What is a brand?

A brand is a name, term, symbol, design or a combination of these used by an organisation to identify it or its products as unique from others. It acts as an identity and signal, communicating many messages to the market.

Therefore, brand identity is its ‘personality’ in context of your target market. In other words, it’s a brand’s characteristics as sees by the market. Every business has one, although some are more subtle and others are very in-your-face.

It’s very important for a brand’s success to have a solid, well supported identity as it allows the target market to relate to it. People are emotional beings and this comes across in their buyer behaviour, so therefore, if a business wants their product to appeal to a certain customer, the identity of the brand must offer a relevant characteristic that is pleasing and favourable to them.

For example, popular cola soft drinks run intensive branding campaigns with their product on the beach with people enjoying summer, with the intention that their brand will become associated with ‘fun times’ and ‘enjoyable experiences with friends’. This trait, which is an element of brand identity, means that customers will recognise a relatable characteristic, and associate their happy emotions with a product that naturally lends itself to that situation.

Five Dimensions Of Brand Personality

Research into the marketing and psychological aspects of branding date back to the 60s, 70s and 80s, and identify five main brand personality traits, known as ‘The Big Five’, which encapsulate the main categories of identity.

How a consumer interprets all brand messaging is how a brand identity is defined, and the definition tends to focus on one of the following traits.

(1) Sincerity

Down-to-earth, genuine, honest, and comfortable.

(2) Excitement

Exhilaration, adrenaline, fun, stimulating and sporting.

(3) Competence

Reliable, trustworthy, successful and intelligent.

(4) Sophistication

Upper class, cultured, charming and posh.

(5) Ruggedness

Outdoorsy, tough and strong.

Regardless of which category, a brand identity can significantly impact a customer’s interaction and emotional connection with a specific product or organisation.

How To Develop A Brand Identity

An identity of a business, a product or brand functions very similarly to that of a person. When you think of a person, you can list off all of the qualities they have that come across to you when you interact with them. For example, witty, smart, fun, outgoing, frustrating, and so on. These qualities can be both negative and positive, and the way you were able to come to the conclusion of these adjectives lies in how you’ve interpreted the signals they projected through their actions. For example, you would label someone as fun, because they shared an experience with you that you enjoyed, or label someone as frustrating because they were difficult to get along with.

It works the same with a brand. The best way to establish, uncover and promote a brand identity is to begin describing the traits and characteristics that come to mind. Then you (as the owner of that brand) must leverage messages and actions which act as signals to the target consumers to allow them to discover and interpret those characteristics and relate your brand to those traits.

Branding Elements

Branding elements are the physical identifiers of a brand, such as design, images, colours, font, name, shaping, spacing and so on. Consistency is key here: once you establish your traits, as discussed above, the way your brand physically exists must be consistent with the characteristics you wish to portray.

For example, if you want a sporty, exciting brand, you may lean towards brighter colours, modern fonts and trendy logos, as opposed to, say, a conservative fashion brand which may choose a more formal name, a cleaner font, a more conservative colour palette, etc.

Customers are very intuitive, and therefore, brand identity and the associated branding elements must be planned very carefully to ensure that they both sync in such a way that the correct messages are being successfully and easily interpreted by the market.

Using A Voice

A ‘voice’ in this branding context refers to the entire suite of communication tools used to promote the brand identity and elements, above, to the market. Basically, it’s how you speak and interact with your audience and how they relate to this.

This can be the colouring, layout and words used on a website, the music and sound on a radio commercial, or the images featured on a print advert.

Again, consistency is very important here. It’s very essential that the voice matches the characteristics and traits originally established for the brand, so that the audience isn’t the victim of mixed or conflicting messages.

Write A Branding Guidelines Document

A ‘branding guidelines’ is a document where all of the branding elements, identity and voice are clearly written out in detail. It provides the ‘go-to’ guide regarding everything about a brand, from design, exact colours, tone, images, sizing, backgrounds, tag lines and correct use.

As mentioned above, for a successful brand and strong identity, consistency is paramount so that the audiences are not receiving mixed messages or incorrect signals. The market is already cluttered with noise, and so it’s very important that a business sharpens their message to be so specific that when a customer interacts, they interpret the message positively and correctly.

A branding guidelines document ensures that all of the branding is used correctly so that the entire marketing effort is heading in one, uniform direction effectively. Making this document easily accessible internally within a business ensures that everyone working on promoting the brand is doing so in the correct manner.

Every business has, or should have, a distinct and unique identity which makes it appealing to their customers, and it lies in a solid branding program to ensuring your brand’s personality stands out from the crowd.

Christopher Melotti
Freelance Copywriter at Melotti Media.

http://www.melottimedia.com.au

Building Business Relationships With Your Customers

The Foundation to Any Type of Business

Constructing healthy business relationships assists you to increase your sales, build up pioneering ideas, and to find out new ideas to expand your business. Whether it is offline or online, it does not matter what type of business you are in. Here are 10 useful tips for building better business relationships.

1. Join Local Organizations

Your chamber of commerce, clubs or non-profit groups with related interests as you are all great places to begin and to make your contacts. You can become a volunteer for a good foundation, always be energetic in your group of people or even resort to banging on doors. If there’s not a group near you, then start with a new one.

2. Set Goals

You should know what you are eager to accomplish from a particular company. Do you desire to meet up with your forthcoming clients, suppliers, potential associates, or job applicants? Setting goals will definitely assist you to evaluate whether that company is right for you or not.

3. Be Prepared

In any circumstances, where you are going to meet new clients, meet them with an open mind and a welcoming approach. Also, bring your business cards and be prepared to explain what your business does in a trouble-free language. Always meet everybody with a smile along with proper eye contact and a handshake.

4. Create a Referral Program

Once you have built your business relationships and have trustworthy clients, you can then reward those clients who propel more business to your way. Offering things like future discounts or other rewards will make your clients feel valued anytime they drive you business.

5. Harness Technology

Contact Management Software, or CMS, can assist you to keep a track the details about your business contacts so that you don’t have to remember the details of their businesses along with their personal details as well. With CMS you can set up reminders for actions like sending birthday cards or e-mailing them to inform them about your newly started services etc.

6. Follow-Up

When you meet up someone you would like to get to know about them, follow-up. Use social networking sites, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook to keep connected with them. Follow each other, send direct messages, or like their posts. You will also get an exposure to that person’s network of contacts for more connections.

7. Mingle

Never squander all of your time at an occasion by discussing with one individual or group. Think of numerous ways to graciously end a discussion and move on. But firstly, obtain contact details from those you have been discussing so you can follow-up those clients later.

8. Keep in Touch

Business relationships are like flowers without fostering, they dry up and then die. Make it a point to frequently bond with your main clients whether by re-tweeting their tweets, follow each other on meeting for lunch/dinner or send an e-card to them on special occasions.

9. Aim to Give, Not Just to Get

Of course, you desire to get advantage from your business relationships, but that is more probable to take place if you have a liberal approach. Concentrate on how you can assist your clients, and you will discover that you are getting more than what you are giving.

10. Connect Offline

Linking on social media is a fine start, but for accurately building a business relationship, you require to squander time face-to-face. Propose getting together for coffee or a meal to share more ideas about your businesses and how you can work together to increase your productivity.

Discovering to construct better business relationships with clients needs time. You won’t have immediate accomplishment. But, if you follow these above strategies, you will discover within a few months that marketing unexpectedly turned out to be a lot simpler and your business is growing.

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