Branding is the art of setting yourself apart by developing a trustworthy identity with a solid reputation for yourself and your business. It is this reputation that creates your edge in increasingly competitive markets. Most importantly strong brands are perceived as higher value. Therefore investing into developing a strong brand will immediately impact the profitability of your business.
Marketing professionals know too well the secrets of what makes a brand irresistible. They understand what influences consumers buying behaviour, how to create brand loyalty and where and how to effectively communicate the value of their products and services. Here are the top 4 secrets to a powerful business brand and how you can learn from the pros to develop your own brand in order to get more customers and develop profitable longterm relationships with clients and brand advocates.
Secret #1 – Understanding & Influencing Buying Decisions
Marketing departments of large corporate industry leaders have worked with neuroscientist for decades to carefully study consumer’s buying behaviour. Through brain scanning technology they have cleverly pinpointed why we buy and how we make our decisions. Corporate marketing guru, Martin Lindstrom shares in his book Buy-ology the extensive studies that him and his team have conducted over many years and how their findings unveil the psychology of our buying behaviour. It may not surprise you to learn that over 90% of people’s buying decisions are emotionally driven. Therefore brands that evoke emotion are extremely powerful. Here are some factors that impact our emotions:
- Senses – we use our senses to interpret the world including how we experience a brand.
- Smells, sounds, colour and texture all influence how we perceive a brand and more so how we feel about it. Therefore logos, packaging and print material will impact prospects perception of the value while tunes and smells can influence emotions and even our buying behaviour. Think of a coffee shop with freshly baked muffins. You may only wanted a coffee but now that you smell those baked goods, why not get a little muffin as well. Another good example are Saje Wellness stores. They understand too well that smells are one of our most primal influencers. Every store places diffusers outside their doors to entice you in and shop. When thinking about your own brand, how can you integrate the senses into developing your customer’s experience?
- Emotions – humour, shock, surprise and fear really make a brand message become sticky.
- The German Edeka Commercial (see below) went viral last year because of the shared emotion it created around the topic of loved ones at Christmas. Infusing your brand stories with a variety of emotions will increase recollection, remark-ability and share-ability.
- Social connectedness, tribes & acceptance – we are naturally social and branding is the way to develop the club.
- Copying others, following rituals and belonging to the same ‘faith’ creates certainty and a sense of community. The brand logo or other visual representation of the brand becomes the shared symbol of identity and recognition among ‘followers’. Apple has created a brand cult among users with strong customer loyalty. Consider how you can create your own following. It will not only strengthen your brand with the ‘in-group’ but will also increase the desire for others to join your movement.
Consistently explore how your brand and messages can incorporate these factors to align with your values and instil the right emotions in your customers and prospects. Your brand will become more powerful, meaningful and valuable.
Secret #2 – Creating Branding Loyalty
Without your commitment to building brand loyalty your business will struggle. Loyalty means that the customers you acquire through your marketing and sales activities continue to buy from you over the lifetime of their needs.
Acquiring new customers is more expensive and time consuming than maintaining relationships with your existing customers. Therefore creating loyalty with your current clients should be at the top of your priority list.
As we have already learned our innate social needs can create loyalty for a brand. However, to consistently maintain this enthusiasm two key factors need to be satisfied for customers to remain loyal.
You will need to deliver a high quality product and ongoing commitment to outstanding customer service. Top brands like Amazon and Apple are great examples of how they have created strong brand loyalty through consistent product and service delivery.
Make quality and service front of mind and top of your game and you will not only have loyal customers but advocates who’s word of mouth will spread your brand like wildfire and for free.
Secret #3 – Sharing Contagious Content
This is neither simple nor easy yet it is one the most powerful ways for your brand to become strong, visible and credible. Traditional advertising is not as effective as it once was. With our attention span dropping due to the ever increasing noise in our oversaturated world of information, word-of-mouth recommendation of your brand is your primary marketing tool. It eliminates competing on price with competitors, grows the likelihood of closing the deal and if following the recommendations of Secret #2, develops loyalty over the client’s lifetime needs. Extensive scientific research into what makes something contagious has discovered these 6 key drivers:
- Social currency – people like to share what makes themselves look good with the inside scoop to ‘classified’ information. Make your content noteworthy, select and let the sharer look good in front of others and chances are your content will spread.
- Triggers – place triggers in the environment of your target audience to stay top of mind and tip of the tongue.
- Emotion – we share when we care so emotional content if done well can spread quickly. Think back to the Edeka Commercial mentioned above.
- Public – we like to copy others to be part of the ‘in-group’ and socially accepted. Your brand needs to be highly visible so others want to become part of your movement and share your content.
- Practical value – useful things get shared more easily. If you can package useful knowledge, tips and expertise people can pass it on easily and your brand will travel further.
- Stories – our love and fascination for stories has never died. Can you create a story that wraps up your brand and makes it exciting to listen to?
Develop your content with these 6 drivers in mind and watch how word-of-mouth for your brand cuts through the noise and brings you more clients with ease.
Secret #4 – Staying on brand
Marketeers know that consistency and alignment of message, values and visuals are the key to a strong brand. A written strategy plan that clearly describes who, where, when, what and how will ensure you consistently stay the course and share your brand promise with the right people at the right time through the right communication and the right medium. Prepare your plan well by taking these steps:
- Assess – internal and external analysis of the business, markets and economic factors as well as the current reputation of your brand.
- Be Clear – core values, brand personality, qualities, niche markets, differentiation and benefits for markets of your differentiators will clearly and succinctly prepare your story.
- Create – in careful alignment design your image, messages, touchpoints, packaging and marketing materials.
- Action – implement brand engagement with your niche markets with consistency in using your chosen marketing tools, PR and events.
Plan to guide your energy, time and money investment and will help keep you on track for the long-term. It is exciting when the clarity of planning pulls all the secrets of a concise strategy together into one concise strategy.
With these four secrets revealed, hopefully you will have a great framework to start designing and refining your brand. Good, consistent branding will solidify your business identity and with that it’s reputation. And a good reputation significantly increases the value of your brand and the worth of your business.
Need a hand to develop a brand then get in touch for a free, 30 minute exploration call to get you on your way.
