The Art of Branding
Bright Branding Breakdown
Smart branding is about being realistic and playing to your strengths. It is also about knowing your prospective customers and not over complicating your branding. Any branding needs to take into account the 3 strands to branding success. Visual identity, behavioural communication and functional intentions. Think about how all three can work together to give your audience that brand experience that is likely to result in making your company stand out from your competition.
The branding starter
The key to successful branding starts from inside your company. Ultimately, only you know your core service and only you and your staff deliver the message. Lastly, only you can ensure consistency throughout your branding visually, behaviourally and functionally.
The mass message mistake
Companies with a lack of understanding will think that multiple messages are likely to attract a greater audience. However, what multiple messages does is it puts off all your prospective customers and it makes your branding confusing. Imagine trying to communicate multiple message through your branding? A message should drive your business, it will involve the identity and character of brand communications. Decide what your unique selling proposition is and what your core product or service is and focus your marketing around it. The trick is to have one clear and concise message and work with it. Have a message that will work for your company, make sure it is achievable and realistic and reflect it in your branding and how you communicate on social media platforms.
Make the message happen
The next mistake companies tend to make, is this presumption that if a message is displayed through an advertisement or a social media post. Then the world knows what the message is and that’s that. For a message to work not only do your audience need to know but your whole company from the top all the way down to the bottom need to be aware of what the message is and what the company stands for.
The WOM tool
In terms of marketing one of the best tools you can have is word of mouth! How do you create word of mouth? Ask your customers and clients if they will join you in getting the word out. For them to want to spread the word you need to give them a reason to. This is why testimonials are so vital. To find out more about testimonials and how you can optimise them to establish your branding then click on - The importance of testimonials and how to use them effectively.
Track branding efforts
The key to successful branding is finding out what works and what doesn’t work. Imagine spending hours on your branding and the marketing of your brand for your prospective customers and clients to not like it even though in your eyes your branding is everything you want it to be. When a customer or a client purchases your product/service try to gently probe them as to where or how they heard about your company. This will give you an insight into what advertising has worked and what hasn’t. Branding online is a little easier to track, using social media platforms to showcase your brand allows you to measure what your customers/clients are interested in. Here is the top 10 tools for measuring your brands reputation online.
Expressing personality through your branding
Personality for any brand is tough to find a middle ground. Personality will vary over different platforms and contexts. It’s good to identify, firstly, an average level and secondly, the extent to which you want to “dial” up and down the degree of formality. Being formal shows professionalism but can also lack personality. On the flip side, informal language can be filled with personality and character although will people perceive your brand as one big joke? TOP TIP… Write in a way that reflects how you speak. It doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be very casual, you still apply the same professional manners and considerations. You just keep the complex terminology to a minimum and develop a tone of voice to your target audience that is likeable. If you are struggling to develop a brand voice, then see how you can shape a tone of voice.
Keep Learning
As you can see, branding is what you make of it. Ultimately, if you want your branding to be successful it needs to be creative and consistent. Put yourself in your target audience’s perspective and ask yourself what would appeal to you. For more advice on branding read our Bold Brilliant Branding article.
