How Branding Can Help Grow Your Business
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Branding is an incredible tool to help you grow your business - exponentially. People are more likely to buy from brands that they know, like, and trust. This starts with a solid brand strategy that all starts by focusing on who your perfect audience is, connecting with them, and delivering value with each and every interaction.
Whether you are a Solopreneur, Entrepreneur, or Small Business or a Large Corporation, branding is key to building a solid - and profitable - foundation for your business.
Never before has it been more important to be heard above all the marketing and advertising noise, attracting new prospects (and more importantly the right ones), building connections, inspiring trust, converting into happy customers who love you and your brand. This all starts with awesome branding.
WHO IS YOUR AUDIENCE?
Not everyone is your customer. Understanding who your perfect customer is will help you to dig deep and connect with them. By focusing on your ideal client vs everyone, you are able to deliver better content, better experiences, and tap into their specific needs.
Once you know who you are looking for, find out who they are, what they do, what do they believe in, what are their values, where do they hang out. Understanding their needs will help you build the right experiences and content to attract, engage, and build loyal customers.
This all start with research and building your ideal customer avatar. Once you know who you are selling to, you can move on to building an epic marketing plan.
WHAT IS YOUR PLAN?
Once you know your audience, How do you inspire them to get to know you? to like you? to trust you? Keep it simple to start. Set out to create realistic goals and strategies that you can measure and improve upon.
How will you start to start to connect with your customers? What types of posts do you want to share? How often? With who?
Each step will have different tactics to achieve your goal. If you are looking to build awareness, your plans will be different than if you are nurturing relationships to build trust. Each phase in your customer journey is important and should have a plan.
Always circle back and check that your strategies align with your audience's needs and your overall marketing objectives.
WHAT IS A BRAND?
A Brand is how people perceive your company through their own experiences. Ultimately it is your customers and the world who decide what your brand is - but - you can help shape those perceptions through branding.
Understanding how your brand is perceived is the first step in understanding where you are now, and what you need to do to get where you want to be. You can do this through an annual brand audit that helps you stay connected with your customers, and make improvements to help create a better brand experience for your customers.
This is all about knowing how your audience sees and hears you across all your customer touch points - online, print, in-person, on the phone, in the media... Try seeing your brand through your customers eyes... you will be surprised with the results sometimes!
WHAT IS BRANDING?
Branding is the art of differentiation - these are the strategies and actions you take as a business to build a certain image of your company, your products, and help align your customer's perceptions of your brand with the image you ideally want them to have.
It's important to note that although you actively try to shape these perceptions, they may not always translate within your customers mind - this is why consistency in branding and being deliberate about all your customer touch-points is so incredibly important.
Be authentic to you and your values and really dig into your purpose – why you are in business. Your purpose will help to guide your branding decisions and align your values with your ideal customers values.
WHAT IS YOUR BRAND IDENTITY?
Once you understand how your customers see you (brand), and how you would like to be seen (branding), you can now begin focusing on your brand identity. Your brand identity starts with your logo - but it certainly does not end there.
Brand Identity is a collection of all your design assets that represent your brand - logo, colours, typography (fonts), voice, tone, specific imagery, etc. These elements help to create an experience for your brand in person, online, offline, and essentially at every touchpoint or interaction your brand has with your prospects, clients, partners, and the world.
The more distinct, specific, consistent, and aligned with your brand strategy, the more likely that they will help to shape your brand into a unique, differentiated, credible, professional, and trustworthy brand.
WHY IS BRANDING SO IMPORTANT?
Branding changes everything... Branding is the reason Starbucks can charge 2-3x the price for a cup of coffee.
Branding supports more than just your logo design, it also:
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Builds trust and credibility
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Creates recognition
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Supports your marketing and sales goals
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Builds value and profitability
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Attracts, inspires, and retains the right employees
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Attracts, inspires, and builds loyal customers
The most profitable companies in the world all have one thing in common - they have a strong brand strategy and position themselves as a leader in their respective industries because of their brand, branding, and brand identity.
