At the core of any successful business lies a strong, well-defined brand. Your brand is a tool that allows you to communicate with consumers, as well as setting a tone to manage their expectations. Below are six tips on how you can create or develop your own brand to a high standard.
1. Hone in what makes your brand unique
Whatever it is that you’re trying to achieve with your brand, whether that’s selling the latest fashion or providing a much needed service, this product or service is unique to you. Identify what it is that makes you different from your competition and emphasize this.
Your unique selling point (USP) is yours to define, and the best way to do this is to study your competitors. What is their USP? What defines their brand or makes them stand out from the crowd? And more importantly, what qualities are they lacking that could be used to define your brand?
When consumers think of your brand – ask yourself if you’ve emphasized your defining traits and USP enough for them to be able to describe it to someone else.
2. Consistency is key
When it comes to your brand identity, it needs to be instantly recognizable. The potential to engage with new consumers is not to be underestimated. In today’s world, time is precious and attention spans are lowering as each year passes, meaning that you only have a limited window of opportunity to get your brand in front of the people who matter.
As one of your main means of communication with your customers, your website should reflect your brand effectively and this should also be echoed by your social channels, whether it be Facebook, Instagram or Twitter or any others. When consumers see you pushing a message on one channel, they will expect to see the same message across all channels.
Guinness is the ultimate example of brand consistency. Often referred to as “the black stuff” or “a pint of plain”, the iconic black stout with its distinct creamy white head is known and loved around the world. A particularly clever example of brand consistency from Guinness is a marketing campaign in which they recreate their iconic pint using inanimate objects relevant to whatever is happening in the world at that time.
3. Think positive!
Brand awareness will mean different things for different brands. For some this could mean that your brand is strongly linked to charitable organisations, for others it could simply mean that flowers will be consistently featured in your content. Either way, one thing all successful brands convey in their message is positivity.
With the prevalence of social media, people are often exposed to more negative opinions than they’d like, whether that be arguments on Twitter or depressing news stories from current events. This affords your brand the opportunity to stand out as a beacon of positivity in a largely negative digital-landscape.
When consumers are looking for a product or service, they look to brands who convey their message in a fun, uplifting or inspiring way. Ensuring that your brand experience leaves a positive impression will also facilitate brand loyalty among consumers, who will come back to you based on their initial encounter.
4. Make sure you have an ‘About Us’ section
Touching on all three points outlined above, having an ‘About Us’ section on your website is essential. While you may be able to fit in a brief description of your brand in the bio sections of social media outlets like Instagram or Twitter, you will be limited to how much you can write, so this is just a tiny piece in the puzzle that is the story of your brand.
A lot of brand awareness marketing campaigns will inevitably drive consumers to visit your website, and when they do visit they’ll want to know as much as possible about your brand.
When was it founded? What inspired you? How different are things now since you began? When answering all of these questions, keep your USP in mind. Remember to show your target audience what makes your brand unique and do so in a positive manner that will leave a lasting impression.
5. Your name & logo are essential
This one’s a no-brainer. Although you should invest a lot of time and energy into communicating your brand message across your various channels and platforms, nothing will portray your brand more effectively to consumers than your name and logo.
Illy Coffee is a great example of good design. Instantly recognized across Europe, Illy’s simplistic red & white text logo pays homage to its Italian roots, reinforcing that premium image Illy is known for. Not over complicated while far from dull or boring, the logo really portrays Illy exactly the way they intended.
6. Know your audience!
The development and success of brand awareness depends on your ability to identify your target audience. Your target audience should be defined before you create your brand, because if you don’t know who to target then you have no way to gauge how effective your branding and marketing campaigns are.
Creating ‘brand personas’, fictional people who are the ideal demographic you wish to target, is a simple yet beneficial exercise that allows you to step into your customer’s shoes and think about different ways that you can connect with & relate to them.
The past few weeks have been a learning process in how to navigate the Covid-19 epidemic, however the weeks ahead offer an exciting opportunity for our clients and other businesses, letting us test our digital marketing strategies and learning from our customers.
At Escalate, we’re experienced at helping our clients navigate the move from in-house to agency, implementing digital-first marketing strategies, and improving business resilience.
If you have any questions, or if you want to discuss your plans, feel free to reach out. We’re using our COVID-19 downtime to maximize our marketing presence, and we’d love to chat to you about it. Join us on the journey!