Jan 07

Synchronizing Your Brand Image With Your Customers’ Buying Habits

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Synchronizing your brand image with your customers’ buying habits.

 

What do customers see when they interact with your brand? Are you projecting your ideas or taking the time to discover and listen to your customers’ wants and needs? In order to achieve success in marketing, it is critical that your image and message are based on what your customers are looking for from the outside looking in, not what a company wants to project from the inside out.

 

The first step in synchronizing your brand with your customers’ buying habits is to take a hard look at what your business is all about.

 

Face the inside reality

 

Your business’s inside reality is what your business is really all about: what you do well, what you don’t do well. It includes all benefits, obstacles, problems, etc. You can change your inside reality by improving processes, training employees, hiring employees, diversifying your services, improving your support and employing numerous other enhancements. Why is this important? Because if you don’t match the outside perception to your inside reality, you will wind up with unhappy customers.

 

Build or rebuild your brand image

 

…in accordance with your “inside reality” and your customers’ wants and needs.

 

The following elements are used to create brand impressions, build value, raise awareness, attract customers and promote services. They are the essence of your brand image:

 

Your logo and tag line
Your Web presence
Your offline branding (stationery, sales kits, exhibits, brochures, etc.)
Your messaging (critical in conversions, must get attention, build value and trust)
Your blog (so important it deserves its own bullet!)
Ongoing marketing and advertising (e-mail, SEO, PPC, Social Media, PR, etc.)

 

So how do you synchronize these components with your customers’ buying habits?

 

First, you take the time to find out what your customers really want, rather than making assumptions about what you think they want. A good way to do this is by conducting interviews and organizing focus groups. Once you know for certain what your customers want, expect and need from your business, you will then be ready to develop the above media and campaigns in alignment with your customers’ expectations.

 

For example, if a customer’s primary goal is to set a meeting with a company that they feel can provide the services they require, they would need a few things to happen first:

 

They need a clear and easy-to-find explanation of the desired services they are seeking.
The messaging they read must build up substantial interest in order to provoke a response.
They must be easily led to THEIR desired call to action…which in this case is the ability to set up a meeting.

 

Now let’s take it a step further. What if you have a Web form to set up a meeting, but the customer is more “old school” and prefers to pick up the phone and call you? You will need to make sure they can easily find your phone number at the exact time they have decided to convert. If they have to look for it, you will likely lose them.

 

So, in summary,

 

Evaluate your inside reality. Don’t guess … be honest.
Discover and define your customers’ wants and needs and how they prefer to do business.
Write down all of your customers’ desired goals, from a low-level conversion such as an e-mail string up to your primary conversion.
Create or update your branding material and marketing campaigns so that they build value and trust and are infused with calls to action aligned with your customers’ goals.

http://www.intrigue-design.com


Intrigue Design was founded in 2005 by entrepreneur and marketing enthusiast Benjamin Donley. It was Ben’s vision to create a company that provides highly effective marketing strategies and creative services to fill the void between the “mega” ad agencies (mostly focused on Fortune 500 companies and Retail) and small graphic & web design firms with limited knowledge and experience in result-oriented marketing and branding strategies.

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Dec 13

Three Affordable Ways To Build Your Brand Image Online

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At the heart of every successful small business is a brand. What a brand is and how to build it is something that a lot of small businesses owners are keen to understand.


There are different aspects of a brand such as:

The brand identity. This is how your company looks and is achieved though the logo and brand colours.


The brand promise. This is the essence of what the company offers customers and how it positions itself. For example, the brand promise could be an offer of superb customer service or to offer the best value.


The brand experience. This is what customers or prospects experience when they interact with your company or your product.


The brand image. This is the internal and emotional reaction consumers have to your brand. It is impacted by what they see in your brand identity, where they see your brand, how they perceive your brand promise and if they have had a brand experience.


There are a number of ways that small businesses can use the internet to build their brand image. In this guide, we will focus on three


1. Put your business on the iPod


A video advert is the ideal medium in which to showcase your brand identity and to give consumers a feel for your brand promise and experience. Imagery and music in a video can immediately bring your brand to life in a way that email or printed communications struggle to do.


