How do you get yourself or your company noticed?
Most market places are over-saturated and your customers have multiple options of who to give their custom to. Why should they pick you? Why should they even notice you exist?
It’s a question that faces us all, so what can you do to stand out from the crowd and make yourself both seen and heard, within the constant barrage of messages we are all bombarded with every day.
Here are a few simple starter tips:
Always speak to your target audience’s main pain points
You can be pretty sure that the majority of customers don’t care about you, your profit margins, your brand, your products, or anything much about your business. What they do care about is how you can help them. How will working with you make their life easier and better?
They want to know why they should buy your product – and best way to show how you can benefit them is to understand their pain points and speak to those particular situations with clarity.
Example:
I’ve been a life-long insomniac. I’ve had lots of people try to sell various cures. White-noice machines, sensory deprivation tank sessions, black-out blinds, sleeping pills, sleep clinics, electromagnetic interference, aromatherapy, acupuncture, diet – the list is endless.
Some focus on the cause, some on the cure? But any that have ever caught even a few minutes of my attention have shown that they understand the impact of long-term insomnia. Referencing both the immediate and future issues that can be associated with sleep deprivation. They spoke about the problems – mental and physical that are associated with insomnia:
Chronic fatigue, Depression, High blood pressure, Diabetes, Heart attack, heart failure, or stroke. Tendency to obesity, Immunity suppression, Impact on memory, even reduced libido. These are pain points that have a huge impact on the individual and showing they understand the impact means I’m likely to at least hear them out.
They are connecting because the conversation is not primarily about them. By speaking to pain points first you build trust, they know you understand and can then move to why that customer needs what you deliver.
There is a good structure to use to do this:
First, explore the pain point and prove you understand the issue
- Show you understand the root causes of their pain
- Show you appreciate how they suffer because of it?
- Explain why they need your solution.
There will likely be others who offer something very similar but if you have a clearly defined reason why you do what you do and how your methodology is unique to you – then you will find traction with your target audience.
Not everyone will respond, and that’s both expected and normal, but those who do align with your values and methods will be attracted to work with you … and will value what you deliver for them. Which is foundational to building a loyal customer base.
Invest in your identity
Everyone who has been in business for more than 2 minutes will have heard the terms USP (Unique Selling Proposition) and POD (point of difference). Perhaps even your UPB (unique perceived benefit).
They are all just jargon and different ways of referencing the same simple thing:
What makes you stand out from the crowd?
What these three letter terms all refer to is market differentiation – and it’s the same challenge facing any business in a crowded marketplace.
So how do you find and define your differentiators?
A unique selling proposition is anything you do that makes your brand different from your competition. For example, it could be: your route to market and your placement strategy – your sales platform or your methods of distribution.
Amazon started as an online book sales service, when most book retailers were stuck in a brick and mortar world Amazon reimagined that world. Your USP could be the product’s functionality (how it works, feels, looks), your pricing, your marketing strategies, or exemplary customer service. Whatever it is, it should be something that is difficult for your competitors to replicate – and when used correctly, it should ensure customers choose you over your competition.
Why you need market differentiation?
With new businesses popping up every day offering products similar to yours, it is only the brands that stand-out that get noticed. The first rule of doing business is capturing your customer’s attention. After all, without their attention you can’t win their business!
Differentiation is the key. It’s the positive ways your brand, products or services differ from your competitors, communicated as succinctly as possible, to your potential customers. (I can’t cover everything in every post so I’m assuming here that you have done the appropriate work to know who your potential customers are and how best to communicate with them! This post is about how to get that customer to narrow their attention to your business!)
The term POD (points of difference) is used to describe those things.
Example:
Perhaps a sleep therapist has combined a black-out sleep mask, with earbuds and an app that means the wearer can play white noise (or relaxation aids of their choice), and the mask also has a cooling fan to help lower the user’s brain temperature to the optimum level for sleep. That’s something unique they can offer. Each element may be available elsewhere but the combination makes for a unique offer.
Whatever your individual PODS are, a clear connection has to be built in the mind of your potential customer that you are the go-to-team to deliver those benefits for them.
You are looking to create an instantly and positive association in their mind between the service they need and your brand – without any potential confusion with a competitor.
Example:
There is a well-used test in the advertising world to test an advert is on brand. The test is simple. You just blank out the logos and names on the concept ad artwork. If the ad still works and by the very look, typefaces, colours, style etc the ad can be identified as coming from a particular company – then it is effectively conveying the brand. But if by replacing the logo with a competitors means you could just as easily sell the ad to that competitor without anything feeling odd, then the ad goes back to the creative team to rework it. It os not ‘on-brand’ and distinctive enough to pass the test.
How to find your POD?
There are different techniques to discover your PODs – or indeed, any gaps in the general market that you could move to fill by developing a specific POD.
We advise that it all starts with market analysis. Understanding the competitive landscape and your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses is crucial. Then identify any elements that differentiate your product from theirs and maximise those differences. But How? I hear you ask:
It’s always a good idea, and a great place to start, to ask your present customers why they chose you? Why they come back? What they most value about what you do for them? etc.
You just might find that there is a clear POD to your offering that you thought was just what everyone did? You’d be surprised how often that is the precisely the case we find when working with new clients and undertaking doing market research on their behalf. What you may consider ‘good practice’ your customer might think is exceptional. Always talk to your customers.
Once you have identified the things that make you different then it’s time to use them in your marketing efforts as your USP. This ensures you are communicating the things that make you unique, and that matter to your customers, so that they help you stand out and command the attention of any potential new customers.
How branding helps you share your USP
Steve Forbes, the editor of Forbes business magazine said “Your brand is the single most important investment you can make in your business”.
Did you know that less than 10% of eCommerce businesses account for 90% of annual sales globally?
Why are those 10% successful? Because they have positioned themselves as the names that people instantly think of when they want to buy a particular product online.
How do they do that? It is all about consistent, repeated brand positioning and messaging. Backed-up by service delivery which aligns the brand promises made to the customer.
If Amazon didn’t deliver your goods on time or the build quality was poor and items quickly broke, then the service wouldn’t match the promise… and you wouldn’t place another order with them.
A great brand can’t fix a broken business model. If all the brand touchpoints and promises align throughout the customer experience – from initial contact to service/product delivery and into aftersales care, then the customer will have a favourable emotional reaction to the brand. They are likely to return as a customer and to refer others too.
I have a quote I love to use that explains this. Maya Angelou, the famous author and activist, said “People will forget what you said, they will forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel”. Although she was talking about being a decent human being, that quote sums up branding in a nutshell.
Think about it. Most people can name a relative, family friend or teacher who was important to them growing up. Someone who gave them time, instilled confidence, helped them to grow and to become ‘them’. I know I had several people at different times in my life who played that role in helping me figure out who I was and what sort of person I wanted to be.
I can’t recall many actual conversations. I rarely recall their specific actions. But I do know that they made me feel secure. They created a safe-place to explore and discuss things – and know these encounters left an impact on me. I have warm feelings towards those people. Sure, we had disagreements at times. They didn’t always do what I thought they should (and visa-versa I’m sure), but the overwhelming connection and positive feelings remain. And one of the key factors to that is that they were there. They showed up – and they were consistent when they showed up. By that I mean, I knew what I was going to get. They didn’t behave irrationally, nor pander to my whims either. This is true of brands too.
It’s well documented that consumers need to have at least 6-7 contacts with a brand before fully register it? Other research has suggested that people need 7-8 contacts with a brand before they will consider doing business with the company. So showing up and being consistent is just the start of the process.
Showing up and then getting noticed are two primary pillars of effective brand building.
Once noticed, people become familiar; familiarity instils trust, and trust translates to sales.
There is another well-worn business adage. To do business with you, people need to know, like and trust you. That’s one of the core tenets of a good brand strategy.
In the very simplest terms… ‘Know’ means both to see you and recognise you. ‘Like’ means they think they could do business with you. ‘Trust’ means to believe you deliver a credible service… for most people, that means some validated social proof.
