The basics of the branding

Building and managing a brand play is a significant role in making your business become a customer’s first choice.

The idea of a brand extends far beyond just your company / partnership / sole-business logo, it has his own core values and interacts with customers and suppliers. In fact, your brand creates and maintains your reputation and reflects your customers’ experience. The certain brands can build up emotional attachments, allowing for strong loyalties and even a sense of ownership from your customers and employees. This can help preserve employee motivation and boost your sales. In competitive markets only strong brands can make any business be noticeable.

If you want to create and manage a brand, you’ll need to concentrate on what your customers want and how you can deliver it. You’ll need to be steady in your service, answer promptly to every other point of contact customers have with you (phone calls, letters, faxes etc.) and understand what makes them buy from you.

How to start with brand creation

Unbeaten branding is about promoting your strong points, what you’re good at and what you believe in. For example:

• Your skills - you are excellent in …
• Something special in your customer service for …
• In your marketplace you providing the best value for money for …
• You occupy a niche market for a particular innovation of …

Be sure that you can always deliver your promises using your strong points which can be referred to your customers as “brand values”.

What your customers want

If you can match your brand values with your customers’ requirements - you are on the road to success!

What drives your customers? What makes them buy from you? In most cases, it’s not just low prices or performance. Location, your personality, availability, believes and other reasons can drive your customers to buy particularly from you. It is a very good practice to  ask existing customers what they like about doing business with you. Useful information on how to expand your business and brand can be obtained by asking potential customers what they look for in their buying decisions.

As soon as your brand values are in line with what existing and potential customers look for - you made a foundation of your brand. But if they’re not, you’ll probably need to reconsider either the benefits you offer to your present customers or whether you’re targeting the right people.

For example, a clothes shop that has high fashion as a brand value can capitalise on it if its customers and potential customers want to buy the trendiest gear. But if its customer base is made up of pensioners, it’s doubtful those brand values will be in line with its customers’ buying taste.

It is worth creating a document containing your core company values and benchmarks for how you want to operate and be seen to operate. Tell this to your employees to make sure you are all working towards the same goals, and re-examine this occasionally.

Building your brand

Once you’ve identified your brand values and your customers’ needs you can begin to construct your brand by consistently communicating your brand values.

Tell your customers

Keep in mind that every possible contact you have with a customer or potential customer needs to strengthen your brand values.

Key areas to consider are:

• your business name;
• names you give your products or services;
• any slogan you use;
• your logo;
• the style and quality of your stationery;
• product packaging;
• your premises;
• where and how you advertise;
• how you and your employees dress;
• how you and your employees behave;
• your company website.

If all these are reliably in line with your brand values, your brand will be strengthened. But if all of them are not in line, your brand - and your business - could be seriously spoiled. A brand makes promises to customers and if they aren’t fulfilled, your customers wouldn’t t want to buy anything from you again.

For example, Delightful Jewellery’s “Elegant” range may be beautifully produced, stylishly packaged and glamorously advertised in glossy magazines. Its brand values could be “classy, special, elegant”. But if staff are impolite or unprofessional on the phone, customers won’t think about Delightful Jewellery’s elegance - they’ll think about its staff’s impoliteness. As a consequence the brand - and possibly the business - will be diluted.

Your logo can be of particular meaning to customers. You should create a policy on its usage, making certain it is used time after time and its superiority is always preserved. This acts as a reassurance when customers are thinking about buying your products or obtaining them after purchase. Your logo can perform as an initial assurance of quality in these situations.

Likewise, make sure that you bear in mind the design and quality of your invoices and receipts, which can often be the last stage in a communication with a customer. This can have an effect on their willingness to give you repeat custom and even to pay on time.

Managing your brand

If you can’t take responsibility for your brand strategy then it’s a good idea to appoint an employee instead to do it for you.

Employees play a vital part in managing your brand because how they act has an important impact on what customers think of you. If your employees believe in what your brand stands for, they’ll be able to communicate it much more successfully to customers.

Keep employees engaged by setting up a suggestion scheme, or occasionally taking the time to talk about your brand and how your business is performing.

Constantly reinforce the message that what they do is important. And make sure they know that violating the promises to customers that your brand makes - even just once - can damage the brand and your business.

Outside your business

Get regular feedback from customers to learn if your business delivers on the promises your brand makes. Ask displeased customers or former customers as well - you can achieve beneficial information from them about how your brand is professed. Honest and constructive criticism can help you see where there’s room for improvement.

Reviewing your brand

A victorious brand can have a long life, provided it’s kept up-to-date and in line with customers’ requirements and expectations.

When reviewing your brand, remember that your customers and employees will have often built up an emotional connection to it, and even feel a sense of possession of it. It is therefore significant that any changes you make are vulnerable to their existing relationship with your brand. Use your findings from meetings with your customers, suppliers and employees to consider the wider insight of your brand.

If there are any inconveniences with your customers’ experiences, don’t be convinced to just change your logo (often mistakenly referred to as a “rebrand”) to solve them. This is a costly process and would not solve the problems, if they are focused on failings in your systems or staff training, for example. Remember that your brand represents the whole customer experience, not just your signage or stationery, and cannot be changed overnight.

Growth opportunities

The reviewing process can often give you a sign of areas into which you can enlarge your business. However, it is equally important to use the findings from your review to ensure if your brand can survive being stretched to other products or services. For example, if you find that customers powerfully relate your brand with particular products, it may be clever to present new products under a new or sub-brand.

To develop your business, you should persuade modernism and the development of your products and services. This will help you to stay in advance of your competitors and take action to the modifying needs of your customers. However, your brand should always support your core values and supply customers with a constant and trustworthy experience. Your brand may therefore become identical with innovation, but in itself may never change.

Budgeting for a brand

Creating and managing a brand can cost you as much or as little as you want it to. The cost of your time to set it up and manage it is the only area of spending that is guaranteed.

But it’s a good idea to set a budget, or else it’s simple to spend money without need. A budget will focus the mind and push you to prioritise your spending on your branding attempt.

The key areas you could budget for are:

• design needs, such as a logo, signage, business stationery or product packaging;
• your premises;
• your advertising;
• time you’ll need to spend with employees to make sure they understand your brand;
• any resources you’ll have to provide for employees to allow them to carry out what the brand promises;
• keeping your company website updated.

You don’t need to do everything at once. As long as employees understand and deliver what your brand promises, it stands a good possibility of success.

You can create stationery, logos, packaging and advertising quite cheaply if the budget is firm. However, it is a good idea to think about your future growth when developing your image as changing it later can prove costly. You may also find that customers and employees will have already built up a relationship with your brand, which can then make it more tricky to change.

Ten tips on branding

To build a successful brand you should:

• Concentrate on what your business accomplishes for its customers. Your brand is no good to you if it isn’t delivering what customers want.
• Take ownership of your brand. Pay attention to customers’ needs, but you should still control what you want your brand to mean to them.
• Be honest. If you don’t believe in your brand, no one else will.
• Keep your brand straight forward by focusing on a small number of key brand values.
• Be consistent. Every feature of your business should make customers feel the same way about you.
• Be thorough. Look at all your systems to make sure they help to support your brand.
• Involve employees. Make sure they understand your brand and believe in it.
• Communicate your brand. Make sure every advertisement, brochure and letter helps reinforce the same message. If you have a logo, use it everywhere, but make sure the quality is consistent.
• Meet and surpass what your brand promises. Failing, just once, will damage your brand.
• Manage your brand. frequently look for opportunities to make improvements. And don’t be afraid to make changes to reflect shifts in the way you do business or new trends in your market.

Tags: branding