The problem for small businesses is that the cost of adverts starts at least $5,000 or $10,000. However, a Movie Brochure, costing a few hundred pounds or dollars, is a far more affordable way for small businesses to bring the business or product to life. Everyday Biographies is a gift company specialising in ghost writing childhood memories and autobiographies. It is a service which is a popular 60th or 70th birthday gift.


To bring their service to life, the agency, Marketing Small Business created a movie brochure for Everyday Biographies so that customers could view it on the site in order to experience the brand and the brand promise; email the link to family and friends who would be interested in buying the service as a gift or download an mp4 version to video iPod to enable customers to show friends and family away from the PC.


Associating the brand with the latest technology has created a very positive brand image. While enabling customers to show the service to others via their iPod made it easy for others to market the company via word of mouth and recommendation.


2. Market your business on You Tube


Once you have a a video such as a movie brochure for your business or your product, you can tap into the enormous video community on You Tube. Visitors to You Tube search for content across a wide range of topics. You can upload your movie brochure and assign relevant tags to it, which means it will appear to people who are searching for content similar to your movie brochure.


Everyday Biographies uses You Tube as a means of increasing awareness and interaction with its brand. A Movie Brochure showcases the Wedding DVD service they provide and You Tube users can link through to the website to see more examples. Thousands of You Tube users have viewed the Everyday Biographies movie brochures, therefore achieving wider brand awareness at minimal cost. In addition to You Tube, small businesses can submit movie brochures to MySpace and Google Video.


3. Marketing on Stumble Upon


The ideal way to promote your brand is through word of mouth recommendation. Stumble Upon is a network of several million users who are interested in sites that are recommended by like minded people or are interested in making recommendations themselves.


The users download a toolbar and when they find a site that they like, they register it. This site is then recommended to others in the network. If your site is recommended, then you will receive large increases in traffic as the network guides people to your site. So how do you get recommended?


1. Luck. Someone on the network visits your site and recommends you

2. Promote your site. You can kickstart your presence by promoting it.

3. Register your site at stumbleupon.com and pay for people to find it. It costs around 3p a visit so an investment of $30 will send around 1000 people to your site. If 30 or 40 of these people bookmark your site as one of their favourites on stumbleupon, this will result in free referrals to you as people regularly visit the sites that others have bookmarked.


Many sites registered with Stumbleupon.com report receiving between 10 and 15% of its traffic from that source. If your small business has a compelling product and a website that users like, stumbleupon can dramatically increase your web traffic overnight and improve your brand image via word of mouth recommendation.

Evan Mangan is a former Head of European Marketing for Yahoo! Mobile and is Managing Director of http://www.MarketingSmallBusiness.co.uk , a marketing agency which makes major brand marketing techniques available to smaller companies. To view some movie brochures view some movie brochures visit http://www.marketingsmallbusiness.co.uk/movie_brochure_example.html

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Nov 18

Defining Corporate Identity, Brand Identity & Brand Image

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Corporate identity is a company’s visual presence, which involves the corporate logo and design strategy for corporate marketing collateral. Corporate identity does not encapsulate brand identity, which is best defined as the soul of your company. However, a corporate identity may, and often does, reflect a brand identity. But some ad agencies, marketing companies and graphic design agencies would have you believe that brand identity is the same thing as corporate identity and that changing a logo or design strategy will change the brand identity. However, this is not the case. There are many intangible factors that weigh in on a brand identity. Such cosmetic changes can help a brand identity by making it evident to customers that a company cares about its appearance, but that’s about the extent of its power. A corporate identity does, however, need to evolve with the times. Failure to do so can negatively affect a company’s brand identity, but care must also be taken to not overly revise the presentation of a brand, lest customers be concerned about the state of a company. Corporate identity, along with organizational culture, product quality, service reputation, features, benefits, performance and value, are some of the key factors of brand identity.

Brand Identity – It’s the essence of your company
Brand identity is the complete package of a business to its customers. It includes the company’s service reputation, product quality, features, benefits, performance and value. It is the summation of all these things, which create brand identity.

