You sell products and/or services to B2C and/or B2B target audiences.
You‘ve been in business for years, have done fairly well, and after all this time are certain you know how to profile who wants and purchases your offering and the best ways to reach and communicate with them.
So, why bother spending time, brain power, and maybe some money developing a formal, strategic brand marketing document?
First off, let’s look at what a “brand” is.
For veteran providers of goods and/or services, this may seem like a no-brainer. But, based on my 45+ years of experience, please indulge me, just in case your definition could be a tad off the mark. (Truth: If I had a dollar for every prospect or client – even some folks from large, publicly-traded companies – who said, “I want to rebrand” and meant updating the logo or devising a fresh tagline, well, I’d have lotsa dollars.)
A brand is not a logo, a tagline or the two together – Name, symbol, color palette, and/or broad recognition of your “snappy tagline,” while certainly signposts to the brand, are not, in and of themselves, makers of a brand. Credible, consistent performance, delivery, and messaging/imagery supporting and reflecting that performance and delivery form the foundation of the brand.
So, again: What’s a brand, and why is a cohesive brand so critical for promoting awareness, interest, engagement, and loyalty to your offering?
For my money, the late, great, marketing strategist, Al Reis, put it best: A brand, he said, is “ a singular idea or concept that you own inside the mind of the prospect.” Its foundation is trust; a signature, believable, focused impression that resides with the person or persons who have encountered a product, service, family of products/services, the company (and/or the person, e.g.) offering them.
Just so all the cards are on the table, note that the opposite of a cohesive brand is brand identity crisis. That occurs when there's a core disconnect between how a company (from the leaders all the way down to the people who answer the phones) perceives and presents the brand and its attributes versus how it actually is received/perceived by the public, or when the brand no longer reflects the company's reality (Hello “X”, formerly Twitter!). The result is confusion among target publics, a dilution of the brand's essential meaning, credibility, value to its target audiences and its raison d'etre, and a measurable decline in consumer trust and loyalty.
Examples? On the plus side, think “Target” and we all likely have similar impressions of the right way to merchandise, present and retail upscale-discount goods. Think Mercedes, BMW, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, even 1-800-Kars for Kids. Ditto. All are cohesive brands that most of us would describe the same way. Now flip that around and think about brands seemingly in freefall: J.C. Penney, Yahoo, Banana Republic, and Subway (Once upon a time their sandwiches were good and good deals. These days toilet paper’s thicker than their meats, veggies are more often than not mushy and browning, and the breads often appear to be holdovers from yesterday or maybe two-days ago).
OK, so how does one build a credible, durable, effective brand?
“Branding” for products, services and companies is the act of carefully and dispassionately evaluating the offering:
Identify its central point or points of differentiation from all others in its class
Allow data (real data, not opinions) to point you to the current and emerging or prospective, target audiences
Develop AND TEST! prioritized messages and images that, nurtured and promoted online and/or off with strategic consistency, competitively will sustain and elevate that branded impression for target audiences.
Branding’s key benefits
A brand’s credible expression/projection of a promise – of satisfaction, success, of quality-of-life benefits – and audiences’ awareness of and appreciation for that unique promise underlie all facets of business attraction/retention success (as long as the promise and perception of the brand match the reality of it as delivered!).
The overall benefits of successful branding are widespread, with target audience(s)’ perceptions that are positive and appropriately attuned and responsive to the info and the emotions the brand communicates. Specifically, a successfully developed and promulgated brand:
Encapsulates/reflects key benefit(s) for internal and external, constituent audiences
Promotes signature differentiation from the competition
Concisely communicates the brand’s intent, its overall mission and values
Clearly defines and promotes the brand’s personality attributes
Supports the goals of business attraction and overall, financial objectives
Underscores internal/external perceptions of economic credibility/viability for the long- term
OK, so exactly what is a brand strategy and how do I (you!) develop one?
Brand strategy is a comprehensive plan and ‘roadmap’ (what to do and when) detailing how a business intends to position and differentiate its brand in the marketplace to meet its marketing and sales promotion objectives. It’s your guide for creating, establishing, and maintaining a competitively muscular, compelling, and consistent brand image, and how that image will overshadow others in your competitive arena.
Here comes the hard part – or maybe not: Developing the brand strategy.
Basically, you have two choices when deciding to develop a comprehensive and competent brand strategy: DIY or work with experienced, strategic marketing professionals.
It’ll come as no big surprise that, as the owner of a nearly 30-year-old marketing communications agency in DC, Return On Investment (ROI; www.roiadvertising.com), I’m partial to the latter course of action. Whether it’s me and my team or folks from another marcom (marketing communications) agency, your chances of really nailing the new brand path forward are so much better when working with people like us who know what to do and have done this before.
