Your Brand is everything important to you and your business, but sometimes it’s hard to define between sales and marketing goals. In this article, learn how to identify your brand identity.
Your brand is so much more than how you describe it, it’s your company’s identity perceived by you and your customers.
Marty Neumeier, a well respected brand innovation author, says “a brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or organization.”
Camille Baldwin, star of Breaking Brand, says “brand to me is identity. It’s all of the things that make up identity, your values, your principles, who you are, your characteristics and your intention.”
Your brand is your business’ identity and how users see you.
But what if your business’ identity and how users see you don’t match up?
Let’s dive into how to make sure your brand’s identity matches how users see you and how to stand out from your competitors.
Align Your Brand Terminology with Search Data
A lot of the companies I’ve worked with in the past get stuck on this. They want to market themselves as one thing, but it doesn’t match the user search behavior or understanding of the brand.
Let’s say for example that you run a travel agency. Your agents are experts in what they do and are your ‘why’ factor for why customers choose your business instead of booking on their own through Expedia or Kayak.
Do you call your employees ‘travel agents?’ Is that enough to capture the expertise they offer? Or do you go with something else like ‘travel consultant?’ As your employees offer more than what you would get from a typical travel agent.
While ‘travel consultant’ sounds nice in the boardroom, it does not match search trends. Travel agent searches easily (and significantly) outpace searches for travel consultants.
Listen to the data. If you’re set on using ‘travel consultant,’ make sure to use it interchangeably use it with ‘travel agent’ when developing content or creating a paid search strategy. You’ll still use the terminology everyone loved in the boardroom, but you’ll also find common ground with the consumer and your marketing efforts.
Figure out what your brand is -- what its best selling point is -- and have some data to support it. If you have travel experts, but users refer or search for ‘travel agents’ instead, try to fit ‘travel agents’ into your online marketing materials. If users are looking for more unique travel experiences and you can provide that, see how that works into your brand voice.
Understand why your consumers come to you
Think about your business. You know what you do for customers and how you help them, but why do they choose you from all the rest? The why is your selling factor.
The ‘why’ may not always be entirely obvious. If you are a travel company specializing in tours, you may think your great product is the why factor.
But what if you found out a different story from customers? Yes, they enjoyed the tours, but they chose your company because tours were always on sale.
Your brand isn’t what you thought it was or wanted it to be. Your brand identity is dictated by the sales team and that potential customers only choose you based on price, but this is not a long term strategy.
Speak with customers. Learn what they are looking for and how your brand can cater to their needs. According to Simon Sinek, the author of Start with Why, brands that last often cater toward an identity of the consumer. Consider Apple. Consumers love Apple, because of the brand, which is why they were able to successfully pivot away from a purely computer company. Users identified with the messaging of breaking the status quo and going against the grain. Even after Steve Jobs left and Microsoft dominated the computer industry in the 1990s, there were still users who were faithful to Apple products despite the challenges. A successful brand goes beyond product descriptions and fancy commercials to create a lasting bond with consumers. Apple has a deep understanding of its target audience, allowing it to anticpate their needs and connect with them in a meaningful way. Let’s say you run a travel company specializing in tours for travelers in their 20s who live in the EU and Australia.
What are these travelers looking for? Research has shown that younger travelers are seeking more authentic experiences that allow them to be active, immerse themselves in the culture and have ‘gramable moments. Can you offer these travelers authentic experiences? Does your creative highlight this?
Your travelers are from both the EU and Australia. Are travelers from both regions interested in the same thing? It’s most likely that they are not.
Living within the EU gives many EU citizens the ability to travel frequently or cheaply. It’s likely that they have already seen Paris, Rome and many of the other major European cities. These users may be more interested in the smaller, more unique tours over the larger tours that stop in all the major cities.
For Australians, traveling to Europe is much more expensive and not a frequent opportunity. These users are more likely to be interested in the longer tours that travel to Europe’s major cities.
Do you understand your localized audience enough to push the best creative and product to them?
Find your ‘why’ factor through understanding what your consumers find important and make that a part of your brand voice.
Think Simple
Make your brand message stick.
Just do it.
I’m loving it.
Think Different.
Because you’re worth it.
Can you hear me now?
All these taglines are simple, memorable and get to the point. I’m sure reading those taglines you were able to easily picture the brand behind it. Your brand should be clear and concise. This may sound easy, but prepare to do a lot of brainstorming on this one. What may sound good, may not translate well. If you can’t explain your brand concept in a simple tagline, you need to go back to the drawing board.
Live and breathe your brand
You brand, your tagline, will shape everything you do. From how you approach marketing and content creation, to how you decide what projects to focus on in the next fiscal year.
L’Oreal’s mission is ‘offering all women and men worldwide the best of cosmetics innovation in terms of quality, efficacy and safety. By meeting the infinite diversity of beauty needs and desires all over the world.’ They believe that beauty is universal and every person is worth it.
Taking a quick look at their Instagram feed, it’s clear they live this mantra. Their content is a mix of carefully crafted content along with images of real customers and employees keep their feed authentic.
Find your brand voice. Make it truly reflect what your company can uniquely offer consumers. By highlighting what makes your offering unique through everything you do, your brand will stand out in the endless social feeds.
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