Brand Image is the market’s perception of your brand identity, which may or may not coincide with your intended brand identity. Companies must work hard at the daunting task of getting brand identity and image to align…or hire a true branding company.

A branding company can show you how success starts with the brand identity. Do you have a branding strategy? Are your employees aware of it and able to be ambassadors for your company’s brand during interactions with the outside world? Are you making the most strategically sound decisions for your brand? Do you know your customers’ perceptions of your brand?

If your answer is “no” to any of those questions, take the first step in being able to answer yes to all of them and success.

Scott White is President of Brand Identity Guru a leading Corporate Branding and Branding research firm located in Boston, Massachusetts.
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Oct 24

What Are The Types Of Startergies Usually Adopted By The Head Of The Marketing Dept To Keep The Brand Image?

Brand Identity 1 Comment »

if you are the head of the marketing department , and one of your loyal customer comes to you saying that the products sold by you are defected and is harmfull to human beings, what can u do to maintain the brand image?

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Oct 04

Defining Corporate Identity, Brand Identity & Brand Image

Brand Identity No Comments »

Corporate identity is a company’s visual presence, which involves the corporate logo and design strategy for corporate marketing collateral. Corporate identity does not encapsulate brand identity, which is best defined as the soul of your company. However, a corporate identity may, and often does, reflect a brand identity. But some ad agencies, marketing companies and graphic design agencies would have you believe that brand identity is the same thing as corporate identity and that changing a logo or design strategy will change the brand identity. However, this is not the case. There are many intangible factors that weigh in on a brand identity. Such cosmetic changes can help a brand identity by making it evident to customers that a company cares about its appearance, but that’s about the extent of its power. A corporate identity does, however, need to evolve with the times. Failure to do so can negatively affect a company’s brand identity, but care must also be taken to not overly revise the presentation of a brand, lest customers be concerned about the state of a company. Corporate identity, along with organizational culture, product quality, service reputation, features, benefits, performance and value, are some of the key factors of brand identity.

Brand Identity – It’s the essence of your company
Brand identity is the complete package of a business to its customers. It includes the company’s service reputation, product quality, features, benefits, performance and value. It is the summation of all these things, which create brand identity.

Brand Image is the market’s perception of your brand identity, which may or may not coincide with your intended brand identity. Companies must work hard at the daunting task of getting brand identity and image to align…or hire a true branding company.

A branding company can show you how success starts with the brand identity. Do you have a branding strategy? Are your employees aware of it and able to be ambassadors for your company’s brand during interactions with the outside world? Are you making the most strategically sound decisions for your brand? Do you know your customers’ perceptions of your brand?

If your answer is “no” to any of those questions, take the first step in being able to answer yes to all of them and success.

Scott White is President of Brand Identity Guru a leading Corporate Branding and Branding research firm located in Boston, Massachusetts.
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Oct 01

Defining Corporate Identity, Brand Identity & Brand Image

Brand Identity No Comments »

Corporate identity is a company’s visual presence, which involves the corporate logo and design strategy for corporate marketing collateral. Corporate identity does not encapsulate brand identity, which is best defined as the soul of your company. However, a corporate identity may, and often does, reflect a brand identity. But some ad agencies, marketing companies and graphic design agencies would have you believe that brand identity is the same thing as corporate identity and that changing a logo or design strategy will change the brand identity. However, this is not the case. There are many intangible factors that weigh in on a brand identity. Such cosmetic changes can help a brand identity by making it evident to customers that a company cares about its appearance, but that’s about the extent of its power. A corporate identity does, however, need to evolve with the times. Failure to do so can negatively affect a company’s brand identity, but care must also be taken to not overly revise the presentation of a brand, lest customers be concerned about the state of a company. Corporate identity, along with organizational culture, product quality, service reputation, features, benefits, performance and value, are some of the key factors of brand identity.

Brand Identity – It’s the essence of your company
Brand identity is the complete package of a business to its customers. It includes the company’s service reputation, product quality, features, benefits, performance and value. It is the summation of all these things, which create brand identity.

Brand Image is the market’s perception of your brand identity, which may or may not coincide with your intended brand identity. Companies must work hard at the daunting task of getting brand identity and image to align…or hire a true branding company.

