If you are struggling with how to grow your brand, this post will give you all the branding tips you need for success.
It’s no surprise that entrepreneurs and business owners are confused about what they need but when you take a step back from it, it’s actually pretty simple.
Branding is the art of shaping the meaning of your business in the mind of your audience to ultimately influence how they feel and their decisions so when you look at branding through that lens then branding decisions become a lot easier.
With that in mind, here are eight branding tips that you can use to actually shape the image and the meaning in the mind of your audience and their decision to go with your brand tip.
Branding tip #1: Give them meaning
Earlier we spoke about the fact that we don’t brand our businesses so that they look good we don’t brand them so that we can have a website or to put some graphics on the side of a van or in a shop, we brand our businesses to give our audience some context as to what our brand should mean to them including what value we’re going to bring and what difference we’re going to make in their lives.
We can’t assume that they’re going to know what our brand should mean to them we need to give them that meaning
Branding tip #2: Define your brand traits
Most businesses go to market unprepared.
They get themselves their logo, their website and then they go into their tactics.
Whether that’s social media marketing, whether it’s Facebook ads or google ads and that’s how they approach the market. They don’t have too much understanding or consideration for who their audience is: what they like, how they connect and what type of personality they have.
Before you can resonate with who your audience is, you need to understand them and you need to understand what they’re attracted to, what kind of characteristics and traits they’re drawn to. When you understand that about your audience and you understand what role you want your brand to play in their lives, then you can use characteristics and traits to associate your brand with that.
When you do this, you would create products and market your business to reach your target audience;
3. Identify the emotional association
We all believe that we’re rational creatures that understand what’s going on. We take all of the information that’s in front of us and we make logical decisions but that’s not how our brain works. We make emotional decisions because we are emotional beings We justify with that logic that we think. We make our decisions but we actually make our decisions based on emotions so therefore it’s really important that you understand what emotion you want your brand to evoke from your audience and what emotion you want your brand associated with. It can be hope, excitement, a sense of achievement, a sense of desire to succeed in life and a lot more.
What kind of emotions are going to trigger the feeling that you want your audience to have and how are you going to align your brand with those emotions.
It’s really important that you understand what emotion you want your brand associated with and keep those emotions in mind when you’re communicating tip
4. Craft image shaping messages
In our experience with the businesses that we’ve dealt with, the entrepreneurs and business owners tend to invest more in visuals than they do in messaging and copy but the reality is that the most influence a brand has is through its messaging and copy so you really need to understand the image that you want to own in the mind of your audience and then shape your messaging, shape your copy to provide that image. This is really something that we spent a lot of time on with clients and it’s really with that understanding of the importance of copy and messaging that we tell you to treat it with all urgency because it is really helpful in making your brand stick in people’s head.
5. To grow your brand, design the experience
Whether or not somebody buys from your brand or somebody goes from being a prospect to a customer is largely influenced by the experience that they have with your brand.
Most businesses don’t take the time to map out and design an experience. If you want to influence your audience, influence how they feel about your brand and what meaning they associate with your brand and what decisions they take after encountering your brand, then you need to design that experience that they’re going to go through so everything from your logo to your website to your messaging to your shop front or any collateral that you might have.
What is the e-commerce experience that you bring them, through what kind of email drip series do they get from you, what kind of follow-up service do you have, what kind of after-sales service or customer service that have these are all part of the overall brand experience and if you don’t take the time to map out that journey that they’re on to map out your customer journey and design that experience well then they won’t have an experience that you want your brand aligned with? Understand the journey that they’re on understand the experience and the feeling that you want them to have and design the experience to give them that feeling.
6. Earn trust with value
The days of push marketing and direct response marketing have passed. They’re irrelevant anymore.
You need to be able to connect with your audience and resonate with them and even if your brand is selling a commodity you can still do that by giving them value through the context in which they will use that commodity.
Giving that value is absolutely paramount you need to connect with your audience. You need to resonate with them and earn trust. If you give value and show up every day with paths that really help them along in overcoming their challenges on a day-to-day basis, they will remember you, you will earn trust and you will be top of mind in that buying decision
7. Be real
There’s nothing too much that you have to do here within this tip.
it’s really just about stripping back those superlatives and using language that sounds conversational and not trying to put on a facade and be something that you’re not.
If you think about how we connect with other people well, we tend to push back from people who put a facade on and pretend to be something that we’re not. We tend to gravitate towards those who feel real. Those who speak to us like we’re humans and don’t try to put on a facade or pretend to be somebody that they’re not.
If you’re able to take that into your business, then your audience will feel that. They’ll feel it in the copy that you use in the engagement on social media and they will have a soft spot for your brand.
8.Take the time to strip everything back
Take time to step back and understand the brand your business is all about. Creating context and meaning for your audience then you can filter everything through that so every social post you put out, every article you write, every email that you write can be filtered through the idea that you are providing meaning and context to your audience,
Over time they will position your brand in their mind. It will be based on an image that you want to own in their mind and ultimately that’s how they will see your brand.
Many small businesses struggle to make a name for themselves in the market. This blog post, however, is meant to provide advice on how to make your brand stand out from the competition. We hope you found this information useful and that it will help your business to grow and succeed! If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at Connect with us
