How are you making your 'Brand' a priority?
I'm wondering what the most effective ways are to show off your brand. What are you doing to prioritize your brand? Do you emphasize your company name/logo in all aspects of what you do? Do your employees wear your logo? Do you send out a monthly newsletter to keep your brand in front of your connections?
Everywhere and in everything, that's how. Make it part of your culture. This includes, very importantly, internal documents, communications, etc. Consistency is as important as font, artwork, and colors. Let your brand permeate everything you do.
Build a color palette - 2 or 3 colors - get someone (or do it yourself) to put together some examples of how to "brand" internal documents (employee handbooks, internal memos, internal materials, etc. Simple stuff, but your staff should be part of your brand. Everything about your business.
Also, branding is more than just colors and logos. Attention to detail is equally as important. Typos in emails, documents with varying font sizes (unintentional), unsigned emails, etc...these get noticed. Very noticed.
Several years ago (though it still happens today), several "stock" emails were being used for phishing bank account information. The original onslaught was largely ineffective, even though phishing wasn't common at the time. Why was it so ineffective? The "bank's" emails were laden with typos and inconsistencies. An email from a "big bank" simply didn't look "big bankish." Brand impacts everything. Make it part of your culture. This won't happen overnight, but will be rewarding to everyone.
"Prioritize" - ?
Skip the hoopla - the most important bits of "brand" are to have premium pricing power based on your value proposition and competitive differentiation in the mind of your prospects and customers.
Everything else is iconography and rah-rah...
Branding takes time but mostly all of what you have inquired are ways to emphasize your brand. The mostly important thing about branding yourself and your business is being consistent all the way down to your character and the fonts you use in your publications. Remember branding is a reputable image that the public can associate to your services and the ownership. For more information, please feel free to contact me to further discuss.
Yes, we should prioritize our brand on No.1 and where you are posting content or links must mention your business name also if possible business logo.
Branding is very essential especially where quality of service is assured.
Once quality is assured, you are meant to go all out to emphasize a brand. For me, I put the logo of my company on any material I'm sending to a client. I put my designation as "Team Lead at 9jasPR" on any personal email. I encorage my team members to use the official email for as many interactions as possible and we're also looking into making T-shirts and other wears.
Hello Alice,
Not sure what your business is, but before you spend a lot of money and effort on Branding...you should read this: http://www.themarketingacademy.ca/?p=817
To your success,
Kevin Toney
the Marketign Coach
Get a logo sorted and stick to same colours and fonts on your website, various media you use.
There are 3 parts in branding that you can focused on:
1. Strategy
Make a clear positioning about your brand:
- why you do your business?
- who is your target market?
- what kind of value proposition that you offer to customer which others can't offer?
all of this should be wrapped in a compelling story, so people could engage deeper with you.
2. People
- does your employee believe in what you believe? Build strong values and personality so your own people can believe in your brand. Your employee is your army, you have to believe in them and vice versa. Otherwise, they just working for money, which doesn't have more initiative to grow along with you and your business. It could impact the growth and customer engagement.
3. Visual
- yes, you can put your logo everywhere, but you must have a visual guidance and consistency towards the design. Print lots of name cards and spread brochures. You have to make sure that your brand is visible and clear enough to be seen.
Great excerpt from The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier - A brand is a person's gut feeling about a product, service, or company. It's not what you say it is. It's what THEY say it is. The foundation of brand is trust. Customers trust your brand when their expectations consistently meet or beat their expectations.
Hello Alice, Start with the right business strategy
Build your brand where it lives: in the minds of its consumers.
Good branding cannot save a poor product or business
Oke, before you brand anything, it is important to have a strong, clear answer to three simple questions, what are we selling ? , who is it intended for? , what is the benefit to customers?
The best time to plant a tree was ten years ago, and the second best time is today - Chinese proverb. Ideally you have been building your brand since years ago and now you are enjoying the effort. But if that is not yet the case, then it is still never too late. If you start today to build your brand right, you will benefit from it sooner than if you keep on delaying or used untested method. The market is never asleep, and so are your competitors. Start now and benefit sooner.
All of the above in addition to having 50, 100 and 150-word boilerplates that employees can use on their LinkedIn profiles and appear on all social media pages to ensure you're delivering a consistent message, that's on brand, across all traditional, digital and social media channels.
Most of my communications are branded, BUT let me add..
What you do is more important than your brand name or logo.
Customers couldn't give two hoots about your company name or logo.. although they do care they receive the quality expected from your brand promise and you are consistent with what your brand stands for such as how you treat your customers, the environment, business ethics with your employees, etc.
So do I make my brand a priority? No. I make the quality and integrity of what I do and promise a priority. The brand is merely a shortcut for people to recall who I am and what I do while connecting the dots and knowing what my business represents.
We prioritize our image and alignment for what we want people to perceive as our brand by tweaking what is done and how we do it. What that means for us is the brand follows not precedes what we do.
Best,
Carson