05 Apr The Pros Share What You Need to Know About Branding
Branding and marketing are often co-mingled, but in the real sense, the two are interpreted differently. Branding is basically the allocation of resources in order to promote awareness of your products or brand whereas marketing involves communicating the value of your brand to potential clients. For this reason, a company requires a good brand identity in order to succeed well in its marketing strategies. You can actually compare branding in a company to how personality is to a person. So as an entrepreneur, what can you do to guarantee your branding success?
68 branding experts were consulted on the same issue and below are some of the ideas that came out strongly.
Identify and target your ideal audience
According to Elizabeth Cullivan, a branding professional with great experience in product marketing and management, in order to create a solid brand, you should first identify your target audience and later come up with a brand that is strictly aimed towards them. This will help you save time, money and effort. Classify them according to their age, educational level, sex, preferences among others and create a brand with a meaningful connection to that specific audience.
Consistency
Just like your personality becomes defined for people to recognize you, so should be your brand. Your brand should be uniquely identifiable, which will help your clients to attach value to your brand’s personality. As Kathleen Kenehan, the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Henson Consulting says, any brand appears bigger whenever the narrative is consistent. Truly, consistency solidifies the brand and builds your customers’ trust.
Create brand standards
A brand is not just about a well-designed logo, taglines or marketing captions. It’s also about the brand’s mission and the message it carries. Since you can’t succeed alone in branding and marketing, you need to share your brand ideas with your team by sharing with them your brand’s mission. Set specific standards that clearly outline how your brand should look and talk in order to prevent your marketers from passing the wrong message when living your brand out loud to your customers.
Focus on what interests your audience
People are more likely to forget what you did or what you said but will hardly forget how you made them feel. According to Adam Alson, also an expert in branding, you should focus on what your clients like and what adds value to them when branding your products. This can greatly help you to promote customers experience and enhance loyalty. To ensure the success of your brand, deliver on your promises and offer unmatched services and support to your customers.
Optimize your social presence
Understand the value of your network and get your brand in front of your competitors. Talk to your customers in their language while designing your branding materials in order to make an organic connection with them and to help you grow your reach. It does not matter if you use messages, email, social media platforms or physical billboards. Instead, put your best foot forward and use reliable channels that your target audience is familiar with so as to bring more conversion and significant better revenues.
With over 50 years of combined experience in graphics and marketing, the Full Sail Graphics team is confident that we will deliver quality graphics on time and on budget. If you’re looking to invest in a versatile form of advertising, please feel free to give us a call at (714) 274-6706.