Branding
What is a Brand
“A brand is the image portrayed and accepted in the market place – it is a combination of the identity achieved, the recognition gained and how people react on an emotional and physical level to what the product, service or company represents. The brand informs the prospective and existing customers of your values and distinguishes you from your competitors. The brand should be consistent with what it delivers. It should be unique, memorable and distinctive (Derek Stockley, 2006).”
In basic terms, your business brand represents the feelings and thoughts people have when they see or think about your business and your logo has a big part to play in this connection.
Your brand can be extremely powerful, it:
- Communicates the type of organisation you are
- Creates an emotional impact which connects and creates customer loyalty by confirming and reassuring you are who you say you are
- Represents your value and services provided
- Distinguishes you from your competitors
- Makes it easy for people to recognise you
- Ensures a consistent message is passed on by word of mouth
- Consistently creates particular impressions, images and ideas in the mind of customers
In plain language it is the way your business expresses itself to the outside world. As an example Coke “is it”, Woolworths “the fresh food people”, Red Bull “gives you wings”. I’m sure you can think of many more.
Your website, therefore, is an integral component that impacts your overall brand. Indeed, the brand in its physical form (logo) will be represented throughout your website and it is critical that it is represented in the best and most effective manner possible throughout.
Exercise
Moment of Fame
Grab a pen and paper:
- Draw a picture of your business logo. If you don’t have one, perhaps take the time to develop a rough draft
- Describe your logo
- Explain why you chose that logo
- Describe what your business does
Branding Model
Your Brand Model should encompass the following attributes
Most Recognised Brands
Here are examples of globally recognisable brands. You may think of others that conjure particular images in your own mind.
- Apple
- Google
- Ebay
- Yahoo
- Coca Cola
- Red Bull
Now, let’s look at their images and note that over the years some have evolved to meet current and future markets
Exercise
Brand Profiling
- When viewing the brands, identify what you immediately recalled about that product as a fact and an emotion
- Choose one and describe the brand in terms of:
– Relationships
– Benefits
– Statements
– Services & products
– Symbols & images
Isn’t it amazing how much information you can recall from memory about these products with as little as a simple image to remind you of your experience.
To put it simply, there are 3 things a brand needs to do;
- Pique the targets markets interest
- Be memorable
- Explain clearly and concisely what your business does
Touch Points
The concept of “touch points” is extremely important in understanding how your brand is impacted during its lifecycle. Your brand is impacted at every point that a client interacts with your business. These interaction points are referred to as “touch points” and the success of these interactions is critical to determining how people feel and think about your business and brand.
Exercise
Consider the “touch points” in going to a restaurant, assuming you are walking down the street? To start, you may see a sign with the restaurant’s brand. It looks like just what you where after. You then get drawn in to the next stage and so on. At each stage you will have a touch point which will affect your perception of your experience both positively and negatively.
To ensure that people have a positive “experience” with your brand, and therefore to impact their behaviour (i.e. repeat business, encode to memory, satisfy need), it is important to consider the “touch points” in your business and how you can best service your customer needs.
Exercise
Spend some time now to identify the “touch points” in your business or website and consider:
– Your current approach to servicing customer needs
– How you could more effectively service customer needs
Emotional Connectivity
The emotional connection people have with your business and website is extremely important. It links people to the business.
Whether your focus is to generate revenue or provide information to your customers, you are attempting to influence a customer’s behaviour (to visit your site ahead of others).
The emotional connection you build with your customer will have an extremely strong impact on the subsequent behaviour.
Exercise
Consider some behaviours you have changed in your lifetime? For example, deciding to get fit, deciding to stop smoking, deciding to shop for groceries online rather than visit a supermarket? Why did you make those decisions? What led up to you making those decisions?
Think about the “experiences” you are giving people through your business.
– What do people think, feel, see, smell, taste, hear?
– What would encourage them to change a habit and use your business?
– How are you communicating this?
– What makes their experience special
– Do you send thank you letters, birthday wishes, invitations, comment on or support social or environmental matters
The service you provide has the power to connect with your customer at an emotional level which in turn encourages long term behavioural connections.
Automatic Behaviour
The next step is to connect emotions to automatic behaviours. Consider as humans we develop this thing called ‘automatic behaviour’ once we have learnt a skill or technique. Indeed, most people have developed an ‘automatic behaviour’ around internet search (e.g. go to Google). An automatic behaviour is something that we do by habit:
–
Tie your shoelaces
– Drive your car
– Fold your arms
– Walking
It is important, therefore, that your website (and indeed the way you do business) is consistent in terms of the information presented and the way it is presented as people will become familiar with where to look and find things.
It is important to get this right and communicate any changes in advance of the change to give people time to adjust their ‘automatic behaviour’ as not all humans manage change in the same way.
Power of Vision and Values in your messaging
A ‘vision’ is a state of things that you see for the future. It is where you want your business to be. The vision is critically important as it dictates the direction in which you and your business is heading.
The set of values that you and your business subscribe to are your “value proposition”. It is a statement about what you stand for.
It is important that these are clear and your customers understand in particular your values as they will contribute to the connection that you build with your customers.
Developing the Brand
In summary you might want to consider the ‘current state’ and ‘desired future state’ of:
– How you relate with customers, clients, staff, providers
– The images you use and what they say about the business
– Your vision, mission and values
– What makes your customer experience different
– The features and benefits of your business
– How you impact your customers’ behaviour
– How you connect with your customers emotionally
– The types of automatic behaviours customers have when they engage in doing business with you