Building your Brand

A brand is anything-a symbol, design, name, sound, reputation, emotion, employees, tone, and much more-that separates one product or service from another. For McDonald’s its the snappy slogans and “golden arches”. For Apple Corporation it is innovation and those adorable lowercase letter “i” added to each product. While not every company can be a McDonald’s or Apple, each every company should spend considerable time crafting and building their brand image. Every business does not need to be world famous in order to have a successful brand. Here are a few tips to consider when building your brand image.

• Know who your target audience is. This may mean some careful research using analytics from your media campaigns both print and digital. Once you have this focus, it will be easier to zone on on your best consumers and start molding your brand image.
• Clearly define who you are as a company: innovative, trustworthy, experienced.
• Stand for something you believe in.
• Differentiate yourself from the competition. Find out what makes you different and special. You must be aware of both your strengths and weaknesses.
• Be extremely consistent with your visual image as well as written image.
• Make sure all communications, individual or mass, are consistent and in line with brand positioning.
• Be consistent with your color pallet across all marketing medias. Keeping the look the same will make it easy to identify your product or service.
• Use customer service as a way to drive home your brand.
• Train your employees to embody the brand and what it equals.
• Reward loyal customers and fans with perks and special treatment to show your appreciation.
• Do not mimic other companies that are in your field. Make your company stand out with service and look.
• Make sure your logo/slogan and tagline is on everything your company touches from print media to social platforms.
• Keep the dialogue ongoing with your customers. Treat them well and it will comeback to you in spades.
• Make sure that every point of contact stays true to who you are as a company.

Building and maintaining your brand image is a major part of the success of your growing business.

Categorised in: Blog, branding