Either way, here’s a general list of steps to follow when developing your brand strategy:
Define your purpose – The brand’s purpose supersedes the importance and marketing value of your name/ logo/tagline. It inspires and drives you and your team and sets you apart from competitors. Some in marketing say that there are two types of brand purpose: functional, which focuses on financial success and value to stakeholders, and intentional, which relates to the larger role and ambitions of your brand. To those I add a third: emotional. Your brand’s purpose is what can excite, inspire, and motivate your team, from the front office to the loading dock, to dig deeper, reach higher, always seek improved performance, and respect and support the brand and how it is to be portrayed in every aspect for the business, from internal meetings to sales meetings, trade shows, advertising …even down to phone conversations. Respect the brand. Expect the right results.
Define positioning for your target audience(s) – Who’s buying what you have to offer? Who wants to buy what you have to offer? Who would want to buy what you have to offer, if only they knew more about it and you? The positioning section must include definitions or profiles of the target audience segments. Start by creating a demographic/ psychographic profile of your typical customers, considering their perceived wants and needs, behaviors, etc. and how your offering is a “must have” for them. Tuning your strategy into their “gotta haves” and “wanna haves” is the first step toward fostering qualified, target audience awareness and interest in your branded offering.
Brand value(s) – You’ve probably heard a lot about corporate values. So, what’s that really mean? Simply, “values” are “principles or standards of behavior; one's judgment of what is important in life.” What does your company stand for as an employer, a provider of goods/services, and as a corporate citizen? And what are the core values that make you and your brand special and different from the competition? In what ways do you stand behind the quality of what you create for or provide to your customers? How do you treat your team to be more productive? To promote from the inside? What kind of environmental responsibility do you weave into corporate policies and practices? When detailing your values as a company, try to avoid generalities (e.g., “To have satisfied customers”). Try to be as specific as possible. Getting that down on paper lays a solid foundation for crisp communication to customers, prospects, and internal/external stakeholders.
Brand Positioning – Positioning is essential for knitting together all the prior previously mentioned elements. It incorporates real-world marketing lessons learned and client experience to establish, hold onto, or to further empower your brand’s marketplace status/position among target audiences, stakeholders, media, etc.. By aligning the business’s identity, communication, and understanding of competitors with client perceptions, positioning ensures the brand remains strong and relevant in the market.
Brand Personality – “Personality” for a brand or a living, breathing homo sapien is the difference maker setting one or the other apart from the herd. A cohesive brand personality makes communicating with audiences more effective by use of distinct, targeted marketing messages. Look to develop signature brand personalities that speak directly to target audiences’ wants, needs, and expectations.
Your Brand Voice – OK, you’ve defined your brand’s personality. Now, how to communicate it? The key is to craft messaging that gets personality and tone voice in sync. What’s the sort of tone to which your target audience will resonate and respond? Business-like and buttoned down? Playful and punny? Remember that your target audience plays a crucial role in driving tone. (For example, a bank or, perhaps, an established company with an older client base will likely adopt a serious and reassuring tone, while a bottled cocktail brand brand catering to millennials might try to be more friendly and humorous.) Knowing your audience, its preferences and expectations for communicating with them, and committing to “brand voice consistency” are key, since your brand voice should resonate across all communication channels. It goes beyond words and encompasses elements such as logos, typography, and color palettes. By maintaining a consistent voice, your brand’s promise and values are effectively communicated to your audience.
Market Analysis – A business never markets in a void. Duh! In all likelihood, you are operating in an aggressively acquisitive arena vying against able, smart competitors. With new brands constantly popping up and industries becoming crowded, truly understanding your marketplace dynamics and rigorously/continually evaluating competitor strengths and weaknesses is essential to your bottom-line success (and quality of sleep!). Identifying unique differentiators between your business and the other guy’s or guys’ helps your brand stand out and be memorable and preferable to your targets. There is a variety of means and resources available to you for regularly surveying and researching the competitive landscape as part of maintaining an effective brand strategy.
Wrapping up
Whew! I agree … that was a lot. But, by weaving these essential elements into your brand strategy. You stand the best, possible chance of fully empowering your business enables businesses to establish a potent, consistent brand presence that connects with your target audiences to the core, while effectively “cross-checking”* your competition and its branded outreach (*my favorite reference to hockey, even though I can’t even skate!).
This is all stuff you can do yourself; it’s time-consuming but totally worth it. If for any reason you can't or don’t want to take it all on to buttress or renovate your brand and its measured performance, I and my team at ROI (www.roiadvertising.com) are here to help. I/we’ve been at this for decades, working successfully with companies as small as local credit unions and retailers to huge, Fortune 150 conglomerates. We’d be delighted to chat about what we can do to help you address your brand marketing challenges.
