A good brand can be the difference between having a product and selling a product.
A great brand can be the difference between selling a product and creating a business.
Your brand is more than your logo. It’s the core of your identity – culture, mission, ethics, competitive advantages – that your customers will identify with when they interact with your organization. When a brand is strategized and executed properly, it will not only increase a company’s popularity and visibility, but it will also compel others to act.
How do you accomplish this? Let’s look at the importance of effective target marketing, staying competitive, and brand development – in regard to both graphic design and content.
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Target Audience
A brand is only as effective as the market it targets. In advertising practices, a target is a clear and focused description of the demographic a company would like to reach. While some companies will target many different markets, depending on the product or service they provide, other companies will consistently target the same market.
A successful target audience is one in which a company has been able to narrow their focus, taking the time to study and understand their wants and needs. It is then the mission of a company to attract these people and satisfy these desires through effective and consistent brand advertising.
Market Context
While it is important to understand the target market of your brand, it is also just as important to understand your competition and how you plan to remain competitive against them.
How do you do this? Research and strategic brand execution.
To understand the advantages of your competitors, you must work to understand what their product or service offers, fully. Then, to get ahead, you must look to develop and advertise new features that will make customers chose your brand instead. These features can be as complex as offering an entirely innovative new service, or as simple as integrating more colour variations in a new logo design.
How else can you remain competitive?
Through creatively marketing your uniqueness and strengths:
Unique Benefits
It is critical to identify all the unique benefits your company, service, or product offers to customers. If you can’t identify a clear advantage in your business, get creative and think outside the box.
Is your product essentially the same as that offered by your competitors? You may still have an advantage over them in the quality of your customer service or your warranty. Think about the customers you already have – why do they choose to deal with you rather than your competitor? Leverage those advantages to speak to new prospects with an authenticity they will relate to and want to experience.
Culture
People like to do business with people they know, like, and trust. You may think your culture matters only for internal recruitment and retention, but sharing the philosophy of your company with customers and prospects can help to engage them in your brand.
For example, if your employees regularly go on fun camping weekends together, why not use pictures and content from these excursions as a way to promote your company on social media? You may not see the direct link between camping excursions and insurance brokerage, but this fun and interactive material may be the reason a customer connects with you and wants to hire your company over another.
You may then even be able to integrate this theme into your logo, website design, and beyond! When an organization positions themselves as on-trend, relatable, and fun, customers are more likely to engage with them on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, and to then also remember and hire them in the future.
Reason to Believe
A brand must also convey trust. In a society filled with “fake news”, what will make someone truly believe that your company provides the best service or wants to help the community by participating in charity events? It’s one thing to claim it, but it’s another thing to show it.
Effective brands practice what they preach. If your company claims to support Charity X every year, why not include a page on your website that includes a pictures collage of your team at various Charity X events and content about why your company is passionate about that charity. You can also use infographics to show how much money you’ve raised for them.
Customers need proof that you are who you say you are. So give it to them.
Brand Slogans & Logos
Effective brand slogans typically include “we” language rather than “I” language, evoking a sense of collaboration and inclusivity. Great slogans also put forward a call to action, creating a mission that will actively push for and drive success. These slogans do not ‘beat around the bush’; they are instead direct, powerful, and concise, leaving no room for misunderstandings.
Example: Barrack Obama’s, “Yes we can” instead of “I can do it” or, Nike’s “Just Do It” instead of “Try it”.
Even more effective than a slogan, a brand logo will push a sale. These icons register with people when they are simple and say something about the brand – without saying anything at all. In other words, great logos are distinctive, appropriate, “cool”, and visually appealing.
Have you ever purchased a Coach purse? How about a Nike hat? In some cases, people may even buy a product simply because the product features an attractive and popular brand logo that they want to associate with their own personal brand.
How Treefrog Can Help
Through the effective implementation of content, graphic design, and social media, your brand will attract its target market and compel that group to engage and buy.
Together, we can strategize, create, and execute your brand. We can design your logo, your website, your product packaging, your business cards, and beyond! We can also help to develop your brand messaging, developing content that will reach all the right people, in all the right channels.
We’ll work to make sure your brand is not only effective, appealing, and directed at the right target market, but that it is also consistent across all platforms.