HOW TO BUILD A STRONG BRANDA key element of strategy planning should involve the development of your brand and how you would like to be perceived.

When designing a brand strategy, this is the first question you should ask:

WHAT IS YOUR UNIQUE SELLING PROPOSAL?

Consider all aspects of the marketing mix and look at what makes your business unique and attractive to the consumer. If these factors lead to a competitive advantage then you have determined your Unique Selling Points, or USPs. These USPs are major contributory factor to what makes your business successful, so should form the central idea to your brand strategy. Most brands concentrate on several of the most powerful and easily communicated proposals benefits in order to create a clearly understood brand message.

BRAND VALUES

Unique Selling Points are why customers are currently buying your products and form the basis of your company 'brand values'. However, brand values should constantly evolve to suit changing market conditions. Once these are established, it's important to make sure that your customer experience reflects these values in every feature of your business.

FOR EXAMPLE

When making advertising decisions, carefully consider how people will view your company. Imagine if BMW were to

show a 16-year-old driver with green hair and a nose ring in a TV ad. This would not fit with your image of a typical

BMW owner, and could cause current BMW owners some concern that their status symbol is in jeopardy. BMW

targets high-income adults, and must strengthen this with every experience their customers have with the

company.

Philip Kotler once said :”If you are not a brand, you are a commodity.”

I’d like to share some tips on how you can improve your brand identity to achieve your goals and become an authority in your industry. Let’s get started.

Trust is the king in inbound marketing and is achieved only by proving great value to

the customers. Comprehensive guides, actionable tips and compelling information

give credibility to your brand and foster engagement with your people.

The rule of thumb in creating a high quality content is to fulfill your customers’ needs.

Use Five Second   Test  to know if your site provides a memorable

experience. NavFlow and ClickTest are good at analyzing your navigation and

design engagement. Compress the sizes of your images. Keep each page under 1MB

in total to keep your site’s loading speed fast.

Add social sharing buttons above and below the fold to leverage the acquisition of

links and share. Don’t splatter all your share buttons on every single page of your site.

Otherwise, it will only give a poor user experience and may decrease your repeating

visitors.

Create an approachable identity by allowing your readers leave their comments or

send personal emails to you. A simple instruction at the end of the post like “Leave a

comment below” or “Share with us your experience” would encourage user feedback.

Use Visual Devices

The use of visual devices on your website helps you gain more traction and creates a

remarkable identity. Incorporate your core values to the common attributes of your

logo like colors and shapes. People will interact with you based on how they

understand your logo. Different meanings can be made out of logo since different

countries has its own cultural views and personal experiences.

Use fonts and colors that complement your brand. Your customers must be able to

grasp what you want to say to them. Select a text color to improve your user’s

readability. Avoid annoying ads that can distract your customers. If you run ads, keep

them outside of the content area. Pay attention to what your customers want to do on

your site such as subscribing to your blog, making purchase of your product or

contact you to know more about your services. You have to observe your customers’

behavior using Google Analytics. Identify your top landing pages to determine the

most engaged activity of your site (contact page, about us, etc.).

A brand is a character, it’s integrity, and people instantly recognise what it is; it is a person’s gut feel about what the product or service or company is about.Develop your affinity marketing

Affinity marketing is the use of brand assets to develop lasting relationships with other

brands (alliances) and to build closer relationships with the customers. This can be

noticed in many authority brands that create friendly personalities to increase their

overall customer base.

Be real and friendly with your customers. Use effective platforms such as social media

and webinar. People want to see the person behind your company. Talk to your

audience and educate them by providing free webinars and video tutorials. Tell them

your stories and experiences. Case study is a good way to show transparency and

expertise in the field.

Use pictures, faces or even mascots in every marketing channel. Associate them to

your brand in a fun and engaging manner. The Roger mascot of Moz helped them

established a recognized identity that stands out from the competition of SEOs. This

mechanical and sci-fi robot is used to create a loveable hook to get customers into

their company. The use of brand assets enables your brand to widen your visibility on

the web and makes your users understand the mission, vision as well as the core

values of your company.

In order to develop successful branding strategies, your business needs to stand out.

You must emphasize what you have that your competitors don’t have. You need to tell

your customers what makes your business different from other companies. You need

to be consistent, proactive and informative with your brand messages. Brand

awareness and purchase intent are highly correlated with repetitive viewing and

consistent branding. For example, you should encourage viewers to return to your

website by placing frequently updated and informative content.

Partner with other brands whose customers are same as yours. Keep your

relationships with them growing since they’ll be your long lasting brand evangelists.

Get them to know more about your services/products by giving them discounts or free

versions of what you are to offer to them. Promote other brands as well through social

media and content marketing.

However, a brand can be damaged much quicker than it can grow - five things that will quickly damage your brand include:

Untrustworthy behaviour Concern about public safety or health Poor customer service (at any level) Obvious company financial difficulty Poor quality products

Get the balance right and your business will go from strength to strength.