You want to build name recognition for your business, but the thought of it gives you anxiety. We get it! Branding can seem quite like an overwhelming feat, especially if you are on a tight budget.
It appears branding requires a ton of money that only big businesses can afford. Here is the good news, you do not need to spend a fortune to market your business. Thanks to technology and social media, it is pretty easy to position yourself as an expert and reach your deal customer group.
But, to achieve this, you need to implement the right strategies. In this piece, we will walk you through 5 of our favourite proven brand activation strategies.
Table of Contents
Define your brand
Branding is an overall experience. It includes how you package your products, treat customers, the ambience of your office and the images on your website and marketing material.
So, you may want to ask yourself, what kind of emotions you want people to feel interacting with your business?
- How would you want people to describe your company?
- What are my core values and mission?
- What kind of impact do I want to leave?
Identify who your target customers are
Your business is not for everyone is probably the first rule of branding. When you started your company, there is a specific market need you wanted to fill. You need to identify the people who will buy your products.
A couple of questions to help you get started on target customer identification:
Who is this person? How old is s/he? Where does s/he live? How much does s/he make in a year? What does s/he like? Where does s/he hang out?
Answers to these questions will help you piece together a profile of your ideal customer.
Establish your value proposition
At this point, you want to figure out things that differentiate you from the other several businesses doing the same thing. One way to think about the value proposition is to see it as a hook to draw in the target customer.
It could be positioning your brand as a customer experience obsessed or highlighting your free shipping offer or only emphasizing the way you do things – the idea is to focus on benefits customers get.
Design your brand assets
Now it is time to translate everything you have done so far into hard, visual assets. You may want to start with creating a brand style guide which will act as a framework for every branding style.
The brand style guide should include brand colour palette, fonts, writing style and the dos and don’ts of your business. It is also a way to ensure consistency across all your assets.
Once your style guide is ready, then go-ahead and design your logo, business cards, website, and create social media profiles for your company.
Leverage the right content to build authority
You are a subject matter expert in your industry. Time to share your knowledge with the world.
The idea is to leverage the right content to get your brand in front of your target audience – so you are not going to create content for content sake. You are going to be strategic about it.
You already know who your audience is, what they want, where they hang out, and how they consume information. With this information, create content which may include video content, writing an in-depth blog post, sharing an infographic or even sending regular newsletters.
By consistently publishing high-quality content, you will gradually become a go-to resource for your customers, they will come to trust you, and when it is time to make a purchase, you will be the first business they go to.
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