What is your company’s brand? What is its personality? Does your brand have a consistent brand promise? If you are like a lot of businesses you might get a variety of answers to these questions from your sales force¬––even from your marketing team. And that’s a problem. Because, if your team can’t effectively articulate what your brand is about then how will your prospects? Our Dallas branding agency can help you develop an effective brand strategy and spend your marketing dollars more efficiently.
Here are 10 things to consider as you evaluate your company’s branding:
1. Every Brand Strategy needs a Brand Insight
Most brand strategies are written without ever scratching the surface. Dig deep. Find your core. This is more than a collection of platitudes––Thrifty, Brave and The Low-Cost Leader. It’s your essence. A brand strategy is not telling your target what they want to hear. It’s forging a meaningful promise that is consistent with what your business is all about.
2. A Promise That Fits in an Elevator
Every brand needs a brand promise. It’s a shorthand summary of what your brand stands for. Think of it as an elevator pitch that puts your brand’s message to prospects in a neat little nutshell.
3. No Two-Headed Beasts
Commit to a clear, singular message in all your branding. Avoid brand promises with ampersands. Having just one point makes an arrow stick to its target.
4. Every Brand needs a Personality
This is more than what your stand for or what you excel at. This is about how your brand feels. Your vibe. Are you cool? Are you steady? A sage or a hipster? Does your brand have a swagger? Does it walk with a limp? Are you the expert? The advocate? Is your brand Tom Hanks or Tom Terrific?
5. The Wall Test
Put your collateral up on the bulletin board. Pin up your last four ads. Stick up that bus card from last year. And hang a screen capture of your website. There should be a color emerging. A big orange blob or a clean white blur. If, on the other hand, it looks like a United Nations meeting everyone shouting in their own language and wearing their native garb, you are in sore need of a brand look.
6. A Brand Nazi
Remember the Soup Nazi on Seinfeld? That guy was a total pain in the backside. And every brand needs one of these folks. It may be a marketing person or a standards manual and a strongly worded memo. But you need a referee on the field to make sure communications are on brand. Brand Champions are in short supply these days.
7. Don’t Ignore Your Business Model
Today how a company does business is a giant part of how their brand is perceived. Do you have a brick and mortar? Are you strictly an eCommerce company? All this shapes your brand.
8. Don’t Let Your Branding go Unmeasured
Brand consulting is not art, it’s commerce. You should use all the metrics available to measure how your branding is impacting sales, conversions and inquiries. Branding is not about getting a shiny new logo and forcing everyone to use Gil Sans in their e-mails. It’s all about ROI.
9. Keep Your Enemies Closer
Even if you have the most innovative, highly desired product on the market, you can expect new competitors to enter the market with a better value proposition. Be ready.
10. A Brand Is Never Stagnant
A well-balanced brand is always moving forward. This means that even a brand like Sears or Sony cannot simply be what they have always been. Successful brands are constantly re-inventing themselves.
We are a Dallas Branding Agency specializing in brand consulting and ferreting out unique brand insights.
