Less marketing, more branding!
To operate a successful business, you need a good brand. A good brand is one that is memorable and whose message resonates with us whether for good or bad reasons. And whatever size your business is, you need to establish a strong and consistent brand that will appeal to your customers and prospective customers in order to achieve continued success.
However in recent years traditional branding and brand building has been harder, this is largely down to the popularity of social media and of course a more competitive market place with more discerning potential customers.
And to put this in context, from when we wake up to the time we go to bed, we’re exposed to between 5,000 and 10,000 marketing messages, from labels and adverts to commercials and pop-up banners. If it sounds like a lot, and it probably does, that’s the point. We’ve trained our brains to ignore most, if not all, of them. If not, we’d probably go insane. But to build a brand, you need people to stop and take notice.
But taking the amount of work you need to do out of the equation, building a good brand and creating tangible impact comes down to the following 10 things:
- Be authentic
- Develop a good reputation
- Think big stay small
- Put the customer first
- Innovate and be bold
- Tell a story
- Add a personal touch
- Be responsive
- Don’t broadcast - interact
- Maintain availability
The days of just stamping your logo on everything and saying that’s it for our branding activities, are very much over. The future of branding is fluid and engaging. You must respect your customers' intelligence by not giving everything away up front. Generate some intrigue and allow them to unearth more about your brand for themselves. This is the way to foster ambassadors who revel in telling other people what they have discovered.