Once they buy, and you deliver on your promises, then that Know, Like and Trust is cemented. You have a happy customer. Once repeat a few times that happy customer can quickly become a loyal fan. Loyal fans are happy to speak about you and bring referral business. Which is good news for any company. Sounds simple, right!
The decision process
As touched on earlier – we all make buying decisions based on emotions. It happens mainly in the limbic system which is the seat of our emotional brain.
To build a business band that engages that section of our brains properly involves a number of components.
Logo design (and your wider visual identity)
Many people talk about the logo as the brand. I understand why the two get confused, but nothing is further from the truth.
A logo is a brand mark. A badge that represents the company. An effective brand strategy will ensure that your logo is imbibed with all the meaning and values that the company has decided it wishes to communicate to its audience.
This goes beyond the mere design of the logo itself. The brand strategy, the business model and delivery, and the rest of the communication and identity system employed by the company – everything has to fully align. Everything has to underpin the logo – which essentially acts as the face of the brand.
As such, a logo carries a lot of weight on its shoulders. It plays a crucially role in your branding strategy. When designed correctly, your logo can instantly capture the target
attention. It can connect with and engage emotions, and play a significant role in creating a recongised brand that can be trusted. Remember we are trying to get to know, like and trust! So, the know part starts with a recognisable logo.
Your logo is key to the recognition and recall of your brand. ‘Like’ then comes from connecting with the target audience and presenting yourself authentically – and ‘trust’ is built by honest interactions and consistently delivering on your promises.
Use transparency to your advantage
A highly powerful strategy for getting noticed in any crowded market is transparency. Consumers don’t trust businesses that are inauthentic, nor brands that aren’t transparent.
In our world where fact-checking can be done in seconds, authenticity and transparency are key. And they are only becoming more important with each new generation of consumers. An Accenture Strategy survey showed “66% of consumers think transparency is one of the most attractive qualities in a brand”.
94% of Millennials say they want to make a difference in the world through their work and they expect brands to feel the same.
Brands need to be open, to stand for something beyond profits and to ‘show their working’ as it were, to keep the younger generations on side.
What are the type of things people are looking for transparency on:
- How do you treat your employees?
- Where do you source your materials?
- Do you have a vision or purpose beyond simply making a profit?
- Do you support a cause? Do you donate a percentage of your profits to a charity or local organisation?
- Do you have an eco-friendly policy and use eco products?
But what if you don’t have a cause?
Firstly, don’t be false. Authenticity is foundational in the trust relationship after all.
But if you do choose to support a cause and use it to promote your business, be sincere. Determine a cause that will resonate with, and will help establish a stronger emotional connection with, your customers.
It doesn’t need to be a huge global issue. You may choose to support a local school or education programmes. Or maybe provide meals for children who need them. The cause just needs to be something you care about and that will resonate with your customers.
It’s a fantastic opportunity to show your brand’s personality, your humanity, and show that you care about something that is important to you and to them.
Consumers love brands with a bigger ‘reason for being’. But never take that connection for granted and don’t waste it. It has to be worked at, and you have to truly believe in the cause or they will quickly see it as a fake promotional tool.
Times have changed, so it’s ok to be vocal about social issues. If you are supporting a popular good cause, then you don’t need to be overly shy about it. Tell consumers what you are doing and why it matters. Maybe put a link on your website, and mention it on your social media occasionally. Maybe even sponsor events that align with the cause.
According to an Edelman survey, two-thirds (64 percent) of consumers around the world said that they would buy from a brand (or conversely boycott it) solely because of its “position on a social or political issue”. So, think long and hard about supporting a contentious issue that could divide your target market.
Your goal is to make your brand shine – not alienate yourself from a large percentage of your audience. But if you feel strongly enough about it then those that agree with you will only feel more inclined to give you their business and a smaller, dedicated client base has been proven to be a very effective business model. It’s the reason people niche after all.
Encourage customer referrals
‘Word of Mouth’ (or referral marketing) is probably the most powerful tool available for any brand to promote their products or services. (It is the reason why S2 use lots of customer quotes on our social media). Real customers’ words, about their genuine experience of the service, processes and outcomes of the work we deliver are going to be more impactive on potential customers than any marketing spiel.
Customers words are helpful for anyone considering making a purchase as they help them understand what you do, how you do it and the difference it makes.
Some people are scared to ask for a referral. And that’s understandable BUT we don’t ask for them. We DO ask for our clients reflections on our work and the process we followed at the end of a project. We ask them to help us understand what we did well and where they felt we could improve on what we did too. We ask them to critique with honest feedback – good or bad. We tell them we will use their thoughts to improve. We are always trying to improve what we do and how we deliver our service to stay ahead of our competition so it’s a valuable thing to do. Honest feedback is the key. If they say nice things about us in that feedback then we ask if we can use their words. Then we might ask if there is anyone they know who they think could benefit from our service – and if so could they introduce us. Done like this, it’s pretty simple and straight-forward.
If customers like what you have done for them then they are usually very happy to make a referral. The big advantage is that it’s not a sales pitch from your company. You don’t even have to sell at all – your customers do it for you!
According to Review 42.com:
- “92% of consumers trust recommendations from friends”.
- “Word of Mouth brings in 5 times more sales than paid media”.
- “74% of consumers identify word of mouth as a critical influencer in their purchasing decision”.
Customer referrals (when done right) help you create a buzz about your brand and stand out from the crowd. Referral marketing can also be done at some scale, if you employ the right tools and techniques.
Example: At my company S2 design we spent our first 19 years trading without a website. We did some networking events but the overwhelming majority of our new clients came from referrals. The vast majority of our work came from repeat clients. Which tells me our brand positioning and values aligned correctly with our service delivery. Clients liked what we did for them, they came back for more – and they were happy to also introduce us to their contacts whom they felt we might be able to help.
Be Your Brand
In our modern world, anyone can start a business from anywhere. Just source products, launch a website, and create social media accounts. Maybe they will leverage the strategies you’ve found in this post (and other resourses online) to short-cut getting their first building blocks in place. Anyone can do it … but statistically most will fail.
In the UK, according to research by Fundsquire (the global start-up funding network):
20% of small businesses fail in their first year.
60% of small businesses fail within the first three years.
It’s not just small business. A study by McKinsey found that the average life-span of companies listed in Standard & Poor’s 500, in 1958, was 61 years. Today, it is less than 18 years. McKinsey believes that, in 2027, 75% of the companies currently quoted on the S&P 500 will have disappeared.
CS investing commenting on the Fortune 500 stated that “Half a century ago, the life expectancy of a firm in the Fortune 500 was around 75 years. Now it’s less than 15 and declining”.
Building a business is not easy, but building a brand is the bedrock of any modern business. Using the strategies in this post will help your brands essence shine through. Promoting your ‘why’: The reason that drove you to start the company, that gets you out of bed everyday and fulfils you.
Make your customers feel that they’re more than just another sale. Make them part of the conversation. Encourage your customers to share their experiences to create a loyal community that openly supports you, just as you support them.
There may well be others who offer something very similar – but if you have a clearly defined reason ‘why’, clearly explain what you do and how your methods and service are unique to you, then you will find traction with your target audience.
Not everyone will respond, but those that align with your values and methods will be attracted to work with you and will value what you deliver for them. Which is foundational to building a loyal customer base.
I hope this article has given you some ideas but if you are not sure where to start or simply don’t feel you have the time to think it all through, then I recommend you talk to a brand professional. There are some really good ones out there – and they will all have slight differences of how they do what they do – as you’d expect!
If you are going to talk to someone then make sure it’s someone you can be honest with. Branding a business means understanding that business – knowing the positives and the negatives. If you don’t feel you can share those intimate business details with someone else, then go back to the top and re-read this post figuring out what action you can take yourself. Look at some other articles and resources online. Doing something is generally better than doing nothing – even if it fails, at least you will have learnt what not to do next time.
And that brings me to the final thing I’d like to say. Your brand is never ‘done’. The market is constantly changing and evolving. The world we live in alters at an incredible rate. What worked today might not be as effective in three months – or even three weeks. You have to monitor, evaluate and iterate to build an effective brand. It’s a constant feedback loop. Those who stand still and are not agile enough to adapt tend to get left behind. Stay informed, stay true to who you are, and stay close to your customers.
