Branding is the essence and story of your organization. It expresses your company’s values and what distinguishes you from your competitors. If you are a business owner, your brand may feel very personal to you, because it involves the product or service that you believe in or created.
Having a clear brand strategy and communicating it to your customers is crucial for the success of your company. That can be challenging, however, because branding takes a certain amount of time and expertise that many businesses may not have access to.
Trillion helps create, express and maintain brands for many of our clients. We’d like to share solutions for several common branding mistakes we’ve seen organizations make that can undermine a company’s success.
Establish a Core Identity with a Strong Brand Strategy
Brand strategy doesn’t just happen, it has to be created. Knowing exactly what your vision and values are can help you chart a course. What exactly do you give your customers that a competitor does not? What is your brand’s personality and how will it engage with your audience? All of your marketing and customer interactions need to express your brand, so it’s important to have a strong core identity from which all decisions can grow.
Our website for Prevention Links expresses their brand of knowledgeable support and warm humanity.
Identify and Target Your Ideal Customer
Research and identify your target audience to ensure your brand aligns with their needs, pain points and preferences. Don’t try to be all things to all customers; that will just dilute your message and possibly mean your perfect customer never finds you.
Take the time to create a strong customer profile. Strategize about where they are and through what marketing avenues you are most likely to reach them.
Create a Visual Brand Identity and Design That Resonates
Getting your visual identity right can be tricky. It needs to be clearly identifiable, but not complicated or cluttered.
The look should be easily expressed and understood across all your channels: website, social media, correspondence, and advertising. Invest time and creativity to get your logo just right. Even if you do much of your design work in-house, getting the right logo design may mean outsourcing that task to a reputable graphic design firm.
Our new brand strategy gave Breakaway Prep, a tutoring and college prep company, a redesigned logo, a refreshed and expanded color palette, and design elements that better connect to prospective student clients and their parents.
Maintain Brand Consistency Across Channels
Your brand will go out to customers across many platforms: social media, your website, paid advertising or direct mail, so it must be consistent across all these channels. If it is not, you risk confusing or distracting your customer.
Your materials need coordinated visuals, targeted messaging, and a recognizable look and feel.
Creating a brand guide for all your staff and freelancers can help you maintain brand identity. This guide will include your color palette, fonts, logo, photographic styles and other visual elements.
Balance Timelessness with Modern Appeal in Branding
This may seem counter-intuitive. You should stay up to date, right? Looking fresh and current is important, but since trends come and go quickly, you could end up looking dated if you’re following a trend that becomes outmoded.
Changing or even tweaking your brand too often could confuse your customers. Be mindful that with any changes or adjustments you make, you remain authentic in your identity. Let your loyal customers know you’re still the same brand they love.
Evolve Your Brand with Market Changes
Avoiding trends doesn’t mean avoiding all change. As the business landscape evolves, your brand will have to evolve as well. You may need to find new channels or update messaging to address changes in the marketplace that affect your customers and their new or anticipated needs. Stay aware of your customer’s needs so that you can be ready to show them their next solution.
Craft Unique, Impactful Copy
Your brand is unique, so you shouldn’t sound like everyone else. The text on your website, social media posts, and other communications should have the vocabulary and tone that connects with your loyal customers and doesn’t feel like it was swiped from the no-frills department. Keep the wording clear and direct so that your differentiators stand out quickly and definitively to both regular and potential customers.
Allocate the Right Resources for Branding and Marketing Success
Having the right budget for marketing is important for a business of any size. There are ways to optimize any budget, and some type of investment is always important to grow your leads and sales. It can be tempting to cut back on marketing when other needs are pressing, but staying ahead of your competition and growing your customer base is always a necessity. You have to keep your marketing machine moving all of the time, even when you’re busy.
Trillion Helps Businesses with Branding
Creating and maintaining a memorable brand takes creativity and effort. Businesses may be able to define their brand, but expressing it consistently while also adapting to growth and the evolving market is a balancing act. If you’d like help from our talented team at any point in the process, we’d love to help! Call us at 908.219.4703 or reach out to give your brand the boost it needs.
