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Thanks to technology and the rapid adoption of social media and mobile devices, it’s now easier than ever to raise brand awareness for your business. However, you need to use the right approach to make the most of your brand-building campaign.
Traditional methods such as television and print media aren’t sufficient anymore. People today would rather be entertained by their tablets or smartphones. Moreover, the Internet never forgets, and people in this digital age are often quick to dismiss a brand they have decided they don’t like.
However, the main aim of brand-building today is the same as it was yesterday. It’s just that you need to be more resourceful to get through to today’s digitally empowered audiences.
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What Is Brand-Building?
Brand-building is the process of generating awareness about your company, its products, and its services using specialized strategies. Without it, your customers might never know your business exists.
Brand-building is essential for profitability. Also, it adds value to the business. It makes acquiring new customers easier, increases trust and loyalty, and provides your employees with a sense of direction and motivation.
Your brand is how other people, including customers, suppliers, competitors, and employees, perceive your organization. Moreover, your brand consists of three major attributes—a promise of value, a unique and memorable identity, and an emotional connection between your business and its customers.
Where to Start the Brand-Building Process
Just like building a multiple-story building, the process of brand-building requires a solid foundation. What’s more, branding requires honesty and trust.
Your customers aren’t going to believe in a brand that was started on a foundation of underhanded dealings and corruption. And if you think you can keep a shaky foundation secret today, just stand back and watch.
What’s more, you also need to determine your goals and objectives for your brand-building campaign.
- What are your expected targets? These will be valuable while assessing the success of the brand-building process.
- What are the core values of the business? What’s the most important thing for you as a business owner?
- What do you believe is most valuable to your target market?
- How do you intend to make a difference in the world?
Brand-Building Gives You a Competitive Advantage
A powerful brand will help you maintain an edge over your competitors both in B2C and B2B affairs.
In B2B, clients respond more to powerful brands and simple businesses. Building a robust brand is, therefore, important for small and medium-sized businesses.
Moreover, you will be able to take advantage of the best distribution channels, once you have a track record of successful brand-building behind you.
To give an example, imagine a customer surveying a massive display of similar products similarly priced from different producers. Most often, that customer will select their purchase largely based on the brand on the label. In short, great brand-building is essential for sales and profitability in the long run.
It Makes Building Connections with Customers Easier
Building relationships is what brand-building is all about. Moreover, it is one of the most complex yet essential activities in any business.
In order for a relationship to work, both parties must put forth effort and acceptance. Unfortunately, customers often find efforts by companies to build relationships annoying. However, once you have built a powerful brand, your relationships with your customers will grow naturally.
Then, you’ll be able to seamlessly introduce new products. Moreover, since your brand will be based on honesty, trust, and quality, the relationships you build with your customers and clients will be long-lasting, leading to long-term business success.
Tips for Building Your Brand in 2020
Now that you know what brand-building is and why it’s so valuable, you can begin this process for your company. But where should you start? Use the following tips to guide your brand-building efforts.
Give Attention to Your Logo, Mobile App, and Website Development
Your logo is among the most important visual aspect of your brand. It’s a symbol that represents your company and brings it into your customers’ minds with no additional information.
In order to support your brand-building efforts, your logo must be timeless. It should stand strong as trends come and go. It must also be authoritative, unique, memorable. What’s more, it should represent your business’s core values and mission.
If your logo doesn’t possess these qualities, then it won’t support your brand-building efforts. So change it.
When you do, choose the right partners to imprint your new logo on your company vehicles. For example, the people at https://www.craftsmenind.com/large-format-printing can get the job done right.
Also, change your mobile app and website to accommodate your new logo. Additionally, ensure that your website and app portray your brand’s colors and fonts. They should be pleasant to view and easy to use.
Build Your Brand on Social Media
More than three billion people globally participate with at least one major social networking website. Therefore, making good use of social media in your brand-building campaign to give your company global reach.
Some of your customers will naturally look for you on social media. Therefore, you must have excellent profile visibility. Moreover, to make the most of social media for brand-building, ensure that your message is consistent and strong over all major platforms.
Even better, link all of your social media pages within one multi-level brand-building strategy that encompasses Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram, as well as any other sites where your customers are likely to hang out. For example, depending on your target clientele, you might also want to target Pinterest, Snapchat, Tumblr, and others.
Maintain Open Communication Channels
Brand-building also involves creating an emotional connection with your clients. If all you do on your website, app, or social media channels is upload messages without listening to and responding to your customers, you’ll easily lose their interest. In other words, hiding behind your corporate authority won’t work for brand-building any longer. This will only alienate your audience.
Instead, open up channels for communication and feedback. Read, understand, and reply to messages and comments on social media. Personalize your emails, and reply positively to negative comments on review websites. This type of communication will help you appear more sincere. Moreover, it will enhance your brand-building efforts by making your followers feel valued. They will therefore be more inclined to buy your products.
Make Your Branding More Visual
Brand-building today has to have images, videos, slideshows, and other forms of engaging media. So if you have a business blog, add some images to your posts. Additionally, videos will enhance your brand-building efforts.
Moreover, when you use videos as a part of your brand-building, you don’t have to go all out with expensive editing software. Instead, spontaneous videos come across as more real. Thus, they help to build trust among viewers. Such is especially the case on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat.
Personalize Your Brand
Today’s customers are savvier than their predecessors. They see behind the curtain. Therefore, they won’t react to a product as they will to people.
Brand-building is all about building authentic relationships with your customers rather than always trying to entice them to buy your products. So tell the story behind the development of your brand and the struggles of its origin.
Use AI, Chatbots, and Other Forms of Immersive Technology
Humanizing your brand is valuable, but in some cases it it downright impractical. Hiring people to interact with customers around the clock every day of the year would be expensive. But chatbots can be invaluable in engaging customers. Chatbots and AI allow for conversational branding and communication at any time of day.
Try Working with an Influencer
An influencer is a social media guru who has a large following on major social networks. Such personalities are an excellent option for communicating the value of your brand, especially if their message is a good fit for your business. For instance, if yours is a fitness business, team up with a fitness guru on YouTube.
However, you might not have the budget for working with an influencers whose followers number in the millions. But a personality with ten thousand followers will still make a difference with your brand-building efforts.
Apply These Tips to Your Brand-Building Efforts
Use these seven tips for better brand-building in your business. A proper brand will improve your chances of survival, especially if you’re a new entrant in a market dominated by a few high-value players.
Moreover, always remember the importance of creating the human connection. Work toward building and sustaining long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with your clients and customers.
