BrandingPage Archives - PROSAR Inbound Inc.

20 December 201913 August 2021

3 Ways to Strengthen Your Brand

Brand is not merely a cool logo. Branding is about creating an appropriate image for, and experience with, your organization; and positively positioning your organization in your audience’s mind.

Effective branding grabs your target audience’s interest and helps them to realize that you are of value to them, and then nurtures an ongoing relationship.

Without an actual brand and content strategy and ongoing stewardship, even well-crafted promotions can fall flat and even alienate your audience.

Here are three criteria to follow when defining your brand and promoting what makes you distinct.

Corporate Messaging

From your tagline to your corporate mission to the content on your website — what you say and how you say it is critical. What is the tone of your organization? Authoritative and instructional, understanding and guiding, carefree and irreverent… the goal is not simply to inform or impress, you should communicate with the intention of making relationships.

Consider your audience (which may include several distinct market segments) and try to engage with them in your writing and messaging. Even with different people creating content, each with their own voice, they can still infuse a corporate tone and positioning through their material. A branding strategy should explicitly outline the messaging objectives, desired corporate tone aa well as slogans and catch phrases.

For your audience to trust your organization, they need to identify or connect with you. Engage them with targeted content that is genuine and relevant to your company. Storytelling is a very effective means of communicating your message and brand, but that doesn’t mean telling tales. What you say and how you say it can provoke tremendous impact and stir emotion within readers; and they can usually tell when it is honest and legitimate.

Consider the User Experience

Whether your customer is on your website, on the phone or on-site, what do you want them to think of your organization? In addition to the branded identity and corporate messaging, does the environment reflect the essence of your organization? Do interactions with your company support your positioning?

The best logo and tagline will have little lasting effect if staff, service, store décor, website design, promotional email wording, etc., are not all aligned to reinforce the brand.

Considering what your brand represents as an experience supports your “story” and helps your audience engage with your organization. This leads to stronger relationships and greater loyalty.

Consistency

The purpose of branding is to go beyond simply creating awareness, and recognition. The goal is to nurture a trusting and loyal relationship. It’s a comprehensive undertaking that requires consistent use of your branded identity, in all formats.

It all stems from your mission, vision, value statement unique selling proposition, any guiding principles for your organization. A thorough understanding of what drives your organization and what it has to offer is the essence of your brand.

Content generation provides many digital options (web pages, blogs, emails, social posts, ebooks and brochures, whitepapers, etc.) and is an influential means of attracting and reaching out to your audience. Consistency in template designs as well as voice/tone help build a strong foundation for your brand (keep that style guide close at hand!).

An editorial calendar maps out what content will be written, by whom, how it will be published, and when. It allows a strategic approach (ensuring consistency in both frequency and focus) and overview to ensure you are creating content that is of value to your audience as well as supporting your brand.

A brand strategy requires ongoing monitoring and attention. It’s part policing and part promoting. Don’t be overzealous or near-sighted in your regulation. In these fluid times, acknowledge that things change and your brand strategy and implementation will need to evolve to stay current and relevant.

For further info on how branding fits into your marketing and sales process, read Understanding the Branding – Marketing – Advertising – Sales Relationship.

24 November 201713 August 2021

Understanding the Branding – Marketing – Advertising – Sales Relationship

PROSAR: understanding sales and marketing - image of a businesswoman pressing a floating unlock button

“It should be simple,” he lamented, “just help me sell more.” Ultimately, that is what most small- to medium-sized business owners want: increased sales. However, increasing sales over a longer period in a sustainable manner to help a business grow to the next level is anything but simple. It requires an understanding of branding, marketing, advertising and sales; and how they work together. The following is a brief overview of how I see it working at the top level, without delving into the nitty gritty of conducting and applying research, tactics, etc.

Overall, your marketing communications strategy should represent the philosophy of your corporate culture, it’s raison d’etre. Starting at your brand level, marketing guides your organization’s communications, behaviour and actions of all staff — it is the essence of your organization. This may seem rather esoteric, but it is fundamental to truly understanding the role of marketing and of branding; which are often mistakenly lumped in with advertising and sales. And, that’s understandable, they weave together rather intimately.

Branding is focused on creating an appropriate image for, and experience with, your organization and positively positioning your organization in your audience’s mind.

Marketing is primarily concerned with strategically communicating your service/product features and benefits, in a strategic manner that amplifies your brand. Marketing should ultimately be focused on satisfying customer needs (and addressing pain points), which should lead to greater sales. But it is not necessarily a linear relation.

Advertising, however, has a direct relationship with sales. If you run an effective ad campaign in your local paper or on Facebook, you can typically rely on an immediate and commensurate bump in sales. Advertising involves using broadcast media to persuasively inform your targeted audience of your product/service’s features and benefits, giving them a reason to buy… now.

Sales is more than the end result. It incorporates the frontline, efforts (human or digital) to assist your audience in making the buying decision. Whether you have counter staff and retail clerks on-site, or stylish infographics and pop-up incentives online, a strategic frontline is a major factor in nurturing and closing sales.

Clear? If it is, consider that branding guidelines should inform your marketing, advertising and sales initiatives to ensure that every touchpoint helps to properly position your organization. An aspect of marketing should be involved in advertising and sales to hone your message appropriately for your targeted audience (and segments therein). Facets of advertising can, and often should, be included in marketing initiatives. The ultimate sale is often envisioned and sometimes explicitly included early in the marketing process (remember your ABCs: Always Be Closing).

