The brand of a business is how it gets recognized and how it makes an impact in the market. It’s not just a visual style and not just a tone of voice. It’s the principles at the core of the business and the proposition of value that it makes to its market. It’s not just in marketing material, either. Branding should be applied in more places than you might imagine.
Photo sourced by Clem Onojeghuo
How you communicate
Marketing and branding aren’t all done through content dissemination, we know that. The public perception of a business’s image is informed by every interaction with them. When it comes to communicating publicly, social media is one of the best ways to ensure you brand what you say. When messaging to consumers, to potential employees, and even within your industry network, make sure the value of the business shines through. Even if you want your messaging to have a conversational or even an amusing tone, as can work well on social media, don’t contradict the brand.
The customer experience
A brand is about more than what you say, too. It’s about what you deliver and how you deliver. Your products and services have a huge impact, but what about the journey that a customer takes to get to them? How does that reflect on elements of a brand like professionalism, reliability and the like? As https://www.candidsky.com/ says, usability is at the heart of website design. If you lack it, you don’t just have a bad website. You have a bad customer experience. That bad experience can lead to some unpleasant assumptions about the rest of the business’s practices, too.
How you’re represented
When your customers get in touch with the business, are they likely to first be greeted by an employee of yours? If so, that’s one more reason to make sure your employees are a happy bunch that are onboard with the ethos of the business. They have to be both convincing and engaged in helping the customer, after all. But even if your customers or clients come directly to you, employees can build or damage your brand. In a best-case scenario, they can be some of the most powerful brand ambassadors for a business that cares about them. In a worst-case scenario, poor treatment of employees will eventually get out and will cause reputational damage to the business.
In person
If you’re serious about getting your brand out there, you will realize that attending and hosting events and meeting people in real life is as important as any digital or traditional media marketing. You need to be able to work a room, as http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ says. To do that, you have to really believe what you’re saying, and work on personal presentation and public speaking skills to deliver it with the poise and professionalism expected of a business owner.
The most important thing about establishing a brand with all the methods mentioned above is that you keep it consistent. Your social media accounts can’t be giving a different vibe from your website. Your staff can’t be saying completely different things from you. Make sure a central brand informs each of the tips above.
