Branding is such an important part of building the image of a company, and good branding can be easily recognized. If we look at companies like Apple Nike and Coca-Cola, we can see how they have mastered the art of branding and created a strong global awareness for themselves. To understand how to brand effectively, first we need to understand what branding is. Once we understand what branding is and what it entails, we can better understand why it is so important.
Branding is a marketing practice of promoting a specific product or company by advertising and creative design to distinguish itself from the competition. This creative design includes the name of the product or company, logo, taglines, mascots, etc. According to Donald Miller, author of Building a Story Brand, “Branding is working to create simple, relevant messages we can repeat over and over so that we brand ourselves into public consciousness.” (Building a story brand, Donald Miller).
Let’s break this down into some more simplified steps:
- The first step is finding your public. You need to center your brand around your public. One way to do this is to create a persona for the public you are trying to reach. This gives you a more personal look at who your public is.
- Now you need to ask questions to complete the persona. What are their needs? How can I make the company about them? How do we help them? These questions can help you narrow in on what you will need to do to effectively brand to them.
- Next, we need to identify the internal and external problems. External problems are the easy ones to find. What does your product or company do for the customer on the surface level? That’s the external problem you are solving.
- The internal problems can be much harder to find. The internal problems are the customer fears, desires, or frustrations. Typically, the product is used to solve the external problem, but it is also often used to solve the internal problem as well. If you are selling a security system for a home the external problem you are solving is keeping the home safe. The internal problem you are solving however, is putting the homeowner at ease, and getting rid of the fear that their home isn’t safe.
- Finally, once you have identified the problems, you have to find out how to guide your public and make it about them. This will help draw them to your product or company because they feel that you are helping them. You can do this by providing a call to action. A call to action gives your customers something they can act upon that leads them to your business or product.
Branding is not a short process, so you will need to be diligent and stay consistent with your messaging to ensure that you are staying with your brand. By doing this you will build success and put your product or company permanently in your customers mind where they will come to you first. Now this may seem like a lot of work and it is but that is why branding is so important. There is a reason that Apple Nike Coca-Cola and many others have created success on the global scale and branding is a main reason for that success.
Follow along with our blog and check out our next post where we are covering planning and all the steps you need to do to effectively plan!