I close with a quote from the Howard Schultz book about the global Starbuck brand, ‘Pour your heart into it: How Starbucks built a company one cup at a time.’
“Authentic brands don’t emerge from marketing cubicles … They emanate from everything the company does”.
The three most common questions asked about branding?
I do quite a bit of networking and there are three questions that keep cropping up about branding from SME owners. So let me try and address them here – there’s three questions and I’m going to answer in 3 ways. Informative (explaining and adding value), factual and finally from a growth mindset.
The three most common questions I’m asked by prospective clients?
It almost impossible to answer those without knowing the particular circumstances of each business but I’ll try to unpack the questions a little here – and give some insight too.
Informative
1. How long does it take to do a full branding project?
It will take the entire lifetime of your business to build your brand because it should be an ongoing continuum of relationship with your target audience, within the context of your particular competitive market. Both the relationship and your competition are likely to change over time so your own efforts and actions may need to adapt and change accordingly.
Some people are a little scared off by that scenario – but any brand or marketing professional who tells you anything different is lying to you (or to themselves).
Yes, a great deal can be done to set you on a good path. Good brand strategy can lay a solid foundation and give you the right tools to navigate the changing landscape but a good brand (like a good website) is never finished, it’s always a work in progress.
2. How much does it cost?
An effective brand strategy and implementation will definitely require your investment. Financially and in terms of other resources. It will cost you honesty, openness, vulnerability, self-awareness and time.
No brand strategist can deliver truly effective work unless you are willing to bear your soul to them to some degree. To do their best work they have to understand your desires and your fears, your strengths and your weaknesses. They have to understand your business intimately to be able to get to the heart of the brand and then devise the best way to present that to your audience.
When I’ve questioned people, who have told me they had a bad experience with a brand designer, I have regularly found they didn’t really understand the requirements or the process – or they didn’t trust their branding partner enough to be as honest and vulnerable as they should. That is not saying that the reason for the breakdown lay with them entirely though.
If the branding team hasn’t explained the process properly, or invested sufficiently to build a relationship of mutual trust and respect, then how can they expect their clients to divulge information that might be sensitive (and possibly even painful to face). Any relationship is a two-way street and both parties need to play their part.
Sometimes the client doesn’t always know the answers to the questions being asked. In those cases, it should be down to the branding team to do more research and investigation to collate the relevant data.
Time is always a key factor.
I’ve been told by an external business mentor that the full process that we employ at S2 design, (in a nutshell research, design and testing) could be offered to the top-flight branding agencies as an outsoursed service. They suggested the price point should be around £30,000 – £40,000 BUT we’d need to find a way to deliver what we do in 3-4 weeks.
Needless to say, we don’t charge that figure to our clients. Usually, with an established business, a 3-4 weeks time-fame would see us through the first stage of our process: our research. It’s also those crucial first weeks of working with a new client that we are building relationships and establishing trust. And as outlined earlier, rushing the relationship-building aspect of the process only creates problems further down the road. Time and resources have to be invested as we and our clients need to work together in collaboration.
Some people liken the best brand strategy as being akin to mining. You have to dig through of a lot of hard-rock, investing a great deal of effort (and possibly even blood, sweat and tears at times) before you unearth the gold nuggets and gemstones that are of real value.
I also often liken brand strategy to building a bridge. You have to build from both banks towards the centre. To do that you need to know both the company and their customers to be able to identify the best way to make a genuine connection between the two.
3. How will it benefit my business?
The benefits of brand strategy, brand positioning and brand design are almost incalculable. (But you’d expect me to say that as this is my area of expertise). So let me talk frankly about impact.
We have testimonials and data that state that clients of ours saw their turnover nearly triple in the year following our (limited) rebrand. Another client saw their own customer sign-up figures treble and the net worth of each individual customer increased four-fold.
If we think of the brand as being the essence of who you are … reaching out to your target audience (as defined and focused by the brand strategy), using messaging and routes to markets that have been identified through the strategy and positioning activity, and all those communications being tested and monitored to ensure the desired outcomes are being delivered. That’s how we generate our results.
If our clients commit to the process, work in transparent partnership with us, and implement on the strategy which the research shows will drive the best results, then we have confidence we can positively affect the perception, emotional connection, and the bottom line results of almost any business.
If you’ve read this far – well done, you’ve pushed through the more esoteric answers and your pay-off is that I’ll try to be a little more direct below. So here are the simpler answers to those same questions:
Factual
1. How long does it take to do a full branding project?
The shortest branding project I’ve ever done took around 8 weeks from the first consultation to the final delivery of assets. However, that is unusually fast.
For most branding projects we are generally looking at a timeframe of 3-6 months. The longest I’ve worked on recently took about 14 months.
Partly the time frames depend on how responsive and decisive the client’s team are, how available the relevant data is, and how willing the clients are to take our device.
2. How much does it cost? *
Every business situation is different. The needs are different, the offering is unique to each client and their individual competitive landscape has it’s own unique topology. All of which makes this question very difficult to answer with any honesty.
So let me give you a ‘bracketed’ answer again. We’ve delivered bare-bones brand assets for under a grand – but we would not be able do all our usual research and exploration for that price point and we would only deliver a limited final product.
Our baseline price normally starts around £5000. This is still a limited service. We would agree with the client during our consultation what can be created and delivered for the fee.
Historically anyone we’ve worked for at this price point have either been charities and NFPs (who we offer preferential rates to at times). Or they have been start-up businesses who do not have the client base yet for us to explore all the research avenues we usually take – and as start-ups, they often don’t have the funds or other resources to engage on a more in-depth branding project
I know what you are asking – what’s the top-end fee and time frame?
The longest project we’ve worked on at S2 needed a great deal of research which took 4-5 months. Comprising of many interviews, focus groups and various other data gathering routes, at a cost of approx £12,000 for the research phase alone.
The brand strategy, design and asset development then took another 12 months from the initial design concepts to final brand delivery, and cost about the same again. The website build and development was dealt with as a separate item taking approximately 3 months at a cost of around £4,000.
3. How will it benefit my business?
The strategy part of this project identified answers to four ‘road blocks’ this organisations audience stated as factors that stopped them becoming customers. Addressing those in the strategy, route to market, messaging and brand design meant those objections were removed and the sign-up figures over the next 2 years proved the value of the process.
We have also worked with international clients on rebrand and repositioning projects – but they have been delivered as extended roll-out projects over much longer timeframes and the overall costs are much harder to state with any clarity. (And they’d only scare most SME business owners if we could state them I’m sure).
Growth Mindset
The very simple answer is that if number 3 is significant enough then questions 1 and 2 are almost irrelevant.
That is an answer I have given when networking but I find it tends to mark the end of the conversation.
If you would like to have the conversation and explore how brand strategy, positioning and design could impact your particular organisation then we offer a free initial one-hour consultation. Surely, it’s worth an hour of your time – no matter how busy you are.
Standing out from the crowd: some basic tips
How do you get yourself or your company noticed?
Most market places are over-saturated and your customers have multiple options of who to give their custom to. Why should they pick you? Why should they even notice you exist?
It’s a question that faces us all, so what can you do to stand out from the crowd and make yourself both seen and heard, within the constant barrage of messages we are all bombarded with every day.
Here are a few simple starter tips:
Always speak to your target audience’s main pain points
You can be pretty sure that the majority of customers don’t care about you, your profit margins, your brand, your products, or anything much about your business. What they do care about is how you can help them. How will working with you make their life easier and better?
They want to know why they should buy your product – and best way to show how you can benefit them is to understand their pain points and speak to those particular situations with clarity.
Example:
I’ve been a life-long insomniac. I’ve had lots of people try to sell various cures. White-noice machines, sensory deprivation tank sessions, black-out blinds, sleeping pills, sleep clinics, electromagnetic interference, aromatherapy, acupuncture, diet – the list is endless.
