Your brand is your promise to customers.
It tells them what they can expect from your products and services. Branding helps customers to choose when making their buying decisions, people want a brand they can trust. It’s what you stand for and why people should buy from you and not one of your competitors, this is why it needs to be different and stand out.Successful brands can connect with customers on another level.
Tip: Look at how their choice of colours, imagery, typefaces, etc evoke their values
You should also go online to businesses with poor brands and see where their branding falls short. You can learn from successful brands and avoid the mistakes of others. After this, you should evaluate back on your brand:- What are your core values?
- What promises do you make to customers?
- What is your unique selling proposition?
- What’s your place in the market and which customers are you targeting?
- What are your key messages?
- How can your brand values be communicated visually?
Your branding should impress.
Your brand identity should show your business and its values. Look at how it will be seen in every environment in which it will be used. Make it simple, less is more, so limit your colour and typeface choices. A startup, no matter how well-funded, will feel short of resources. Businesses should focus all its branding energy and resources on building up a single brand. Try not to create separate brand identities for the company and for each of its products. Multiple brands will complicate your energy and resources, and confuse customers. Tip: Get your domain name quick! As you’re considering alternative names, make sure you can get your domain. Check out our domain name registration to see if it’s available. When choosing a brand name you need to make a fundamental choice out of three:- The first is to select a name that’s descriptive of what you do – think WebMD, The Home Depot, 1-800-flowers, or Urban Outfitters.
- The second is to choose a name that says nothing about what you do, but is evocative. Evocative names employ suggestion and metaphor to bring to mind the experience or positioning of a brand. They are singular and creative, and make for powerful differentiators. For example brands like Yahoo!, Virgin or Apple.
- The third is to select a memorable, unique nonsense word. Examples of such whimsical, unique brand names include Google, Hotmail, Coca-Cola, Canon or Volkswagen.
Consistency underpins all successful brands.
Never compromise, live your brand values every day and safeguard your brand identity. Customers must be able to quickly distinguish your business and understand what it stands for. If you have employees, make sure they realise the importance of branding (provide training where necessary).Domino’s social approach is well-integrated – the brand’s Pizza Legends campaign allows people to visit the website, create their own ultimate pizza design, then name it and share it on social media. L’Oreal Now there is the expensive social campaigns, let’s look at a powerful internal use of social media. L’Oreal encourages its staff to use the hashtag #lifeatloreal to showcase the culture of the organisation. It is to help with recruitment but also retention, by putting all the perks of the job front and centre. This is a simple tactic, and one that other brands have adopted, too.People? Who needs em' when you've got Dom the Bot to keep you company?! https://t.co/47JjgCko3d pic.twitter.com/C54FMLEd86
— Domino's Pizza UK (@Dominos_UK) June 6, 2017
https://www.facebook.com/LOrealUSA/posts/1255978697774726:0 Nike Nike has an inspirational Instagram account that really catches the eye. There are numerous great videos, that showcase Nike’s athletes and the dedication needed to succeed. https://www.instagram.com/p/BU5Ehrhgqq7/?taken-by=nike KLM The most recognised social CRM experts in all of B2C marketing. The airline understands that customers want to be served in the channel they are using, not directed elsewhere. Recent innovations include Messenger integration, one of the first brands to think about bot strategy.Today's work location… not too shabby 😉 #lifeatloreal pic.twitter.com/vo9Pb2pnXN
— Aaman Birk (@AamanBirk) June 7, 2017
KLM’s social customer care famously started in the wake of the 2010 Icelandic ash cloud, when many flights were grounded. Response time is regularly the best in the industry and in late 2014, Karlijn Vogel-Meijer told the Festival of Marketing that last click attribution showed $25m had been generated from social media. Furthermore, customers have been able to pay via social media since early 2014. All in all, a committed and innovative brand on social. Paddy Power Now this is one to keep your eye on, on social media for it’s risky and humorous content. Whilst many gambling brands take an irreverent tone, Paddy Power is arguably the best at it, and the most risqué. Paddy’s posts range from the puerile to the outrageous, but guess what – they get shared a lot.You can now use @twitter to get onboard of your #KLM flight. pic.twitter.com/BuwIRLFbvr
— KLM (@KLM) June 7, 2017
At least there was some good news last week. pic.twitter.com/jQ74jTRkIY
— Paddy Power (@paddypower) June 12, 2017
If Theresa May is forced out of the Conservative party, who would want to inherit this mess? pic.twitter.com/vaPC1hNVAT
— Paddy Power (@paddypower) June 9, 2017