Successful Branding - What You Should Pay Attention To
Purchase decisions are often heavily emotionally motivated and in most cases are made in favor of a brand that the consumer feels connected to.
The perceived basic and simple characteristics of a brand include, for example, the logo, the brand name, and also the slogan. To strengthen the emotional connection to your brand and products, as well as to maintain customer preference for your offering, you should pay attention to the smaller details in branding, as even the smallest changes can have negative effects on the company.
Consistent Brand Communication
Both in developing your brand and during a rebranding, consistently uniform communication is a key element. One brand name, one logo, and one claim that are used across all marketing channels. Because this is how you achieve the desired recognition value of your brand. Combine your visual branding with the appropriate brand voice, serious and professional or casual and funny, matching your products, industry, and target audience. Ensure that this basic tone runs consistently through the communication channels you use.
Consistent customer communication not only helps customers identify better and ultimately also benefits business objectives. You can even expect a positive influence on your website's search engine optimization. Google & Co. prefer search results that can be attributed to a brand, and brand entries rank more easily and better overall.
Stay True to Yourself
After a certain time, companies often begin to question their branding and frequently decide prematurely to make changes. However, this contradicts the continuity and stability preferred by customers. Customers do not necessarily expect restructuring, and too many or too extensive adjustments to branding can even be off-putting. Even if you feel the need to revise the brand, customers feel very comfortable with reliability. Even large brands stick to their branding for good reason: Audi - Vorsprung durch Technik; Haribo macht Kinder froh und Erwachsene ebenso; Red Bull verleiht Flügel.
Do You Still Want to Redesign?
Special care is required when rebranding your brand. You should always keep in mind that your existing brand creates a connection to current customers, and if you undertake your brand communication carelessly or without thought, this could well result in losing customers. You should in no case aim for a complete change of your company's brand identity. As in every good change management process, it is also advisable during a rebranding to explain this to customers and thus prepare them for it. Through good and reliable communication, your company creates the impression of good organization, which gives many consumers confidence. This way, you retain your valuable customers who remain loyal to your brand, and purchase decisions will continue to fall on your products.
Stand Out from the Competition
Differentiating your own brand from the competition is one of the core functions of successful branding. Good and outstanding brand communication effectively sets you apart from the competition. This way, you remain memorable to customers, and the decision falls much more easily on your products or services. As part of your branding and the associated message, you should also communicate and present the added value you offer.
Use your marketing strategically to make your brand and offering unmistakable and thus remain memorable. Show consumers what advantages they receive when they use your brand compared to another.
Design Your Website Professionally
A modern website is designed with an appealing look, is user-friendly to operate, and is technically soundly set up. Good web design considers not only fleeting design trends, but besides the good mix of text, images, graphics, and other design elements, above all user-friendliness and also user guidance. Simple guidelines for a well-structured website are high-quality images that match your brand and an informative mix of text and image components. Page-long text puts off visitors and is therefore not beneficial for the website, as it rather leaves a negative first impression.
The images used are, on the one hand, a design element, but naturally also convey a message. The visual language of your website can be a powerful tool within online branding.
Mobile optimization, clean development, and search engine optimization are other important pillars of your professional website.
Know Your Customers
No product and no brand can appeal to "all" potentially possible consumers. Defining a target audience and examining and precisely describing it is one of the fundamentals of marketing. Try to do this with the necessary depth of detail. Because the target group "over 70 and dog lovers" includes Prince Charles and Ozzy Osbourne equally.
The more precisely you define your target audience and the more you know about your potential customers, the more effectively you can design your brand communication. The appeal and the feeling of belonging will be greater.
Brand Knowledge and Identification in the Company
Your company is also represented by the entire workforce, and your employees also form part of your brand, so you should ensure that they can represent the company and brand accordingly. This is particularly evident in retail: sales staff at an English men's outfitter will cultivate a different customer interaction than employees in a sports store.
Clear Language
On the website and also on other communication channels, technical terms should be used sparingly where they make sense and are necessary for a correct description. Beyond that, you should always strive to speak to your target audience in as clear and understandable language as possible. At the center of brand communication are always the messages "what defines the company and the brand" and "what added value does the company or brand offer". Specialist content may show expertise at first glance, but ultimately confuses the customer. Keep it simple and understandable.
Careful Selection of the Brand Name
Especially when you are just starting out and choosing a name, exercise special care. This needs to be well thought out and cleverly chosen, because it should already tell as much as possible about your brand and also stand out against the competition. Choose a short name that is both easy to write and easy to pronounce, so that you are easy to find and customers can easily remember the name. Make sure there are no other companies already using this name to avoid confusion. Is the brand name fundamentally positively associated and can be linked to what you offer?
Take sufficient time here - because once established, the name of your brand can only be changed with considerable effort.
Branding Forms a Solid Foundation
A stable brand and matching communication form a very solid foundation for all further marketing activities. Further activities to achieve business objectives, primarily profit maximization and often also healthy business growth, can build on this. Dedicating yourself first to revenue increases, customer growth, and company expansion and then tackling the shaping and defining of the brand in a second step works less well.