Some focus on the cause, some on the cure? But any that have ever caught even a few minutes of my attention have shown that they understand the impact of long-term insomnia. Referencing both the immediate and future issues that can be associated with sleep deprivation. They spoke about the problems – mental and physical that are associated with insomnia:
Chronic fatigue, Depression, High blood pressure, Diabetes, Heart attack, heart failure, or stroke. Tendency to obesity, Immunity suppression, Impact on memory, even reduced libido. These are pain points that have a huge impact on the individual and showing they understand the impact means I’m likely to at least hear them out.
They are connecting because the conversation is not primarily about them. By speaking to pain points first you build trust, they know you understand and can then move to why that customer needs what you deliver.
There is a good structure to use to do this:
First, explore the pain point and prove you understand the issue
There will likely be others who offer something very similar but if you have a clearly defined reason why you do what you do and how your methodology is unique to you – then you will find traction with your target audience.
Not everyone will respond, and that’s both expected and normal, but those who do align with your values and methods will be attracted to work with you … and will value what you deliver for them. Which is foundational to building a loyal customer base.
Invest in your identity
Everyone who has been in business for more than 2 minutes will have heard the terms USP (Unique Selling Proposition) and POD (point of difference). Perhaps even your UPB (unique perceived benefit).
They are all just jargon and different ways of referencing the same simple thing:
What makes you stand out from the crowd?
What these three letter terms all refer to is market differentiation – and it’s the same challenge facing any business in a crowded marketplace.
So how do you find and define your differentiators?
A unique selling proposition is anything you do that makes your brand different from your competition. For example, it could be: your route to market and your placement strategy – your sales platform or your methods of distribution.
Amazon started as an online book sales service, when most book retailers were stuck in a brick and mortar world Amazon reimagined that world. Your USP could be the product’s functionality (how it works, feels, looks), your pricing, your marketing strategies, or exemplary customer service. Whatever it is, it should be something that is difficult for your competitors to replicate – and when used correctly, it should ensure customers choose you over your competition.
Why you need market differentiation?
With new businesses popping up every day offering products similar to yours, it is only the brands that stand-out that get noticed. The first rule of doing business is capturing your customer’s attention. After all, without their attention you can’t win their business!
Differentiation is the key. It’s the positive ways your brand, products or services differ from your competitors, communicated as succinctly as possible, to your potential customers. (I can’t cover everything in every post so I’m assuming here that you have done the appropriate work to know who your potential customers are and how best to communicate with them! This post is about how to get that customer to narrow their attention to your business!)
The term POD (points of difference) is used to describe those things.
Example:
Perhaps a sleep therapist has combined a black-out sleep mask, with earbuds and an app that means the wearer can play white noise (or relaxation aids of their choice), and the mask also has a cooling fan to help lower the user’s brain temperature to the optimum level for sleep. That’s something unique they can offer. Each element may be available elsewhere but the combination makes for a unique offer.
Whatever your individual PODS are, a clear connection has to be built in the mind of your potential customer that you are the go-to-team to deliver those benefits for them.
You are looking to create an instantly and positive association in their mind between the service they need and your brand – without any potential confusion with a competitor.
Example:
There is a well-used test in the advertising world to test an advert is on brand. The test is simple. You just blank out the logos and names on the concept ad artwork. If the ad still works and by the very look, typefaces, colours, style etc the ad can be identified as coming from a particular company – then it is effectively conveying the brand. But if by replacing the logo with a competitors means you could just as easily sell the ad to that competitor without anything feeling odd, then the ad goes back to the creative team to rework it. It os not ‘on-brand’ and distinctive enough to pass the test.
How to find your POD?
There are different techniques to discover your PODs – or indeed, any gaps in the general market that you could move to fill by developing a specific POD.
We advise that it all starts with market analysis. Understanding the competitive landscape and your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses is crucial. Then identify any elements that differentiate your product from theirs and maximise those differences. But How? I hear you ask:
It’s always a good idea, and a great place to start, to ask your present customers why they chose you? Why they come back? What they most value about what you do for them? etc.
You just might find that there is a clear POD to your offering that you thought was just what everyone did? You’d be surprised how often that is the precisely the case we find when working with new clients and undertaking doing market research on their behalf. What you may consider ‘good practice’ your customer might think is exceptional. Always talk to your customers.
Once you have identified the things that make you different then it’s time to use them in your marketing efforts as your USP. This ensures you are communicating the things that make you unique, and that matter to your customers, so that they help you stand out and command the attention of any potential new customers.
How branding helps you share your USP
Steve Forbes, the editor of Forbes business magazine said “Your brand is the single most important investment you can make in your business”.
Did you know that less than 10% of eCommerce businesses account for 90% of annual sales globally?
Why are those 10% successful? Because they have positioned themselves as the names that people instantly think of when they want to buy a particular product online.
How do they do that? It is all about consistent, repeated brand positioning and messaging. Backed-up by service delivery which aligns the brand promises made to the customer.
If Amazon didn’t deliver your goods on time or the build quality was poor and items quickly broke, then the service wouldn’t match the promise… and you wouldn’t place another order with them.
A great brand can’t fix a broken business model. If all the brand touchpoints and promises align throughout the customer experience – from initial contact to service/product delivery and into aftersales care, then the customer will have a favourable emotional reaction to the brand. They are likely to return as a customer and to refer others too.
I have a quote I love to use that explains this. Maya Angelou, the famous author and activist, said “People will forget what you said, they will forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel”. Although she was talking about being a decent human being, that quote sums up branding in a nutshell.
Think about it. Most people can name a relative, family friend or teacher who was important to them growing up. Someone who gave them time, instilled confidence, helped them to grow and to become ‘them’. I know I had several people at different times in my life who played that role in helping me figure out who I was and what sort of person I wanted to be.
I can’t recall many actual conversations. I rarely recall their specific actions. But I do know that they made me feel secure. They created a safe-place to explore and discuss things – and know these encounters left an impact on me. I have warm feelings towards those people. Sure, we had disagreements at times. They didn’t always do what I thought they should (and visa-versa I’m sure), but the overwhelming connection and positive feelings remain. And one of the key factors to that is that they were there. They showed up – and they were consistent when they showed up. By that I mean, I knew what I was going to get. They didn’t behave irrationally, nor pander to my whims either. This is true of brands too.
It’s well documented that consumers need to have at least 6-7 contacts with a brand before fully register it? Other research has suggested that people need 7-8 contacts with a brand before they will consider doing business with the company. So showing up and being consistent is just the start of the process.
Showing up and then getting noticed are two primary pillars of effective brand building.
Once noticed, people become familiar; familiarity instils trust, and trust translates to sales.
There is another well-worn business adage. To do business with you, people need to know, like and trust you. That’s one of the core tenets of a good brand strategy.
In the very simplest terms… ‘Know’ means both to see you and recognise you. ‘Like’ means they think they could do business with you. ‘Trust’ means to believe you deliver a credible service… for most people, that means some validated social proof.
Once they buy, and you deliver on your promises, then that Know, Like and Trust is cemented. You have a happy customer. Once repeat a few times that happy customer can quickly become a loyal fan. Loyal fans are happy to speak about you and bring referral business. Which is good news for any company. Sounds simple, right!
The decision process
As touched on earlier – we all make buying decisions based on emotions. It happens mainly in the limbic system which is the seat of our emotional brain.
To build a business band that engages that section of our brains properly involves a number of components.
Logo design (and your wider visual identity)
Many people talk about the logo as the brand. I understand why the two get confused, but nothing is further from the truth.
A logo is a brand mark. A badge that represents the company. An effective brand strategy will ensure that your logo is imbibed with all the meaning and values that the company has decided it wishes to communicate to its audience.
This goes beyond the mere design of the logo itself. The brand strategy, the business model and delivery, and the rest of the communication and identity system employed by the company – everything has to fully align. Everything has to underpin the logo – which essentially acts as the face of the brand.
As such, a logo carries a lot of weight on its shoulders. It plays a crucially role in your branding strategy. When designed correctly, your logo can instantly capture the target
attention. It can connect with and engage emotions, and play a significant role in creating a recongised brand that can be trusted. Remember we are trying to get to know, like and trust! So, the know part starts with a recognisable logo.
Your logo is key to the recognition and recall of your brand. ‘Like’ then comes from connecting with the target audience and presenting yourself authentically – and ‘trust’ is built by honest interactions and consistently delivering on your promises.