Analytics can help to see through the confusion and determine the success of specific initiatives. Especially online, you can track all manner of marketing and sales initiatives to better understand how and when your audience engaged, or didn’t. And automated marketing solutions can help you use this information to nurture prospects through to a sale and even customer loyalty. However, part of marketing relies on an intuitive understanding of the rather convoluted marketing process.

Back to our lamenting business owner: he’s right that the underlying objective of the marketing and sales process is simple: to differentiate your organization and position it positively to your main audience. The implementation is the tricky part — just communicate the right thing, in the right way, at the right time, to the right people. It’s not easy being right all of the time, but the alternative is relying on luck, and we all know that luck runs out.

Your target audience is not forced to do business with you, people have choice — often abundant choice. This makes marketing crucial to any organization seeking to be successful. Strategic marketing differentiates your organization from others and effectively communicates the features and benefits you offer. A good marketing plan, effectively implemented will get it right most of the time.

27 April 201728 October 2022

How Consistency Improves Your Branding – 5 ways to help your brand reach its potential

The purpose of branding is to go beyond simply creating awareness, with the intention of nurturing a trusting and loyal relationship. It’s a comprehensive undertaking that requires consistent use of your branded identity, in all of its forms. It’s no easy task to maintain consistency among myriad print, digital and broadcast touchpoints: letterhead, business cards, ads, billboards, brochures, website, blogs, social media accounts, emails, ebooks, posts, videos, TV, radio… Reputation manifests in everything that represents your organization, including the experience of dealing with your organization.

In our ever-changing digital world and increasing communication channels, consistency is an increasingly critical aspect in successfully establishing a trusted and sought-after product, service or organization. This article focuses on the role that consistency plays in successful branding. Here are five important considerations that relate to your brand consistency, and your ability to build a strong brand.

Start from the Heart

It all stems from your mission, vision, value statement unique selling proposition, any guiding principles for your organization. Ensure that they are authentic and aligned. A thorough understanding of what drives your organization and what it has to offer is the starting point. Your brand is the essence of what your market thinks of your organization; so consider what it is destined achieve, and what its brand should represent.

A full appreciation of your target market, their expectations and desires is also key. In order to be successful, you’ll need a receptive market; resonating with your audience paves the way to acceptance. Essentially, your brand should relate directly and explicitly to the belief system of your organization and that of your market.

Set the Foundation

Even small companies can find it difficult to ensure that everyone treats branding aspects in a consistent manner. Add to the mix associates, freelancers, consultants, suppliers, advertisers, etc. and the task of maintaining a common front becomes rather formidable. Create a Branding Style Guide (this is often done when a new Corporate ID is created).

A branding style guide doesn’t need to be a monumental tome with excessive rules and regulations, but should cover all typical print, digital and broadcast uses. It should also be reviewed and updated periodically (at least every 3 years) to ensure it is relevant to the media and technology you and your industry are using.

It identifies all items used in presenting your organization and sets guidelines for their use. Graphic and presentation components typically include logos, icons, colours, fonts, specific photos and illustrations, etc. People have a strong and lasting connection with graphics and colours, which explains the importance placed on logos and their use.

Content components incorporate tagline, slogan, lexicon, tone, etc. What you say and how you say it can provoke tremendous impact and evoke strong emotion. In order for your audience to learn to trust your organization, they need to identify with what you have to say. The vocabulary used and tone of corporate content can help to position your organization as genuine, knowledgeable, caring, expert, as a go-to source that can be relied upon. Note that having a consistent corporate tone doesn’t mean that all your content needs to sound the same. Individual voices and characters within your organization add depth and can help to attract targeted segments or personas.

Plan the Journey

Knowing where you came from and where you want to go makes it more likely that you’ll actually get there. To keep you, and the rest of your team, on track, plan how content and graphic identifiers will be used to build and support your brand. How will it get in front of your target market? What format will it take? When? Use an Editorial Calendar to ensure strategic, relevant and scheduled content.

Content generation provides many options (web pages, blogs, emails, social posts, ebooks, brochures, whitepapers, etc.) and is an influential means of attracting and reaching out to your audience. Consistency in template designs as well as voice/tone help build a strong foundation for your brand (keep that style guide close at hand!).

Chose your social media carefully, there are a lot of platforms, and just because they are cool or popular doesn’t mean it is a good fit for your organization. Also, consider the resources required to maintain an active and strategic presence.

All Aboard

Having the components, a guide and a plan put you ahead of most companies. But to make it all work successfully you need buy-in from your organization. Your brand may not be a strong rallying force of motivation (it should be!), but it must be embraced by all. The entire organization needs to understand and support your branding initiatives.

In order for your team to be part of the successful implementation of your branding plan, they’ll need access to info and files. All graphic components, the branding style guide and editorial calendar should be easily accessible to anyone who will be publishing and presenting on behalf of your organization.

Stay the Course

A brand strategy requires ongoing monitoring and attention. It’s part policing and part propping. You need to ensure that your team is adhering to the style guide and maintaining the image and voice to properly position your organization. You’ll also want to identify where the brand is weak and might require additional support.

Don’t be overzealous or near-sighted in your regulation. In these fluid times, acknowledge that things change and your brand strategy and implementation will need to evolve to stay current and relevant.

Do you have any thoughts on brand consistency or other considerations that could be added to this list?

Image Credit: mindscanner / gettyimages