If you’re running a business and you’re trying to reach an audience, then you’re going to need the right brand to do it. The brand is everything that represents the business from the surface and beneath. It’s the reputation, the aesthetic, and, most importantly, the connection it has with your audience.
In order to forget that connection, you need to help people find a way to identify with the brand. Here are a few different elements that can help them do just that.
The problem you solve
Every business, product, and service should begin with a simple question: what problem am I solving? In what way are you helping your customers or clients? What obstacles are you removing, what needed benefit are you providing, or what lifestyle are you helping them achieve? This should be the core of your marketing message due to the fact that it gets to the reason that they might want to buy from your business and support it in the first place. If you don’t find a problem that you solve or a goal that you help your audience reach, then it’s not just a branding problem, it’s a problem with the whole business that you need to go back to the drawing board with.
The voice of the brand
When it comes to how your brand communicates, the tone it uses and the attitude it projects are going to play a big role in either drawing your audience in or sending them scurrying off. For that reason, you should make sure that you consider seriously how you form your brand voice. Is it going to be professional and serious? Conversational and light? Can you utilize humor? The best way to work this out is to take the time to identify your ideal customer profile and think about how you would personally try to sell it to someone like them. Then, you should establish a brand bible that, in part, systemizes the voice of the brand, perhaps even including examples of the types of language to use or to avoid.
The social aspect
Modern businesses get to enjoy one aspect of brand building that was rarely possible for businesses outside of local mom and pop stores: the benefits of direct ongoing communication with your audience. It’s not a one-way street anymore. Using social media for business allows you to communicate with your audience and, most importantly, for them to communicate right back. Aside from using this as a tool to provide support or to gather feedback, simply responding to people who mention your brands or reply to your posts helps build a sense of community. From this, you can foster a very strong type of brand loyalty and even find some brand ambassadors in the mix who can do wonders for your word of mouth.
The right face
Not every business is going to need a set of faces to represent it. A lot of businesses, including online businesses, will use the real business owner or employees to strike up a connection with their audience. However, you may not always want to directly put your own face in front of your business, especially when it comes to marketing messages. Instead, working with firms like a modeling agency can help you find the people who best suit your brand and the type of look that you’re trying to give off. This is especially true if you’re trying to present any products or services that help customers live a certain aesthetic or style.
Show some appreciation for your customers
There’s no kind of brand identification or loyalty that is stronger than a personal history with the brand. You can foster this in some customers solely by providing excellent products or services but if you want to make the most of it, you need to be able to go above and beyond. This can include sending things like loyalty rewards to returning customers, some free swag to new customers on their first order, as well as things like welcome, thank you, and appreciation letters. It makes the service you provide feel that much more personal and the resulting loyalty can, in turn, lead to a much higher lifetime value per customer. People do appreciate the human touch.
Hopefully, the tips above can help you find the right keys you need to help people identify with your brand, forming a connection, and opening a dialogue that creates customers that are more loyal and more invested in your business than they might otherwise be.