Use transparency to your advantage
A highly powerful strategy for getting noticed in any crowded market is transparency. Consumers don’t trust businesses that are inauthentic, nor brands that aren’t transparent.
In our world where fact-checking can be done in seconds, authenticity and transparency are key. And they are only becoming more important with each new generation of consumers. An Accenture Strategy survey showed “66% of consumers think transparency is one of the most attractive qualities in a brand”.
94% of Millennials say they want to make a difference in the world through their work and they expect brands to feel the same.
Brands need to be open, to stand for something beyond profits and to ‘show their working’ as it were, to keep the younger generations on side.
What are the type of things people are looking for transparency on:
But what if you don’t have a cause?
Firstly, don’t be false. Authenticity is foundational in the trust relationship after all.
But if you do choose to support a cause and use it to promote your business, be sincere. Determine a cause that will resonate with, and will help establish a stronger emotional connection with, your customers.
It doesn’t need to be a huge global issue. You may choose to support a local school or education programmes. Or maybe provide meals for children who need them. The cause just needs to be something you care about and that will resonate with your customers.
It’s a fantastic opportunity to show your brand’s personality, your humanity, and show that you care about something that is important to you and to them.
Consumers love brands with a bigger ‘reason for being’. But never take that connection for granted and don’t waste it. It has to be worked at, and you have to truly believe in the cause or they will quickly see it as a fake promotional tool.
Times have changed, so it’s ok to be vocal about social issues. If you are supporting a popular good cause, then you don’t need to be overly shy about it. Tell consumers what you are doing and why it matters. Maybe put a link on your website, and mention it on your social media occasionally. Maybe even sponsor events that align with the cause.
According to an Edelman survey, two-thirds (64 percent) of consumers around the world said that they would buy from a brand (or conversely boycott it) solely because of its “position on a social or political issue”. So, think long and hard about supporting a contentious issue that could divide your target market.
Your goal is to make your brand shine – not alienate yourself from a large percentage of your audience. But if you feel strongly enough about it then those that agree with you will only feel more inclined to give you their business and a smaller, dedicated client base has been proven to be a very effective business model. It’s the reason people niche after all.
Encourage customer referrals
‘Word of Mouth’ (or referral marketing) is probably the most powerful tool available for any brand to promote their products or services. (It is the reason why S2 use lots of customer quotes on our social media). Real customers’ words, about their genuine experience of the service, processes and outcomes of the work we deliver are going to be more impactive on potential customers than any marketing spiel.
Customers words are helpful for anyone considering making a purchase as they help them understand what you do, how you do it and the difference it makes.
Some people are scared to ask for a referral. And that’s understandable BUT we don’t ask for them. We DO ask for our clients reflections on our work and the process we followed at the end of a project. We ask them to help us understand what we did well and where they felt we could improve on what we did too. We ask them to critique with honest feedback – good or bad. We tell them we will use their thoughts to improve. We are always trying to improve what we do and how we deliver our service to stay ahead of our competition so it’s a valuable thing to do. Honest feedback is the key. If they say nice things about us in that feedback then we ask if we can use their words. Then we might ask if there is anyone they know who they think could benefit from our service – and if so could they introduce us. Done like this, it’s pretty simple and straight-forward.
If customers like what you have done for them then they are usually very happy to make a referral. The big advantage is that it’s not a sales pitch from your company. You don’t even have to sell at all – your customers do it for you!
According to Review 42.com:
Customer referrals (when done right) help you create a buzz about your brand and stand out from the crowd. Referral marketing can also be done at some scale, if you employ the right tools and techniques.
Example: At my company S2 design we spent our first 19 years trading without a website. We did some networking events but the overwhelming majority of our new clients came from referrals. The vast majority of our work came from repeat clients. Which tells me our brand positioning and values aligned correctly with our service delivery. Clients liked what we did for them, they came back for more – and they were happy to also introduce us to their contacts whom they felt we might be able to help.
Be Your Brand
In our modern world, anyone can start a business from anywhere. Just source products, launch a website, and create social media accounts. Maybe they will leverage the strategies you’ve found in this post (and other resourses online) to short-cut getting their first building blocks in place. Anyone can do it … but statistically most will fail.
In the UK, according to research by Fundsquire (the global start-up funding network):
20% of small businesses fail in their first year.
60% of small businesses fail within the first three years.
It’s not just small business. A study by McKinsey found that the average life-span of companies listed in Standard & Poor’s 500, in 1958, was 61 years. Today, it is less than 18 years. McKinsey believes that, in 2027, 75% of the companies currently quoted on the S&P 500 will have disappeared.
CS investing commenting on the Fortune 500 stated that “Half a century ago, the life expectancy of a firm in the Fortune 500 was around 75 years. Now it’s less than 15 and declining”.
Building a business is not easy, but building a brand is the bedrock of any modern business. Using the strategies in this post will help your brands essence shine through. Promoting your ‘why’: The reason that drove you to start the company, that gets you out of bed everyday and fulfils you.
Make your customers feel that they’re more than just another sale. Make them part of the conversation. Encourage your customers to share their experiences to create a loyal community that openly supports you, just as you support them.
There may well be others who offer something very similar – but if you have a clearly defined reason ‘why’, clearly explain what you do and how your methods and service are unique to you, then you will find traction with your target audience.
Not everyone will respond, but those that align with your values and methods will be attracted to work with you and will value what you deliver for them. Which is foundational to building a loyal customer base.
I hope this article has given you some ideas but if you are not sure where to start or simply don’t feel you have the time to think it all through, then I recommend you talk to a brand professional. There are some really good ones out there – and they will all have slight differences of how they do what they do – as you’d expect!
If you are going to talk to someone then make sure it’s someone you can be honest with. Branding a business means understanding that business – knowing the positives and the negatives. If you don’t feel you can share those intimate business details with someone else, then go back to the top and re-read this post figuring out what action you can take yourself. Look at some other articles and resources online. Doing something is generally better than doing nothing – even if it fails, at least you will have learnt what not to do next time.
And that brings me to the final thing I’d like to say. Your brand is never ‘done’. The market is constantly changing and evolving. The world we live in alters at an incredible rate. What worked today might not be as effective in three months – or even three weeks. You have to monitor, evaluate and iterate to build an effective brand. It’s a constant feedback loop. Those who stand still and are not agile enough to adapt tend to get left behind. Stay informed, stay true to who you are, and stay close to your customers.
I close with a quote from the Howard Schultz book about the global Starbuck brand, ‘Pour your heart into it: How Starbucks built a company one cup at a time.’
“Authentic brands don’t emerge from marketing cubicles … They emanate from everything the company does”.
What’s the impact of graphic design on business?
73% of companies invest in design to help their brand stand out from competitors
Studies have found that 94% of people’s first impression of your business relates to your website design
75% of website credibility has been assessed to be a result of its design
If you are not investing in the visual presentation of your business then you are will be losing business and are risking your long-term future.
Graphic design has become an essential business tool. It can deliver a drastic and profound impact on businesses, across all industries, across the entire world.
Uniquely designed graphic elements showcase who a business truly is, what they stand for, what they represent, what they sell, and even their value proposition. Well-positioned and targeted design will also help your customer funnel – attracting the right target audience whilst subtly weeding out the inappropriate parties. Meaning you can focus your time and energy on your best prospects.
Graphic design plays a key role in business success. Presented as a consistent styling and message across every aspect of a firms visual communication. Brand, business cards, banners, posters, brochures, websites, packaging, and advertising – anything that represents your firm and carries your name should be carefully designed. Without graphic design, businesses could not reach their customers. Developing a unique brand identity to stand out within the multitude of competitors is essential. We all need good design to command attention in the public eye, without a successful graphic design strategy a business will not last very long in their industry.
The effect of graphic design in different industries
Regardless of your particular industry; good design is paramount to standing out and helping your potential consumers learn more about you at a glance. It is proven to impact how and even if they decide to shop with your brand. The graphic design impact on all industries is only continuing to grow and develop as graphic design continually evolves.
So let’s explore some specific industries and how graphic design has delivered results for them.
