As a business owner, your company’s brand deals with why your company or business exists and the core message that you communicate to your consumers. It’s important to have a brand plan that covers; vision, strategy, brand promise, targeting, innovation and marketing channels. When considering how you will create a brand plan for your business, you must understand the three principles of branding. Below are listed the most important principles of branding and why each of these factors are important to your company’s overall brand.
Identity
As a business owner the identity of your brand is about how you want to be known and what you want to be known for. For any business the identity of the brand is important because it deals with how that business wants to be perceived by customers. The components of the brand including the logo, tagline, typeface, etc., should communicate the values and core beliefs upon which the brand stands on. Simply put, your brand identity is the essence of your brand and should encapsulate all of the emotions that you want consumers to feel and think when they encounter your business. Emotion has been shown to be the primary factor of decision-making on a consumer’s path to purchase. It is your job to influence the prospective buyer in a way that makes them passionate about your brand.
The questions you must ask yourself are as follows:
- Who are we?
- What do we want consumers to feel and think about our brand?
- What are the core values of our brand?
- What is the brand promise of our brand?
- How do we deliver on our brand promise?
Visibility
The visibility of your brand is all about the exposure your brand receives in the marketplace. The messaging of your brand and how you communicate your core message to your consumers will contribute to your brand’s awareness factor. These days it’s important to generate awareness for your brand both on-line and off-line. How your brand shows up is important to your overall marketing strategy because you need a consistent brand image across all platforms.
The questions you must ask yourself are as follows:
- Where are the critical places that our brand needs to be seen?
- What is the central message that we want consumers to get?
- What is the big value of delivering this message to our audience? Why now?
Credibility
Every brand has to have a certain element of trust in the mind of the consumer. Your brand’s reputation reflects the level of credibility that your business has in the marketplace. When your customers know that your brand is reliable and trustworthy, they are more likely to buy from you time and time again as well as refer other people to you. Brand credibility is a strong tenet of branding because your brand will not stay around too long with a negative reputation.
To understand how important brand credibility is, all you have to do is look at companies who, for whatever reason, when out of business because of poor management, poor sales or poor operations. Eventually the credibility of their brand and failure of a solid business model contributed to their demise. However, on the other hand, when you consider companies that seem to not only excel but maintain a lion’s share of their industry’s revenue, it perhaps has a lot to do with the credibility of their brand in the market.
The questions you must ask yourself are as follows:
- Do people trust our brand? How do we know?
- What reputation does our brand hold in the market?
- How can we solidify a respectable reputation in the marketplace for the future?
As you can see, the above branding principles are important to the overall essence of your brand. Once you have clarity around things like identity, visibility and credibility, you are well on your way to having a solid brand in your industry or niche. Just make sure you are able to answer the important questions that will provide you with key insights on each principle. Happy Branding!
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This article was written by Lori A. Manns. Want to use this article on your blog or website? Here’s the author credit you must include.
Lori A. Manns is an award-winning marketing expert, sales coach and trailblazing business strategist who works with small business owners to help them elevate their brand, get more dream clients and grow revenue. Lori is President of Quality Media Consultant Group and founder of the Trailblazer Business Mastermind and Trailblazer Business Academy and where advancing entrepreneurs go to learn growth strategies and how to run a profitable business the soulful way. Lori is the creator of the Sponsorship Sales Secrets System™, which shows clients how to get more sponsors and sales for their business, guaranteed. To learn more about the work Lori does to help business owners and entrepreneurs all across the U.S. to accelerate their revenue and succeed in business, visit www.qualitymediaconsultants.com