When it comes to building your business and creating customer loyalty, your branding is incredibly important; although any business can have a brand, not every business can have a brand that is both recognisable and synonymous with them. Here we will look at how a tactical approach to branding is an important part of your marketing and will ultimately boost the value of your business and encourage customer loyalty.
The Importance of Brand
A good brand goes beyond being just a memorable logo, it adds to and encapsulates the value of your business, promotes customer loyalty and gives your employees a company ethos to work towards. The brand is formed by every part of the customer experience, from the customer service, the packaging, the website to the company social media platforms. Failing to spend the necessary time investing in your branding can impact the growth and success of your business, so it’s crucial to get right.
Understand Your Demographic
To build your brand effectively, you need to understand your demographic – knowing their wants and needs. If your brand doesn’t appeal to your target customer, your sales are likely to suffer. Create a customer profile – the perfect customer you wish to target – and define their wants, needs, desires, likes, dislikes, education level etc and build the brand from there. Carefully defining your customer will help you tailor your brand to them.
Stay True to Your Business
Being tactical in your branding doesn’t mean that you’re making your business into something it isn’t. Stay true to you and your business and keep your branding in line with that authenticity. Customers will quickly see through branding which is attempting to project something the company isn’t.
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Create Your Brand Mission Statement
Your branding should sum up what your business is about and what it stands for and should do it succinctly; your mission statement will feed into this and help form the direction and the future of the business. Every big successful brand starts off with a purpose – and this isn’t just to exist and make money; this purpose, such as to make life easier or cheaper for the consumer in some way, will make up your mission statement.
Research Your Competitors
Your brand won’t stand out if you’re simply doing what your competitors are doing. Researching your industry and identifying where your competitors are succeeding and failing will help guide your branding efforts. Make sure to differentiate yourself from the rest of the industry, but still appeal to your target consumer. A good way to make a comparison is to create a list of 3-4 competitors and highlight what they’re doing well and what you think they aren’t doing as well and see how your brand stands up against them.
Create Trust in Your Brand
Building a business consumers can rely on, which is professional, polished and looks after its customers will help foster trust in your brand. Offer rewards for loyalty, random acts of kindness – such as a free full-sized sample – and no-questions-asked returns and consistent quality to create a brand that can be trusted and relied on. Your brand becomes your promise to the customer.
Your Brand as an Experience
One of the most effective ways some companies build their brand is by building an experience around their product. Apple has done this very cleverly and effectively, now with millions of loyal consumers around the world. Apple has their ‘genius bar’ where you can receive help and support with your products, and their stores are laid out to appear sleek, minimalistic and futuristic; all of this helps support and build their branding. When considering experience in the context of your brand, ask yourself: what is like to work for this company? What is the purchasing process like? What is aftercare like?
Build Advertising Campaigns to Support the Brand
Advertising is what will help cement your branding and how you will target your brand to your demographic; it’s for this reason that it’s so important to make sure your advertising is properly aligned with your brand identity. Know where your demographic is easily found – such as on Instagram or in print media – and build your advertising to suit both the platform and your brand. At this point, everything should tie together, from the website, to the logo, to the advertising, to the packaging.
Blogging and Video Content
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Some people think building a business blog isn’t worthwhile, but not only is it a great way to showcase the company personality, but it also works to boost brand awareness and search visibility. Blog and video content are an effective way to showcase your products, offer related advice – such as skincare help for consumers from a cosmetic brand - give insight into you as an owner, why you started the company and how the business operates. Giving a voice and a face to your company via video and blog content will make it much easier for consumers to relate to your brand and get behind your company mission statement.
Solicit Feedback and Reviews
It’s one thing to showcase your brand and sing your own praises, but it’s another for your customers to do it. During the customer purchase journey, set up a quick and easy way – normally best via email – for consumers to give feedback. Not only is this feedback great for your business to learn and grow, but it’s also a brilliant way to encourage new business. Testimonials and positive reviews give new customers confidence in your brand and products and will encourage them to purchase. Also, consumers who leave positive reviews are also more likely to then recommend your business to friends and family as well as come back to make a repeat purchase.
Generate A Following
Advertising and social media platforms are the perfect way to build a following and encourage customer loyalty. Strong branding makes consumers want to connect themselves to you and your messaging, meaning they will want to follow you on the likes of Facebook and Instagram as well as recommend you to friends and family. Branding which connects well with your demographic makes it much easier to grow naturally.
Consistency is Key
To maintain and build the value of your brand, you will need to remain consistent in all areas. Establishing a strong brand, as discussed, improves customer loyalty, but this means your customers have certain expectations when it comes to your business and how it presents itself to the world. If part of your business fails to meet those expectations, such as imagery or a level of service which doesn’t align with the brand, then this can impact brand value and customer retention; maintaining consistency will help protect your brand.
Building Financial Value
When investors or buyers value a business, they will often look at both the tangible and intangible assets. Your tangible assets are your physical assets which make up a big part of the everyday running of the business, such as equipment, offices and stock. However, your intangible assets also play a big part in the valuation of your company and include your trademarks, reputation and, importantly, your brand value.
Branding is a huge part of your company and should take a lot of consideration; remember to be tactical about how you create and build your brand, ensuring you reach the right audience, employing the most suitable and relevant advertising. With authenticity, consistency, and the right kind of content, you can build your brand into something consumers aspire to and want to buy into.
Money, business and travel writer. Big football fan.