Technology
The ever-growing, online nature of our interactions means that graphic design plays a primary role. Every app created features graphic design. Likewise for every website, blog site and instagram feed. The more effective the design the more eyeballs you attract. Every explanation, launch event or “how to” technology showcase relies on design elements to help people better understand the use of that technology. Add in user journeys, user interface and user-experience design and the impact of good design on the uptake of new technology is immense. Without graphic design, technology would be a much more confusing and uninviting place.
Fashion
We think of fashion design as a pinnacle of creative expression but consider how fashion designers would reach their audiences if they didn’t have graphic designers? In the fashion world, the importance of creating an identifiable brand image is the key impact a graphic designer could have. But without proper labelling and promotion, the world might never discover the fashion designers unique product within an industry filled with millions of similar offerings.
Advertising
Advertising can be a dirty word for some people. But all business needs to present its offer to the people who it would benefit. And advertising is simply the presentation of that core message to that key target audience. Advertising is everywhere. You can’t shop online, read a magazine, walk into a store, or drive down a busy street, without seeing billboards, posters, pop-up ads and the like. All of these messages and visuals are created by the graphic designer to engage the correct target audience and to motivate them to take action. Be that place an order, call for info, or donate to a specific disaster relief fund.
Ecommerce
Image visiting a shopping site or app and only finding a page of text. How would you react? The eCommerce industry is built on graphic design, it is an inherent part of our modern online experience and underpins the entire industry.
Travel and Hospitality
Who would book a hotel or travel destination without seeing pictures and reading up a little? Graphic designers spend a lot of time highlighting key information and showcasing beautiful settings to excited people about the destination.
World leading Brands
The most effective brands build an emotional connection with their audience. And it’s mainly rooted in experience.
What was your first car? Did you love it? If it delivered freedom and adventure (and wasn’t a complete wreck that broke down regularly) then the chances are you have fond memories of that car and probability suggests that that fondness will extent to the manufacturer too. But if it left you stranded by the side of the road regularly then the opposite is probably true.
If you react negatively to a certain brand that you have little personal history with, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad branding. It’s more likely that you don’t fit the target audience profile and so the messaging and approach is not designed to engage you.
We all recognise the big name brands at a glance and have some sort of reaction to those brands. People become familiar and nostalgic about brands that they have history with – and this is not by accident.
Consider why brands spend millions of dollars creating identities that allow them to stand out from the competition.
The impact of graphic design on business is shown here in these three examples of world-leading brands with exceptional brand identities:
McDonald’s: McDonald’s began in 1937, but it was then called “The Airdome.” Renamed McDonald’s in 1940, when they first started using the Golden Arches design, but the Golden Arches were only used in the architecture of the building, not as the actual logo. The first McDonald’s logo was launched in 1948 and featured a Speedee Service Logo, still not the iconic “M” that everyone recognizes today. Bought out in 1961, the new owners first incorporated a version of the Golden Arches design into the logo but it was in 1968 that the Golden “M” logo that everyone recognises today was created. It wasn’t until 2003 that McDonald’s adopted the “I’m lovin it” strapline in a change of advertising campaign. Brands are not static. They should always be taking stock and evaluating. In recent years the Ronald McDonald clown figure has been conspicuous by his absence which denotes a shift in the brand positioning (but that is another post for another day). Today, McDonald’s is in over 100 countries and serves 69 million people every day.
Coca-Cola: Coca-Cola was founded in 1892 and has grown to now be the most recognised global brand, featured in over 200 countries across the globe. The Coca-Cola logo has remained fairly consistent over the years but it has been regularly, revised and redrawn (ever-so-slightly). It was a design written in black until 1947 when what’s known as the red button logo was released. 1958 saw the first use of the “Fishtail” design. In 1969 the logo revision known as the “white wave” appeared, and in 1982 the Diet Coke logo was released. The brand logo also saw revisions in 2003, 2007, 2011, and 2013. But the core brand has always remained relatively consistent and recognisable. Coca-Cola understood the power of design and branding early but it wasn’t until 1916 that the famous Contour Bottle was released. Designed to stop copy-cat brands the creative idea for the bottle was to create a uniqueness that instantly identified coke. The creative brief stated that the design should still be recognisable and identifiable even if the bottle was broken. That brief birthed a design icon. Coca-Cola now has a market cap of over $50 billion and is valued at over $120 billion when the brand value is included.
Apple: The first Apple logo was made in 1976 and featured an illustration of Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree. In 1977, Steve Jobs hired graphic designer Rob Janoff to design a logo and the very first version of the ubiquitous Apple logo was born. A rainbow-coloured apple with the bite taken out of the side. The rainbow was a key element then as Apple was the first to introduce a colour monitor. In 1997 the Apple “Think Different” campaign was released featuring the same rainbow logo, but it wasn’t until 1998 that the first iMac was released, and they changed the logo to a translucent and monochrome look. By this time every computer had a colour monitor so it was no longer a key message for the brand. Apple sells products in over 175 countries across the world as has become the worlds leading technology brand.
World-leading brands are by definition the best of the best. They are examples that everyone knows and understand. What they have in common is a commitment to using design at the heart of their businesses.
They were not world-beaters when they invested in graphic design. What they teach us all is that a brand is never finished. Like a good website, a brand should always be refining and adapting.
What graphic design and the principles a good designer will bring to your image, promotion and communications is an investment. And it’s an investment that will pay for itself over and over again.
If you think good design is expensive, you should look at the cost of bad design.
– Ralf Speth, CEO of Jaguar Land Rover
What does sustainable graphic design mean for business?
Customer Perceived Value
The New Revolution: Business, Innovation & Design Thinking
To Niche or Not to Niche?
Carl Jung’s (Brand) Archetypes
Corporate Design: What is that all about?
What do you think of when someone talks about corporate design. Most often people seem to think of graphic design, but good corporate design also embraces design strategy, and brand architecture too.
This means that in modern usage corporate design is not just concerned with the graphical identity and visual representation but also the structure and planning of particular processes to achieve distinct goals.
Most larger corporations have understood this for many years and have incorporated every form of design into their success strategies.
For effective corporate design, it’s important to define the two common strands that corporate design covers – which I will then expand on so you can apply the theory to your own company.
So let’s look at the elements of an effective Corporate design.
1. Logo
The logo is akin to a badge. That’s what a brand mark originally was after all. A hot metal brand burnt onto the rump of cattle, whiskey barrels and packing cases. Those burnt marks carried a 3 fold meaning:
The modern company logo is simply the updated version of that ‘branded’ mark. It is a representation of the company and acts as the ‘face’ of your organisation. In terms of branding or corporate design, it is simply the very tip of an immense iceberg.
A good logo is generally designed for instant and immediate audience recognition. Most people can name companies simply by seeing the logo. People have tested this further by switching the typography and images within well-known logos – and most responders can still identify the original company based on the colours and shape of the logo.
But let me state this very clearly: A logo is NOT a brand. Your logo is simply the visual representation of the company/brand. The logo itself can not communicate the values, mission and qualities of the company it represents. Those are things that have to be imposed onto, are infused into, your audiences understanding of what that logo actually means. I’ll say more on this later.
Your logo obviously helps differentiate a company from its competitors. In fact, that’s one of the tests designers use to evaluate a logo. But a great logo doesn’t mean anything until the underlying company injects the logo with ‘worth’ or meaning.
Under the logo sits many contributing factors that will feed into your audience’s understanding of what that logo represents and what it, therefore, communicates over time.
These are far too complex and diverse for me to expand in any real details here – but I’ll give a brief overview.
Directly supporting the logo are the other physical, visual elements of the companies communications collateral.
The colour scheme, fonts, tagline, website design and the nature and style of images used too. But there are also other less obvious elements that a good corporate or brand designer will consider. The style of typography, the language used, the tone of voice and the rhythmic style used in your text too.
Below that are yet more intangible elements that also all feed into your audience’s understanding of who you are as a firm, what you stand for and what they can expect from you.
Some are strategic in nature. The brand positioning and brand values for example. Customer experience, perceived product value, brand promise and even the systems and processes you use when interacting with your audience – all project meaning and elicit understanding in the minds of your audience when they encounter your logo.