A branding company can show you how success starts with the brand identity. Do you have a branding strategy? Are your employees aware of it and able to be ambassadors for your company’s brand during interactions with the outside world? Are you making the most strategically sound decisions for your brand? Do you know your customers’ perceptions of your brand?

If your answer is “no” to any of those questions, take the first step in being able to answer yes to all of them and success.

Scott White is President of Brand Identity Guru a leading Corporate Branding and Branding research firm located in Boston, Massachusetts.
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Sep 29

What Is The Brand Image And Sources Of Equity For The Nivea Brand?

Brand Identity 2 Comments »

What is the brand image and sources of equity for the NIVEA brand? Does it vary across product classes? How would you characterize their brand hierarchy?

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Sep 29

What Makes A Successful Corporate Brand Image?

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Your corporate brand is, more than anything else, the most significant thing which will define you in the public eye, and therefore the one which will help to ensure your success – or your demise. A strong brand image and name will boost confidence throughout the business, and create a strong, successful impression in the market. So what aspects of your business or product should you bear in mind if you are considering either a rebranding opportunity, or perhaps creating a corporate brand from scratch for a new business?

One of the first things that should be considered is longevity. There is no gain at all to be had from planning a branding strategy for the immediate future only. With a short-term brand image, you will be losing out on one of the most significant aspects of branding, and that is the benefit which can be gained from having a brand that lasts, that survives the storms and comes out floating beautifully, if you’ll pardon the metaphor.

Most brand images only tend to be truly successful once they have been weathered a bit. A new name, a new logo, a new image might attract some attention initially simply because of its novelty. However, novelty, like fashion, becomes tired and yesterday’s news. What comes after novelty? Not a great deal, unless you’ve planned for the longer journey. Plan your corporate brand with a view to making it last beyond the immediate future, and see it as a means of taking your business well into the future.

Another aspect of a corporate branding strategy which should be considered very seriously is consistency. People appreciate a brand image that is consistent wherever that business happens to be featured. This includes everything from your letter headed notepaper to your storefront, from your portfolio leaflets to your website, and from your business card to your trade show stands.

What is the best known brand world-wide? It involves yellow arches – that is all that is needed for the name to jump into your mind. The branding is ubiquitous, which exemplifies the need for consistency, and which also emphasises the importance of design. A brand logo should be as suitable to be printed on letter headings as for visibility on a large scale, such as from motorways or from the air.

This means, if you are considering your brand image from a starting position that you need to think carefully about what will work across all of the advertising media and yet not look out of place at the entrance to your office building. This can be quite difficult, since what works well in one form doesn’t always translate well to others.

Consider a website for example, where your banner image can be 800 pixels wide, and a couple of hundred or more high – plenty of room for a long name, a long slogan and a few images. But what of your business cards? Can you achieve the same impact and immediate brand recognition within a space just a few centimeters square?

A good plan when it comes to creating a successful corporate brand is to consider not only the market place, but also your competitors. What makes your competitors’ brand images stand out? What is it about their brand image, brand name, logo or color theme which gets them remembered? Think about the slogans or tag lines they use, and how these are perceived by customers.

Of course, this is not so that you can copy the ideas or principles, attempting to piggy-back on the success of other businesses. There are very few examples where this works at all, let alone successfully. However, having an understanding of what is already out there in the marketplace, working successfully, gives you a much better idea, not only of what you are up against, but of how you can stand out against it.

What is it that makes your business different? You will undoubtedly have an edge of one kind or another. If you are much smaller than your competition, then you can be more personal. If you are much bigger, you’re likely to be more competitive. If you are a merger of companies, you have more breadth to your experience, and if you are new then you can offer a breath of fresh air and a novel approach.

Once you understand the edge that your business has over other businesses, and understand not only what makes your business stand out, but also what you would like your business to be known for, then you can start to perceive ways in which that can be communicated and expressed through your corporate brand image.

A successful brand image will be one which is remembered easily, is recognized quickly and which has something to say, says it succinctly and says it effectively. It is not often successful if it makes people think for too long, tries to be too clever, denigrates the competition or is too easily dated. Try to avoid these clich

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