As a business owner, you already believe wholeheartedly in the product or service you bring to the world every day. But how can you get your potential customers as excited about your vision as you are?
The answer: By defining, building, and maintaining a thought-driven brand.
In the same way that you have invested in every aspect of your business, it’s equally vital to invest in a winning brand. The benefits are plentiful. Brilliant brands help you establish your position in the market. They foster customer trust. And they allow you to form a competitive advantage.
Like any investment, building a brand can require a financial commitment. But more now than ever, you can build a brilliant brand with virtually any budget by starting with some basic pillars that can pay big dividends.
Let’s get started:
What Branding Is—And Why it Matters
A successful brand goes far deeper than a company’s logo. It is both written and visual. Your brand is the words you use to talk about your business and promote your unique selling proposition. It’s the way you present your company in colors and imagery. It’s the experience your customers have with you. Your brand is the articulation of your company’s vision—who you are, the value you offer, and why your work matters.
Get your brand right, and you’ll have a roadmap you can use to enhance your decision-making and propel your business forward. You’ll also benefit from increased customer loyalty. That’s because 62% of consumers say they feel an emotional connection to the brands they buy from the most.1
And, while in the past, branding and its bottom-line value were difficult to measure, today, we can quantify brand value more concretely. Apple, for example, has a brand value of $355 billion.2 That’s a lot of iPhones, wouldn’t you say?
Three Elements of a Winning Brand
- Positioning
- Your brand position is the core of who you are. It differentiates you in the market by explaining why and how your product, solution, or service stands out from your competitors. It’s the thought behind your very existence—sometimes spoken, sometimes unspoken.
- Authenticity
- If you’re not honest about who you are and what you do, your customers will pick up on it. Your brand must communicate the reasons buyers should believe in you, trust in you, and engage with you. A majority of consumers (86%) say authenticity is vital when choosing which brands to support.3
- Clarity
- Your brand doesn’t have to be 100% correct right out of the gate, but it does need to be easy for customers to understand. Having a signature brand color, for example, boosts brand recognition by 80%.4 The verbal and visual vocabulary you present play an important role in either reinforcing your brand or watering it down.
Brand Identity: Where to Focus Your Investment
Creating a brand that will elevate all aspects of your business will require an investment in time and resources. The first step is to ask yourself these three basic questions:
What drove the creation of the business in the first place—the concept, the beliefs, the conviction?
What do your customers need to see—and feel—to make an emotional connection with your company?
What will your sales team need to articulate the company’s vision to prospects and customers?
These answers can help form your brand development. It may make sense to work with an agency that specializes in brand development to help you create a mission statement, vision statement, and positioning statement. You and your chosen partner can test and optimize those statements, then use them to inform a host of choices you make – from your logo, visual and verbal brand to what your customers see and hear when they engage with you.
How to Introduce Your Brand (and Stick to a Budget)
Once you have your brand pillars in place, it’s time to execute. The way you introduce your brand, however, will depend upon a number of factors.
For example, if your company markets to consumers, a big launch out of the gate may make the most sense. But if you’re a B2B company that offers services to clients, you’ll have a much longer sales cycle that may include lead qualification and nurturing through various funnel stages. That means you might do more of a soft launch, focusing first on awareness. Then you can create and phase in more brand applications and experiences over time.
How to Scale Your Brand
From the start, you’ll want to keep your brand as consistent as possible. Brand consistency creates understanding and engagement with your customers. It also delivers profits. One study says that building brand consistency can increase revenue by 20%.5
As you scale, you may make subtle changes in your brand as it is applied to a range of tactics, approaches, and pitches. Starbucks and Dunkin’ (coffee, anyone?) are two of the major companies that have made small tweaks to their brands and product mixes in recent years without losing their identity.
So, it’s OK to adjust the colors of your logo. It’s fine to tweak your positioning statements. You can shift your messaging—indeed, you should do so as you start to enter new markets and target new customer segments. What should remain consistent, however, is the authentic essence and core beliefs of who you are and what you offer.
We’ve Only Just Begun
Many brands come and go, but those that invest in creating the most powerful brand possible will stand the test of time. Your brand is a living thing. It takes continual care to keep it relevant. We know this because we’ve lived it—in fact, watch for our own evolution in the coming months!
If you’re looking for a strategic partner who can help you create a brand identity and scale it successfully, reach out to us and learn how you can solve it with Simon.