2. Typography
A company font is now often one of the key concerns when we brand a company. The very design of a font will communicate something about you to the world. A mismatched font will immediately create a feeling of disconnection. A solid blocky font might be a great match for a heavy machinery manufacturers logo (like JCB or Mack Trucks) – but it’s still not going to be appropriate for the body text of their brochure. However, the choice of body font used for that needs to still evoke meaning in the readers’ minds. Is the font design round and open. Or condensed and narrow. Readers do draw meaning (or read the font) as they also read the actual words.
A well-proportioned, clear and legible font can make a huge difference for perceived accessibility when looking at large amounts of copy, on a website or even a marketing flyer, the apparent density of the text can affect reader engagement.
Like a good logo. Well-considered text, both in design and language, will create a ‘feeling’ in the reader’s mind.
Large corporations tend to opt for clean, sans-serif typefaces – (especially if they originate in Europe) whereas in the USA often serif fonts have historically been deemed as more authoritative.
Your choice of typeface should reflect and resonate with the company’s image and beliefs.
Heritage brands often try to reflect a sense of ‘history’ in the choice of a serif font like Palatino, Bembo or even the ubiquitous Times New Roman. Serif typefaces reflect classical design – originally deriving from stonemasons carving text into rock, the serifs’ helped to stop the rock splitting at the corner of the letters. We all understand serif fonts as more formal.
All text is written to communicate and should therefore be readable. For example, web designers should consider the differences between browser rendering engines. Text fonts will not be displayed in the same way across different browsers.
Accessibility is becoming more of a concern with large corporate websites. Usability should always be a primary concern and increasingly typography design plays a large role here – but your company should also care about its users with disabilities who might only have access via the help of a screen reader.
With the advent of voice searching (Alexa, Siri etc) these questions are becoming part of the commissioning process for websites now. Sadly, many organizations are still struggling to catch up with the changing nature of web interaction.
Another consideration with voice searching is the fact someone may never visit your site on an actual screen at all. I can’t expand too much on the implications of that here but let me just ask if you’ve ever thought about developing a company identification sound? Think about the intel jungle or the AppleMac start-up sound. Like Pavlov’s dogs, you know what that sound means the instant you hear it and it connects you back in some way to the company.
Does your heart jump a little when you hear the ice cream van’s melody coming down your street? That’s the power of association in sound.
3. Colour
Any graphic designer, worth that title, will think carefully about different colour combinations, colour psychology and colour theory when devising your logo and corporate colour scheme. Colour is a very strong conveyer of emotion for us as humans. And your colours will convey a strong statement about your organization – and how it does business.
It’s proven that some shades of green or pink can make us feel more relaxed, even dropping our heart rates. Alternatively, seeing red can raise our heart rates and yellow can make us feel happier.
Your chosen colours should convey meaning, emphasize the philosophy and strategy of the corporation.
According to studies conducted by the Institute of Color Research, human beings make a subconscious judgment about their environment or an item within 90 seconds – and that that assessment is largely based on colour alone. The importance of colours in corporate communications can not be overstated and should not be ignored.
It’s notable too that our brains apparently did not evolve to see or appreciate the concentrated and saturated primary colours in the same way as we view other hues. Our eyes and brains evolved in the natural world and therefore we tend to appreciate sophisticated colour combinations rather than colours that clash with one other. Corporate colour schemes generally use colours that blend well. Unless, of course, there is a logical reason to employ a colour clash to convey a particular meaning about your brand.
4. Brand
I’ve mentioned brand lots already. A common definition is that your brand is the gut feeling someone has after encountering/engaging with you.
A brand is the overall essence of the business. It’s a holistic view. A brand identity communicates an organization’s strategy in an encompassing, universal way to connect with the target audiences.
Jeff Bezos famously said that “Your brand is what other people say about you when you are not in the room”.
Or as Scott Cook put it. “A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is — it is what consumers tell each other it is”
For me, brand management is all about reputation management. So brand design is all about influencing the target audience to form the desired comprehension and connection with the company.
The overall impact of branding is therefore often more of an emotional response than a logical and rational process. And emotion, according to psychologists, is in fact how we make most of our decisions. We just like to tell ourselves that we use facts and logic.
A company should aim to create a feeling of “know, like and trust” in your target audience. One of the objectives is for your prospects to resonate with what you offer and ideally to see you as the only option that provides a solution to their problems.
We use the formula that Trust + Confidence + Emotion equates to a strong brand (or strong corporate positioning).
Your company should consider its objectives and values in all it does. These form your particular organisation’s characteristics. They should reflect the philosophy, processes, image. A strong brand builds credibility and motivates clients. It expresses its uniqueness, differentiating itself from the competition distinctly, attracts and engages the desired target audience and build connections to convert those prospects into custom.
A poor brand expression is when the target audience feels like the image and the reality don’t quite match up. As soon as that disconnect happens then brand trust erodes. And that translates to lost custom.
The key ‘takeaway’ here is that your company has to deliver on the brand promise.
You have to do what you say you do, in the way you say you will, and at the level of quality and service, you said you would.
5. Quality
Quality is one of the most crucial elements of brand delivery. Quality defines a company in policies, procedures and responsibilities to its users and also to both the wider community and the wider world.
If your company delivers quality products (or services) consistently – then you have a great chance of gaining repeat custom. Yet more consistency makes repeat customers into loyal customers – and if you continue to deliver then, over time, those loyal customers become fans, and will referer and introduce others to you.
Quality should be reflected in every aspect of a corporation and at every customer touchpoint.
How you do business, the kind of products or services you deliver, how you handle and interact with your prospects and clients. These are all integral parts of your brand experience. Every detail and every interaction either build or detract from your brand in the experience and the mind of your prospects and customers.
6. Community
One of the biggest companies to recognise the power of the community was Apple. It nurtured a dedicated, community of enthusiasts around its products.
It’s no easy task to form engaged and enthusiastic communities and it’s also hard to then leverage that connection. But once you have them and deliver consistently then you can create brand evangelists. And that translates to the power of referral and word-of-mouth marketing. Customers who are passionate about the brand and believe in the company’s products. Who actively promote you and recommend you to others in their influence.
How has Apple done it?
7. Culture
Tony Hsieh, CEO of the online shoe and clothing company Zappos said: “Your culture is your brand.”
He understood that every aspect of how you do business, your entire business, is the basis of who you are and is therefore the truth of the corporate brand that needs to be communicated. Everything else is inauthentic and will detract or harm you connecting to your audience properly.
Culture is sometimes confused with community – but it is in fact very different. Culture refers to the preferences, tastes, behaviours, manners, knowledge and values that are shared in and favoured by the community.
It also refers to the very culture of your organisation. Smaller companies tend to take on the culture (and personality) of the boss. In larger entities, the culture can be more complex. And a company can have a great customer-facing culture but could still actually be a toxic place to work. In the long term, that serves no one well – the firm will find it very hard to retain staff and that will eventually affect the customer-facing side of the business too.
If you have (sub)communities formed around products or service, it doesn’t necessarily mean that these communities have a healthy culture either. A damaged culture can ruin a company’s reputation very quickly.
If you accept my assertion that brand management is essentially reputation management then you’ll fully grasp the problems a poor culture, either in the workplace or created around your products, can have on the effectiveness of your brand – and therefore the health of your business.
Add into the mix that you can’t really control what people are saying about you (when you are not in the room) and the holistic nature of a unified corporate design and brand positioning starts to come into sharp focus.
The biggest ‘rooms’ in the world are now the conversations that happen on social media. A poor customer experience or a bad review can circle the globe in second and haunt a company for years.
The left hand needs to not only know what the right hand is doing but it needs to be working to the same ends. It’s becoming evident that the world is shrinking. A company can no longer hide anything because the internet has made everything accessible and visible. The successes of the future will be the corporations that can walk the walk as well as they talk the talk.
Ethics is increasingly becoming a valuable commodity. Civic responsibility is now part of the value system that younger generations are looking for from the companies they align with.
