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We have already determined, in Understanding the Actual Impact of Branding Part 2: Personality, that the work of building a brand is continuous and does not necessarily stop at a particular point or stage. Every other aspect of the business is affected by the work put into brand building.
Your brand must be hard to miss; customers must encounter it in everything related to your company that they can see, read, hear and, if possible, feel. From the moment they walk into your place of business, they must be able to interact with your brand in that environment. Business cards, advertisements, and everything that represents the business must support the brand personality, culture and spirit. Your brand must be consistent with regards to the fonts used, colour, photography, etc. Additionally, it is important to ensure that the brand’s personality, voice and message are in sync and incorporated into the content. The same uniformity needs to be applied across all marketing mediums, including social media pages and video content. Podcast audios have been increasing in popularity and if your business considers this platform for its marketing, make sure to engage on themes that feed into the positioning and culture of your brand.
Stick with it
“Your personal brand is a promise to your clients… a promise of quality, consistency, competency, and reliability.”
Jason Hartman
We have been reiterating the importance of uniformity and consistency of your brand everywhere it appears so, in essence, sticking with and staying true to your brand building. Once you’ve identified your brand voice, apply it to all forms of communication. Consistency is what makes brand building all the more worth it. The inconsistency that comes with changing your branding results in customer confusion and negatively affects the flow and success of long-term brand building.
Be its no.1 fan
“It’s important to build a personal brand because it’s the only thing you’re going to have. Your reputation online, and in the new business world, is pretty much the game, so you’ve got to be a good person. You can’t hide anything and, more importantly, you’ve got to be out there at some level.”
Gary Vaynerchuk
Your brand is your baby and your life’s project, and who better to be its biggest advocate and fan? You (and hopefully your employees too) are the best person to market your brand because you know it best and can do right by it at any given moment. It is therefore important to hire staff that will be able to fit and work with the core values of your brand as opposed to working against the mission and vision of your brand. Being your brand’s biggest fan also shows your confidence in the work you put out and, with that, you can also reach out to loyal customers and encourage that they share your content and/or post reviews.
Creating a digital footprint
At this stage, you should be more or less clear on how to create a successful brand and, because we live in the digital age where almost everything happens online, we will briefly go into what is needed in order to have a good digital foundation to set your brand on and create awareness around it.
Your website is your digital HQ
Your website is probably the most important tool you have to market your business and for brand building and growth. It is here that consumers will find more information on your business, and their experience while on your website needs to motivate them to take action. It is important to invest in launching a clean, user-friendly website that hopefully loads fast and is mobile-friendly—considering that everyone is on their phones! But, everything else aside, great content is key to driving people (back) to your website.
Make it easier for customers to find and explore your website
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) helps with increasing the quality and quantity of relevant organic traffic to your website. It increases the visibility of your website to users of a web search engine. It is therefore vital to develop a strategy that addresses SEO ranking factors such as secure and mobile-friendly websites with high-quality content that provides valuable information. A winning content marketing strategy will bring you a thousand steps closer to engaging with your desired target audience and building brand trust.
It’s important to get social
Social media marketing has proven to do wonders for businesses and creating brand awareness. A good social media strategy will help your business connect better with your community, therefore, curating relevant content, publishing original content, creating and engaging your community and paid advertising are vital for increasing reach and growing your community. Relevant and high-quality content is also vital for social media pages—consistency in brand representation.
Email marketing is not dead
Building your email marketing list early on in your brand building journey can do you a lot of good! The idea is to treat your emailing list as an intimate community that you have established a relationship with. A brand subscriber list can be built through pop-ups, sidebars and lead magnet forms on your website. These are only some options. The right person or people will engage with your brand, further increasing its awareness.
Paid advertising can increase sales and brand awareness
A paid advertising campaign may be costly while you’re building your brand but, as you will recall, in Understanding the Actual Impact of Branding Part 1 we established that you need to see the brand building process as an investment too. With that said, paid advertising can yield positive results for your brand by increasing awareness and driving more traffic to your website, but be careful not to exhaust your budget on what could be quick and short-term results. Platforms such as Facebook and Google Ads rely on factors such as a well-defined target audience, tracking performance meticulously, compelling creative copy and design, and using the right keywords.
Analytics and reporting help you to continuously improve
Since the process of brand building is continuous, you will want to gauge progress over time or between specific periods and have a look at what you’re achieving from your work. You have to know how you’re performing; otherwise, what’s the point? Google Analytics should be installed on your website—it will shed light on the activity on your website.
All these components of establishing a digital foundation along with a marketing strategy for your online platforms and brand consistency will certainly give your brand an advantage over other brands—yours will be competitive! Branding is important for your business; we have come to terms with a brand’s transformative power when it is fused into every aspect of the business that the customer comes into contact with.
References:
Crowe, A. (2018). Top 7 Ranking Signals: What REALLY Matters in 2019? Retrieved from https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-guide/ranking-signals/#close
Infoentrepreneurs (n.d.). The Basics. Retrieved from https://www.infoentrepreneurs.org/en/guides/branding—-the-basics/
Cherry, B. (2019). 18 Captivating Mission Statement Examples You Need to Read. Retrieved from https://www.bluleadz.com/blog/15-of-the-very-best-mission-statement-examples
Gregory, S. (2019). 11 Simple Steps for a Successful Brand Building Process. Retrieved from https://freshsparks.com/successful-brand-building-process/
Lim, S. (2019). Brand Personality. Retrieved from https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/brand-personality.asp
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