It’s difficult to read any marketing articles today without the mention of branding.
However, as often as the concept is discussed, few business owners really understand the potential power of their brand. Likewise, they simply don’t know how to build and leverage a valuable brand.
Consistent and Persistent
The reality is that a brand is not something that can be wrapped up and purchased off a shelf. Rather, it includes a number of objective and subjective elements appealing to customers’ reason, emotions, and expectations.
Because of these complexities, the only way to build a valuable and effective brand is to consciously work at the process over an extended period of time. That work starts with two things:
- A carefully developed strategy and,
- Selecting the elements you believe are important to your prospects and customers
Once that strategy is in place, every aspect of your marketing program will incorporate the details and tactics that build your brand in the eyes of your market. This reality means that each of those marketing details should emphasize and reinforce your brand. Achieving this goal calls for managed consistency and persistence.
In other words, you want the audience to see your company represented with the same colors, logos, voice, and look in every marketing piece, social media post, website, and advertisement. However, real brand equity requires a management commitment beyond the visual elements of your marketing materials.
Creating Expectations and Delivering on Them Every Time
While attention to detail is essential, truly valuable brands are not solely the result of brainstorming with a creative director. Management and employees of a company must consistently and repeatedly deliver on the message they are communicating.
McDonald’s became one of the world’s greatest brands because its founder, Ray Kroc, was obsessive about quality and consistency. He wanted the fries his people served to be uniformly delicious at every location across the country every time they were purchased.
If you are convinced about the importance of a brand, take the time to ensure yours is consistently delivering on what your marketing message is promising.
How do you do that? First, you want a customer to immediately recognize your company. This comes with professionally and consistently presented and carefully executed colors, taglines, materials, and all the other common marketing elements.
However, you want the recognition of your brand to evoke the right reactions and emotions in a customer. In other words, your brand equity is questionable if the strong recognition of your brand doesn’t create a positive feeling in those to whom you are marketing.
There are some large companies today that have spent hundreds of millions in marketing dollars and have recognizable brands, yet a number of those do not have the loyalty that investment should have created.
That failure most often lies in the reality that the marketing message, though consistently communicated, is at odds with the actual market experience dealing with the company’s people, products, and/or services.
No matter your budget, make branding a priority but approach it as an overall reflection of what your company consistently represents to your customers.
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