Branding often gets tied up in semantics and you know that’s the debate of what branding means, what marketing means, and what branding versus marketing means. When you have professionals debating so heavily about what one thing means to the other then 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 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 ultimately their decisions. When you look at branding through that lens then branding decisions become a lot easier. With that idea and with this article let me give you seven branding tips that you can use to shape the image and the meaning in the mind of your audience and ultimately their decision to go with your brand.
Give Them Meaning
To double down on what I said before we don’t brand our businesses so that they look good. We don’t brand our businesses 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, 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.
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, 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 that they have but 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 meaning and ultimately resonate with who your audience is. Define what traits you want your brand aligned with. Write them down and build your brand with those traits in mind.
Identify the Emotional Association
We all believe that we’re rational creatures that we all 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. We are emotional beings. We justify with that logic that we think we make our decisions on but we make our decision based on emotions. Therefore you must understand what emotion you want your brand to evoke from your audience and what emotion you want your brand associated with. It might be hope, it might be exciting, and it might be a sense of achievement, a sense of desire to succeed in life. What kinds 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? You must understand what emotion you want your brand associated with and keep those emotions in mind when you’re communicating.
Craft Image Shaping Messages
Business owners and Entrepreneurs 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. You need to understand the image that you want to own in the mind of your audience and then shape your message and copy to provide that image in the mind of your audience. I can’t stress this enough and this is something that I spend a lot of time with my clients with. It’s with that understanding of the importance of copy and messaging and how influential copy and messaging is in shaping the mind of your audience.
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 understand this. Most businesses don’t take the time to map out and design an experience but if you want to influence your audience then you need to design that experience that they’re going to go through, everything from your logo to your website, your messaging, 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 you have? There 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 and design that experience 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.
Earn Trust with Value
The days of push marketing and direct response marketing have had their heyday. I’m not saying that they’re irrelevant or that they don’t work and in fact, if you’re going to have a cohesive strategy then they should be part of that strategy but they have had their heyday and today if you don’t have a strategy that is about giving value then you’re missing out. You need to be able to connect with your audience and resonate with your audience. 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. Today giving that value is paramount. You need to connect with your audience. You need to resonate with them and you need to earn trust. If you give value by helping them along in overcoming their challenges on a day-to-day basis then they will remember you and you will earn trust.
Be Real
There’s nothing too much that you have to do here within this tip. It’s 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 who speak to us like we’re humans and don’t try to put on a façade or pretend to be somebody that they’re not. If you’re able to take that into business then your audience will feel that. They’ll feel it in the copy that you use in the engagement that you have on social media and they will have a soft spot for your brand. Take the time to strip everything back and be as real as you can be.
There’s no shortage of articles on how to market your business or how to build your brand. It can be overwhelming but if you take the time to step back and understand that branding your business is all about creating context and meaning for your audience then you can filter everything through that. Every social post you put out there, 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 that will be positioned based on an image that you want to own in their mind and ultimately that’s how they will see your brand.
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