I’ll offer one final definition regarding effective corporate or brand communications if I may. An effective corporate strategy has complete confidence in who its ‘tribe’ are – and rallies that tribe together. It’s a company that shares the tribes’ values and is totally comfortable and authentic in its own skin. There is no artifice. It’s real. It’s honest. It’s genuine.
Let’s come full circle, back to those early items that carried the hot-iron brand marks. The language we use may have shifted slightly but the essence is still the same. The rancher branding his cattle to claim ownership is now reversed. It’s now your customers who choose to align with your corporation – so it’s probably better for a modern company to consider this more in terms of ‘belonging’. The mark of quality is still all about trust and authenticity simply means being real. If our brands can achieve this we will find that people will align with them.
The author Howard Schultz said it well in his book about the rise and increased dominance of Starbucks – “Authentic brands don’t emerge from marketing cubicles … They emanate from everything the company does”.
I hope you have found this article helpful. If you are still unsure of how to design your corporate identity and join all the dots effectively then please feel free to contact us and we’ll see how we can help you further.
Branding or Marketing: Which is right for you?
The question of whether investing in branding or marketing is the best option for your business has raged for many years. For me people are usually asking the wrong question, The better questions to ask are about the necessary outcomes desired and time frame. Essentially, can you play the long game or do you need some quick wins? If we are brutally honest with ourselves, for most of us the answer is probably a little of both. And in the present financial landscape, many are probably leaning more towards aiming for quicker, short-term wins. Knowing what you need to achieve in both the short and long-term timeframes will help decide what actions should be your primary focus.
These days branding and marketing are inexorably intertwined. Many business owners I speak to are not really able to state a clear distinction between the roles. My view is that they do share a great deal of common ground – but they approach the questions from very different perspectives.
I often explain branding in terms of reputation management. If you have a poor reputation then it is going to affect sales regardless of how good a job the marketing material does. If there is a disconnection or lack of trust in the brand itself, if the brand messaging is broken or the brand has been damaged by bad reviews or bad press – then the best marketing in the world will still struggle to win back the trust and belief of your audience.
Effective branding is about creating a relationship of trust so loyalty and repeat business becomes the norm. The most effective brands develop those customers to become advocates – so good branding translates to the conversation the public has about you. As Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon said it: “Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.” And these days the biggest rooms are social media sites with their global reach. A bad review will travel the globe in seconds.
Marketing, on the other hand, in whatever form it takes, is the conversation your company has with present and potential clients. The modern consumer is very savvy and is inherently aware, and usually somewhat suspicious, about being marketed to.
Playing the short or the long game.
Marketing tends to be measured over much shorter periods of time than branding. We talk in terms of marketing campaigns – which can alter messaging and focus regularly. We tend to measure marketing in actions or sales, and the ROI is expected in relatively short timeframes. (ie. weeks and months).
Did campaign X deliver the expected results? With the desired increased website visitors completing purchases, an upturn in sales in region Y during/following our marketing or advertising activities? These are the type of metrics that every business is familiar with.
Alternatively, branding is about building a relationship of trust and confidence. Which by nature requires a longer timeframe. It’s a much longer process, more akin to dating. You take time to get to know one another. Building familiarity, trust and depth of relationship along the way. You wouldn’t ask someone to marry you on your first date, would you?
If you are looking to build a strong brand – or evaluate your brand position then ask yourself:
This brand-based, customer journey requires the establishment of a relationship and so needs a reasonably long timeframe. It’s more a series of long country walks, with time to talk and get to know one another, rather than a 200m sprint. I know that’s an overly simplistic metaphor, as both branding and marketing cross-pollinate and interweave massively, but I can only deal in broad brush strokes here.
The question I often ask is: Can a marketing campaign deliver if your audience does not know and trust the brand? In some cases and for some products the answer is Yes! Otherwise, no new names would ever enter the marketplace. But customers tend to only trust an unknown entity as a ‘calculated gamble’, or impulse buy, which they will then critically evaluate. Impulse buys by nature tend to have a lower price point relative to the individual’s income.
To command greater customer loyalty, gain repeat business and a larger premium then the brand that stands behind the marketing offer becomes a key consideration.
Which begs the question: Can a brand exist without marketing? The two are so co-dependent that I truly can’t think of an example. Any action of presenting the brand to market could be classed as advertising or marketing in some way. Each relies on the other, each is co-dependant but if plotted on a Venn diagram they would have a very large shared area. There are specialist marketing firms and there are specialist branding agencies, so for me, the distinction is really more about strategy and delivery.
In simple terms, the brand lead approach should, if done properly, be about aligning the overall strategy and messaging. Whereas marketing is generally focused on the delivery of the specific message to the relevant target audience. A marketing department might be running several different campaigns aimed at different sectors or different customer avatars, the UPS might also be a distinctly different offer to each target audience. But I’d argue that these should all be held under the overall brand strategy or the public can start to feel confused and even distrustful of a company that appears to change depending on who it’s speaking to!
Moreover, I’ve never yet seen marketing value appear on a company ledger – whereas brand values are regularly cited in company valuations. For Coca-Cola, brand value accounts for approx $70 billion of its £120 billion valuation. * But it’s a mistake to think that branding is just for international companies.
In a world where social media channels are the primary interaction tools then having an online presence is crucial. Which explains the explosive rise in personal branding as people strive to build a personal following to capitalise on their own unique qualities and expertise. Any presentation of yourself, product or company is a marketing opportunity although overt selling tends to be counterproductive on such platforms, and so brand positioning becomes the key focus. Marketing and branding do co-exist and cross-pollinate hugely but I would suggest, for reasons already stated, companies should start with the brand.
Developing a strong brand position, with distinctive brand collateral and messaging that is proven to connect and resonate with the target audience – building a solid relationship of trust, should build customer loyalty and give rise to more impactive and effective marketing.
It’s not all visual
Branding is not all visual … which is a common mistake many businesses appear to fall into. It’s about representing the essence of who you are, how you work and what you do. In as authentic and honest a way as possible – across all the customer touchpoints. Every interaction with your business needs to be fully aligned and honestly reflect your core values.
The modern consumer is very attuned to identifying when things don’t quite ‘smell right’ – so being honest and authentic is the only option. Any sense of you being disingenuous will damage your customers’ relationship – usually irreparably… and with social media and review sites at everyone’s fingertips that is likely to transpire into much more than simply one damaged relationship.
Most people still think about branding in a primarily visual way. With designers driving the look and feel of the brands’ presentation to the world that is understandable. The UK Design Council has researched the impact of design and states:
But modern branding should also include the tone of voice and language you use. Many people are starting to develop brand collateral that involves the other senses too. Sound branding has become much more common – and with the growth of voice search technology (like Alexa and Siri) the need to consider the auditory representation of a brand is a huge growth area.
Other firms have even invested in specific scents. Some retailers have custom aromas they use in their stores: Abercrombie & Fitch, Starbucks, Pandora and even Samsung have all embraced scent branding within their stores. Apple also has a scent that is used – when you unbox a new Apple product it’s a full sensory experience. The new box smell is no mistake. The fact that a new iPhone box is such a tight fit that there is a sense of a vacuum or suction has been purposefully designed to create that experience. The almost church-like, scale and feel of the original Apple stores were unlike anything on the high street at the time … all these customer interactions have been considered and designed to deliver an overall experience of the brand.
So, Do you need quick wins? or Do you need long-term loyal customers?
The truth is that all businesses need both. As branding and marketing become more aligned knowing your objectives and having clear measurables is crucial.
I believe that ‘the brand’ should be the touchstone that all business activities are checked against. If something doesn’t align with the brand – in vision, implementation or ethos then it could damage your relationship with your audience.
I believe that ‘the brand’ should inform all marketing actions. If the direction you are taking doesn’t seem to fit with the overarching brand then it could be time to look at a rebrand to re-align all the elements into a new, unified vision. Alternatively, it could be time to launch a new entity or create a subbrand. There is no one size fits all approach. It all depends on your objectives and your audience.
My advice?: Do the research and follow the data. If you’re not sure how to progress it could be valuable to do a brand and communications audit first? And if you are really stuck and unsure what to do then you can always give a brand professional a call.