Find out Brand Building Helps Your Business Grow
If someone mentions Amazon to you, you think of a huge customer-centric tech company that has expanded in many areas including home speakers, online shopping and audio books.
Why’s that? It’s because Amazon has invested heavily in it’s brand and it has reaped the rewards. According to the latest Brand Finance Tech 100 report Amazon has become the world’s most valuable tech brand, with it’s value surging by 42% to $150.8 billion.
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon once said “Your brand is what other people say about you when your not in the room” and building that brand is fundamental, particularly in the early stages of a growing business. Here are 8 Simple Steps that can help you build your brand,
1. You’re bigger than you think you are.
It doesn’t matter how big your business is whether it is 200+ or a one man band forming alliances with other organisations (if perceived competitors) is a fantastic way to project your brand. Take, lip balm manufacturers, Bonne Belle who forged a flavour partnership with Doctor Pepper to create a flavoured lip balm back in 1975. The product became hugely popular with teenage girls and continues to be a popular product creating nostalgic indulgence for many adults today.
2. Know your Personas.
Your buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research. According to Cintell, 82% of companies with better value propositions also use buyer personas. If you don’t understand your customer, how can you communicate to them effectively on social media, your
website, at conferences etc? Take, Airbnb as an example, it’s all the about the customer. If they didn’t have any guests or Airbnb Hosts there would be no brand or product. Looking to create a persona? HubSpot have a fantastic ‘Make My Persona’ tool that helps you understand your customers.
3. You’re the Solution!
Your customers are looking for help to alleviate a problem, not necessarily a specific product. You want to promote your product but you definitely don’t want to come across pushy and salesly. Use language and tone that presents helpful and personal nature to your brand. Your buyer personas will help to identify the pain points and in turn allow you to position your brand as a solution.
4. Develop an identity and voice
Once you’ve understood who your customer is and how you can help, you need decide how you are going to communicate with them. Developing a voice is going to help you engage with your target market and differentiate your business from your competitors. Once you’ve developed your brand identity this needs to be consistent throughout your logo, website, video, imagery and ongoing marketing communications.
5. Go Go Digital.
We live in a digital world and ‘being online’ is the most cost effective and efficient method of getting in front of your customers. In addition, the data and insights that you’re able to obtain from your marketing efforts is immense. Make sure you choose the right channels that are reflective of your business. For example if you’re Business to Business 94% of B2B marketers would say that LinkedIn is the best platform to distribute social compared to Twitter, Facebook etc.. (Source: LinkedIn). Make sure that your website and landing pages are built to match your brand goals and convert your visitors into customers. Ensure that you have forms to capture customers details, calls to action to guide the customer to perform a specific action. Your branding needs to run
6. Get With The Times New Roman
Yes, those pretty colours and fonts mean something. Canva report that up to 90% of Snap Judgements made about products can be based on colour alone. Like your brand voice, colour gives your business identity and also provides competitive advantage. Choosing the right colour takes time to identify and it can be based on numerous facets such as your industry, your target market, your product. Take the colour red, it has a number of contextual associations, one of the most common is for danger. However, red in China is synonymous with local culture and heritage.
7. It’s All About the Service
A report from Ombudsmen Services, an independent body which provides dispute resolution for the UK's largest sectors, found that 28% of people report losing "brand loyalty" after receiving bad customer service. Delight your customers! It doesn’t matter if you’re a sword maker in winter fell or a purveyor of tea on Craggy Island your customer experience is going to be intrinsic to your brand. Excellent Customer service earned media - word of mouth is huge and organisations are foolish not to captilise on this. Utilise customer feedback and reviews to gain an understanding of how people perceive your brand and how you continuously improve as an organisation.
8. Start Building!
Ever heard the quote ‘I’m taking care of my procrastination issues; just you wait and see’?! It may seem like a huge piece of work to build on your brand and it is but there are plenty of resources to get you started. Remember building your brand is just that, it’s an iterative process, it will take time and patience but it needs to start with a strategy and an ongoing plan.
If you are looking to create an inbound marketing strategy for your business contact us below.
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