Creating a solid brand strategy is not easy. Almost every iconic company has had a bumpy ride. Founders of Tesla, Apple, and Amazon have likely gone through a fair share of struggle when it comes to branding. Yet, failure is a harsh reality that you can’t shrug off. Even if you have a perfect plan in place, you may fail to structure your brand as per your desires.
It’s highly likely for an innovative and well-researched product to fall flat in the market. According to Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, each year more than 30,000 new consumer products are launched with 95 percent of them failing. Constant product failure leads to termination of the brand.
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What Is a Brand?
Customers’ overall perception of your business is called brand identity. Jeff Bezos says it even better: “Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.”
Building a brand is a process. Brands do not become famous overnight. It is a steady journey of innovative projects, gradual lead enhancement, and word-of-mouth referrals.
How to Make a Successful Brand-Building Campaign
Trial and error eventually lead to reward. The key is to improve every time a branding campaign fails. This article highlights the five simple steps you can take to ace your branding game.
Define Your Target Market
Appealing to everyone while expecting maximum conversion rate in very little time is one of the biggest mistakes people make when building a brand. Stepping into the market with this mindset brings nothing but failure. A smart move is to identify your target audience. This step helps you solidify your message and craft a sound marketing strategy.
You have to evaluate the demographics, likes, dislikes, pain points, expectations, and behavior of your target audience, which you can ascertain by asking the following questions:
- What is the location of your target audience?
- What is your target audience’s perception of your brand?
- How do you want to change your target audience’s perceptions?
- Who else is competing for the loyalty of this audience segment?
- Do you offer any special features?
Determine Your Brand’s Mission
Your brand needs a mission statement, which defines the purpose of your brand’s existence. You can’t build your brand without telling people what it’s about. This statement will guide your brand-building process across all channels. It should be authentic, reliable, and proven. For instance, Apple has aspired “to bringing the best user experience to its customers through its innovative hardware, software, and services.”
Your mission statement must also be clear, focused, specific, and simple. The visual elements of the brand should reflect your mission statement. From the logo to the tagline to the digital flyers, everything must fall in line with the original mission.
In case you lack expertise in designing a logo, it is always better to seek professional help. You can hire a logo design company to revamp the visuals elements of your brand so that they reflect your mission statement.
Research Your Competition
Next, you have to figure out how to look better than the rest. Think about your unique selling point. You have to outline all of the qualities and benefits of your brand compared to competitors. There are four primary reasons to study competitors:
- It gives you a better understanding of customers’ expectations.
- It allows you to understand your shortcomings.
- It gives you a chance to improve your unique selling proposition.
- It will enable you to learn from competitors’ successes and failures.
Integrate the information you find into your marketing plan. Tell your customers what they are missing by choosing your competitor’s products or services. You can tweak your product in light of these findings.
Spot Your Value Propositions
A value proposition is a promise of value to be delivered by your products or services. It lets customers know why they should purchase from you, not from your competitors. If you are ineffective in declaring our value proposition, you will end up losing a significant number of customers. In fact, value propositions are so important that 69 percent of businesses-to-business firms have them.
It is extremely challenging to outline your distinct qualities in a concise statement. Your value proposition should be user-centric, engaging, and factual. Some benefits of having a value proposition are the following:
- It improves customer engagement and understanding.
- It attracts the right prospects and increases the quality of leads.
- It helps potential customers understand what your company offers.
- It creates a substantial difference between you and your competitors.
- It provides a clear message.
Come up with an exciting value proposition and watch your conversions grow.
Market Your Brand
Marketing is a tool used to create and maintain demand, relevance, reputation, and competition. You can’t launch a top-notch product and expect it to soar in the market without adequate promotion. It is vital to display your brand on as many channels as possible.
Digital media offers massive scope for marketing, and you must take advantage of all the opportunities it brings. You have to be creative with the marketing of your brand to expand its presence and reach. For example, you can sell merchandise for your brand by stating its exclusivity or by giving freebies to loyal customers.
Most business owners falsely assume that they will always remain a customer’s favorite because he or she never complains. This is the wrong mindset. You need to find ways to stay at the top of consumers’ minds. Even if you own an established brand, you must prioritize the needs and demands of your customers.
Final Thoughts
Brand-building is a continual process. You can’t design and leave it on its own to work well. Instead, it needs constant monitoring. The first few steps are always hard, but if you learn how to do it right, you will fall in love with the process.
By Evie Harrison
