4 min
Your brand is the sum total of what people think, feel, and remember when they encounter your company.
A strong brand is remembered AND generates results. Today, customers buy from companies that they feel connected to. It is no longer an issue of appealing to the needs of customers but rather to their emotions.
For example, everyone knows that they have a need for personal hygiene products, yet there are shampoo, soap, even toothpaste brands that we pick out on a daily basis that stand out from the saturated market.
We create authentic brands that clarify your message and overall look and feel to captivate prospects, turn them into customers, and triple your marketing ROI.
All that being said, how do you build a brand strategy that is attainable, measurable and relevant?
Understand Who You Are Talking To
Most people think that sales and marketing works by persuading people to think that buying a product or service is the best decision they can make.
This persuasion-first, emotion-second approach to sales and marketing gets the process exactly backward. There’s only one reason that anyone buys anything: because they feel deep in their guts that buying will make them feel better.
We don’t want success; we want the feelings we think success will bring. We don’t want beauty. We want the feelings we think beauty will bring.
In other words, we buy when we believe that the product or service we’re buying is the vehicle right now that will take us away from pain and toward pleasure.
When we understand what your customers feel and believe about their current situation and the changes they desire to experience, we can engineer your marketing and sales messages to help your customers make the decision for themselves to buy.
Understand Who You Are and What You Stand For
Your brand needs to focus on one universal truth that customers and staff alike can get behind. A hair care brand does not simply believe that conditioners should be made well, but they might operate on the underlying truth that everyone deserves to feel beautiful and confident.
This is more universal, and if your company really believes in the truth of what you stand for, it will connect deeply with potential customers. In this way, your brand operates as much more than just a product or service. Emotional branding fulfils the underlying emotional need through a tangible product.
Figure out the underlying motive of your brand, and what you specifically add to your industry, and make this universal truth known to and practiced by everyone on every level of your company.
Along the same lines, what values and occurrences do your company stand against? For example, if your construction company stands for safety, you stand against cutting corners or doing the bare minimum to complete a job.
Letting your clients know what they can avoid by hiring you, as opposed to your competitors, can be a powerful tool.
Knowing what your brand will always stray from and condemn is equally as important as knowing what you stand for in the self-discovery process.
Companies often make the mistake of establishing “values” but not talking about what those values look like in action or what they mean. Talking about what you stand for and against can help to solve this.
Still not sure how to figure out who you are? Check out what our experts have to say about Defining Your Voice.
Make Your Story Make Sense
Once you are done understanding who you are and who your audience is, it is time to come up with different assets that will accomplish a symbiotic relationship between you and your customers.
Each time a customer decides to engage with your business and buy your products or services, they do it because your story told them to.
They start in an ordinary world, but long to be a part of the extraordinary world with no problems and endless possibilities. They see your product that makes a promise to transform their current life into the one they desire.
You need to evaluate what makes your brand memorable. For example, visuals, names, and ad strategies should make sense and fit together.
These elements need to operate like a well-oiled machine to meet your goals for the growth of your brand.
Simple things like making sure that your logo works well with your brand, or that your typography is readable are important to its success. Even the color schemes you pick should all work together to create your brand image. Without them, you may fail to show your brand’s message.
That being said, your brand’s message and name should be relatable to your audience. So relatable that your customers know what to expect and keep coming back for more.
One way to promote these assets is through your digital media. It should all work together so your audience can understand your mission. Your customers should leave feeling like they can be successful with the use of your products.
Repeat
You heard that right, after you are done with all this hard work it is important that you repeat this process. While we have been told that consistency in the marketing industry is key, you shouldn’t be afraid of evolution.
Build your branding scope of work, test it out, and see what works and what didn’t. This is a key step for the evolution and consistency of your brand.
Oftentimes we have an idea of what we think might work, but it doesn’t actually end up not working. These moments are essential for your brand to develop the perfect messaging and find the perfect audience.
Don’t believe us? Check out how some of the biggest brands we know have used the power of repetition in their branding scope of work to their advantage in such a saturated market.
We Practice what We Preach.
Just like we recommend for our brands looking to elevate their marketing, we have our own archetype and follow our own cycle of purposeful repetition for our brand strategy.
We engineer marketing strategies for ourselves and for our clients that incorporate distinct brand personalities, with messaging and tactics that reflect them.
Plus, we use powerful data to make sure our tactics are running how they’re supposed to. We believe in the power of repetition, and know that the long-term strategy can include patience.
In fact, our 12-month marketing strategies are designed to be repeatable. The foundation of them stays consistent, but we constantly look for ways to improve them.
Learn more about our branding services how we can make your brand’s marketing strategy work more effectively!