Brand Your Business
When customers see your logo or hear your name, what impressions do they get? How does your branding message impact their cognitive and emotional response to your company?
Customer perceptions and relationships are determined to a large degree by your ability to create a consistent image that is conveyed through every interaction and activity that involves your company. Branding your business is more than a single campaign; it is continuous and it defines the relationship between you and your customers, prospective customers, employees, vendors and the media. According to Charles R. Pettis III, president of BrandSolutions Inc., “A brand is a proprietary visual, emotional, rational and cultural image that you associate with a company or product.”
While branding often is associated with highly visible expensive campaigns, it also can be effective by using available resources and starting small.
Branding insights for IT marketing:
- What is your current message? Even if the term “branding” has not been part of your marketing plan, customers still associate a brand image with your name. Assess your brand strengths by reviewing customer service files, interviewing sales representatives and asking clients about their perceived strengths of your company. Since branding elicits emotional and intellectual responses, get information about how consumers think and feel about your business.
- Craft your brand. What are the positive qualities that set you apart from your competition? Build the foundation of your brand around your unique selling points so your message reflects what you do best, and apply these concepts to every customer interaction including packaging, marketing, advertising, sales, customer service, public relations and the web.
- Brand to the individual and the community: Successful branding reaches people both on a personal and a community level. Personal branding impacts consumers when they are in contact with your business, such as talking with a sales person, walking into your showroom and visiting your website. Your impressions create a personal relationship that can be broadened through referrals and word of mouth. Community branding occurs when you create a consistent, repetitive association to your company through the use of marketing materials, advertising and public relations.
Specifics for Developing Your Brand Strategy
Be Consistent: Consistent messaging reinforces a brand. Burnish your image by efficiently and consistently telling your story. Tech companies find this particularly difficult because effectively describing sophisticated technologies is challenging.
All marketing materials should be consistent in use of design elements, inclusion of your logo and slogan, artwork, colors and typefaces, as well as the way your company name is displayed and your products are described. Strive for the same look and feel in your online and offline presence.
Brand Internally: Executive management’s commitment to develop a culture that supports the brand is fundamental to the success of this initiative. According to a study conducted by the Chartered Institute of Marketing, companies that have consistently succeeded in building brand equity view their brand as a central organizing principal for all company activities, not just something they sell to consumers.
Internal awareness throughout your organization can begin by distributing a brand-positioning document to your staff and reinforcing this message through company-wide meetings.
Infuse Your Brand in the Company Culture: Brand messages that are integrated into the daily company culture and are consistently reflected throughout an organization strengthen a brand’s equity. The philosophy behind your brand must permeate your entire organization for it to take hold, and to morph as your company evolves. Consider e-Bay, Google, HP and Microsoft: culture at these companies is reflected in all of their external and internal communications, from advertising to corporate gift giving to company meetings.
Use tools to spread your message.
- Advertise in as many vehicles as your budget allows. Frequency is important.
- Distribute press releases to trade and consumer publications on a regular basis. Craft them to demonstrate your expertise in providing solutions to customers’ challenges.
- Create a strong online presence. Give your target market ongoing reasons to visit your website. E-seminars and email marketing can establish and perpetuate your visibility.
- Give away products, promotional items and information so your brand becomes omnipresent.
- Sponsor media, industry, community, cultural, sports and other events.
- Offer incentives to tell others about your products and services (for example, give discounts to customers who refer prospects).
- Develop cooperative relationships with other businesses whose products complement yours.
While large companies can allocate a variety of resources to branding initiatives, smaller companies with tight budgets can still effectively build their brands by consistently delivering a positive, powerful message within the organization and its community.
By Teddi Converse, Principal, tc.communications