Developing a brand is a nuanced but also wide-ranging process that involves multiple employees working in different departments. So while a brand strategy may be the brainchild of a single individual, it takes an entire organization to bring it to life. With that in mind, today we’ll take a look at how the best businesses go about creating and maintaining a winning brand strategy. Here are the five elements all businesses should prioritize in branding:
Logo/Aesthetics
Appearances matter. How a logo, color scheme, website, and other branded items look can have a big effect on how consumers perceive a business as a whole. Obviously, it’s crucial to create a quality logo that is both unique and recognizable. (This is easier said than done to be fair.) But it’s just as important for your logo to match with your other aesthetic choices. It wouldn’t make much sense to have an ultra-modern, super-sleek website paired with an old-fashioned logo. Nor is it particularly wise to use a lot of different colors in your branded images. Think about how the best brands utilize color: coke is red, pepsi is blue.
Messaging
In the world of digital marketing, content is king. That much isn’t up for debate. However, it’s not enough for businesses to simply produce a lot of content in order to boost their brand image. Rather, it’s important for a company’s digital content to have a recognizable style, tone, and message. What’s more, the tone a business chooses to utilize should align with its products, services, and goals. So it’s reasonable for a writer to use more technical language when creating content about a sophisticated product like a gray top tube, for example, than they would for a blog about a pet-training service.
Distinctive Qualities
Businesses in certain industries all tend to fade together because they use the same style of logos, employ the same sort of messaging, and write the same content. Whatever other qualities your brand possesses, it must first and foremost be distinctive and unique. Your business has to stand out to succeed! Otherwise, consumers aren’t likely to remember it.
Purpose
Businesses need to exist for a better reason than to simply make money. The good news is that businesses can express their goals, ambitions, values, and purpose through their brand. If all else fails, a unified brand message should let customers know what a business is all about.
Consistency
The most important element to a successful brand is consistent performance. It’s key for employees to understand branding policies so that they can create content, respond to customer queries, build social media pages, etc. in a manner that aligns with company vision. Companies that have glaring inconsistencies in their brand implementation will struggle to connect with customers or even earn their trust. Consistent performance over a long period of time might not be “sexy,” but it’s essential to brand viability.
