more and be closer to your business.
So there you have it. 6 simple yet effective pointers to help you on your way to create a powerful brand for business growth.
One last thing, don’t be ignorant of other strategies and techniques that could work to build your brand too – networking, blogging, and content marketing all work with a clear strategy behind it and consistent effort. Even consider guerilla marketing to make the maximum impact! What’s the ultimate aim?…
Be where your customers are.
Be the brand your customers want you to be.
—————————————————————————————————————————
I hope you learned something new, insightful or useful from this blog.
At The Brand Experts, we believe in helping businesses build a ‘brand blueprint’ for business growth.
We achieve this through a series of workshops designed to help businesses realise and communicate their ‘Why?’ to resonate with ideal customers and make a difference in the world. Successful brands in the future care about customers, not branding. I believe that future is now. I’m passionate about creating brand stories & design assets that help brands get ‘in sync’ and connected to customers they care about.