Branding has increasingly become more mobile-friendly, focusing on stronger online presence, increasingly more visual marketing and straight-on communication. With detail intuition being the closest thing to making an impact in your industry, the question is how to brand your business better and more efficiently?
Discussion points:
1. Branding Yourself – the Highlights
1.1. Why You Should Create a Brand
2. Tangible Brand Fundamentals
2.1. Visual Branding – Detail Intuition
2.2. Visual Identity through Design and Graphics
3. Marketing Highlights
1. Branding Yourself – the Highlights
What is Branding to You?
Don’t panic if you don’t know the answer – that is why you are here. For a business, branding means adding personality to the “needle in the hay”, and making it stand out. Simply put: you pick a name for your business and want people to recognize it locally, nationally and/or internationally.
1.1. Why You Should Create a Brand
There are at least 3 major reasons:
a) You want to become visible and stand out from the rest
b) You want to share your message with the world
c) You want to sell: B2B, B2C, B2D* (*business-to-distribution channel), H2H* (human-to-human); because there is either a gap in the industry or competition isn’t delivering enough quality.
d) Bonus: There is room for everyone. Or you just simply can!
2. Tangible Branding Fundamentals
First off, a brand is a long-term commitment and like every commitment, it relies on “doability” (the ability to make and build), which does not happen overnight. Tangible elements refer to the actions we take to build a certain brand identity. These include:
Brand architecture
Brand voice and tone
Brand logo and visual vocabulary
Brand security
2.1. Visual Branding – Detail Intuition
A few words on each.
Brand architecture means mission and vision: what you promise to your customers, clients and fans and how will it serve them.
Brand voice and tone is related to how you translate the brand to your brand consumers and potential consumers and in what way you wish to communicate your mission and vision to them (friendly, formal, business jargon, close communication, or a combination of all).
Brand logo and visual vocabulary refers to the Typography used (i.e. Arial, Georgia, Times New Roman) in CAPS or Non-CAPS, the Fonts (Regular, Bold, Italic, mixture of two or more), the colors to define the visual identity (primary brand colors and brand accent colors), the Logo that allows the design to “breathe”, the road from Mark to Trademark. Let’s not forget how details make the difference and include here the Minimum size display and the Clearness grid.
Notable enough, every brand should have a human face to display near an email signature.
Brand security and protection refers to domain name market registration and management solutions, as well as digital measures to ensure that your brand’s digital assets and identity are safe from harm (i.e. online theft).
Detail intuition combines all the resources and allows you to determine details in future trends. This enables companies to gain a real advantage in the way they position the brand, services and how they address potential customer needs.
2.2. Visual Identity through Design and Graphics
This is the focus part of building an online brand. Visual identity principles are closely related to the way we define the look and feel of a brand.
First off, every brand should have a “most recognizable” mark that represents the company: a typed drawing, a specific figure, an element in a deliberate font and color displayed in a series of renditions (each appropriate for every context). A rendition can contain just a logo or the trademark (when the case), additional words and phrasings such as “powered by”, along with a tagline, in different sizes and patterns.
Contrast plays another role in how the visual identity stands out. Dark bold backgrounds can be the “make it or break it” point, and it all depends on the amount of good contrast and clear legibility between background color and the mark. A color-based or black version of a logo should only be used against light or white backgrounds, whereas a white or light color-based logo versions should only be used with dark or color-stroked backgrounds.
The Graphics also play a vital role, think of every social media profile, every picture on your blog, every banner, every infographic or graphic material your team produces – each contributes to how the audience perceives you.
3. Online Marketing Highlights
Online marketing is on the brink of change as well, on a clear and simple premise: people’s trust cannot be won with pushy sales strategies. Inbound marketing is the only way to go, combined with social listening and brand sentiment.
Core principles of inbound marketing include a consumer-oriented approach, where the mission is to live where your audience lives, and attract new potential customers, as opposed to hard selling techniques. The content you create circles the idea of providing real solutions and addressing customer needs, instead of blatant advertising of your services. A brand will win customers over by answering their questions, solve cases, involve and promote the audience, and start a long-term relationship with them.
Trending Ideas to Boost Your Marketing
Here are a few creative ideas to use in your marketing strategy:
Create heat maps with local resources to answer your customers’ local needs
Compile a resource page based on customer data
Optimize your newsletters as a weekly issue where trending information and creative solutions are listed, instead of just your product or service updates
Organize regular video/audio webinars for live interaction with your customers
If customers use some of the social media platforms as CRM channels, then structure your social media content as an addition to customer support
Do short surveys to better understand your audience
Keep it simple, keep it personal – this is the human-to-human principle
Embrace the new: Instagram stories, the new Facebook pages format, Snapchat videos
If possible, meet your customers face to face, take pictures with them, and use this as fresh content
Invite your customers to add and create content of their own. This will enhance the voice of your community.
These are our recommendations in terms of taking your branding to a higher level in quarter 4. The year is far from over, and in many industries, autumn means a new business season. So take the lead, and do not lose to competition.
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Link: Branding Your Business in 2016: Quarter 4 Highlights
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