Is Your Brand Cohesive? Big Change Marketing Strategies to Govern Your Brand
In today's market, we think of brands as being a title and a logo, albeit well made. However, a brand has a much deeper storyline, a much more meaningful presence, which governs how customers view their entire experience with your company. You never know who is watching, how deeply they are researching, and what they are reading about you unless you control the message from the first color impression of your website to the last interaction with your customer service.
Is your brand cohesive enough to walk your clients or customers from first glance all the way through the end of the buying process? Do you have every step of your brand governance taken care of? Read our insights below for a healthy, safe guide to proper brand governance.
Color, Text, Meaning, and Message
Don't get too creative with your colors. Your office, your business, your website, and your employees' uniforms need to all be part of the same color scheme. Keep your type, font, and the feel of your messages all part of the same scheme.
Keep your meanings clear and simple. Don't overcomplicate your marketing message. Your brand should be clear and simple and easy to understand. If you have complex steps to your business outline, put them in your business plan, not your marketing message.
Real Life Example: The colors, cut, and font of digital marketing expert and guide, Julie Stoian blend together perfectly to show off her professional design and high-ranking search appeal among prospective business owners and marketers.
Are You Friendly or Neighborly or Clear or Bold?
Your style should be apparent from first sight. Your site, your brand, and your business should all reflect the type of business you have. Are you a bold approach to an old problem? Do you have new testing for interested investors? Is there a simple product which everyone loves? The style of your brand and the mannerisms and speech patterns it assumes should all be clear and well-defined.
Professional or neighborly, your brand needs purpose behind it. The reason behind your brand and the purpose it invigorates should also be clear about your brand governance. Make sure that your purpose is clear, whether it is helping people get the perfect skin or erasing a widespread problem in a key demographic.
Real Life Example: The style and example of skincare specialist selling and distribution, Rodan and Fields, can be seen quite clearly through their white-on-white color scheme, their technical dermatological text, and their focus on quality and performance as well as end results.
Who Is in Charge? The Story to End All Stories
“People buy from people, not companies” - This is a well-known sales slogan because it describes exactly how people are motivated. They believe in a person with whom they can relate, not a faceless company with which they cannot establish a personal rapport.
It is common knowledge that leaders and managers are part of the reason why anybody buys any product or service in the first place. The example, gregariousness, charisma, and trustworthiness of the leadership define the entire company and your brand should reflect every part of this fact. To be specific, your brand should have your leadership on display everywhere, with their faces, story, personal struggle, and how their business helped them to overcome their obstacles.
Who started your business, what was their struggle, and how did their company create the end result from which other people can also benefit?
These are the questions which all of your customers are secretly asking themselves, but no one is wanting to state it outright. What's in it for me? Why should I care? Any good salesperson knows that their success is defined almost solely by how much the client can relate to the story behind the brand.
Make sure that your brand message and leadership are apparent from beginning to end throughout the packaging, shipping, website interactions, and face-to-face experiences. Who you are and why you do what you do are the two biggest motivators for your future sales prospects. Everything should be cohesively distributed. Make sure your About Us page has a real story about real people, complete with photographs of the owners, some of the managers, and in-depth photographs of the key processes of your work.
Real Life Example: Even from the beginning of your first trip to their website, farm-to-home beef craft business, CrowdCow, shows how personal beef growing and eating are to all of us. The owners of the company make it personal to themselves and to each website visitor, including more of their story (and personal sign-offs) on each follow-up email to email subscribers. This is an excellent example of how easily a company owner can pull people in to see their own personal viewpoint on an important matter.
Check for Breaks in Your Customer Experience
Quality controlling your brand governance - You need to see your client experience, online or in person, as one long journey from beginning to end. As you quality check their experience, are there any jarring interruptions along their journey through your sales process? Is there any break in the level of quality, the message from the company, or the comfort provided in client care?
Make sure you check every path your client can take - It is common for neighborhood storefront businesses to only set up a business card website and leave it neglected. It is also common for online retail sales to dry up when the entire store is chat-based and customers don't have the option of calling and talking to someone local about their needs.
Conclusion
In conclusion, your brand is the only message and face that your potential clients or customers get to see before they decide to buy from you. By providing a consistent, trustworthy set of experiences, you can reduce the pain of paying and create a comfortable number of sales for yourself.
Helen Cartwright is a passionate blogger, who excels in the Digital Marketing and Technology niche. When not wired in marketing strategies she ghost-write for a variety of authors who have their work published on leading online media channels such as The Huffington Post and Entrepreneur.com.
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