Businesses are everywhere and competition is tight in almost every industry. One of the most common questions entrepreneurs get is “what is your unique selling point?” as this essentially sets a business apart. However, there are brands that still get confused whenever they’re probed about their business.
Suffering from brand confusion means being unable to articulate what your business is all about. In this day and age, it is challenging for business leaders to train all their employees in knowing the brand at heart especially with the ongoing pandemic. Apart from your staff, you cannot also expect your customers to communicate your business in the most precise manner possible if you are confused about the brand yourself. Ready to lose your credibility if that’s always the case. We’ve prepared some steps below which you can take to clarify your brand, avoiding brand confusion. Let’s get started!
Define and understand your core. Your mission, vision, and values make up the foundation of your brand that you should be carrying in your head every time. From your company pamphlet to the customer experience and product quality you put out there should be reflecting your core. Pursuing something without having any backbone is just a waste of time. You cannot move in the right direction without understanding why you’re there in the first place. This is crucial in your brand strategy as you operationalize your big idea.
The way you are perceived by your target audience can be traced back to your branding after all. This significantly affects your profits and customer retention. Therefore, if you haven’t ironed out your core yet, better start now. You need to ask yourself why your company exists, how you plan to achieve your vision, and what are your moral compasses. All these should be aligned with one another.
Develop and stay with your guidelines. Once you’ve grasped your core, you should start expounding your strategy alongside the brand guidelines that everyone must stick with. Consistency is key to ensure that all your stakeholders can easily identify your brand. You will be able to set up the guidelines once you’ve had a brand positioning exercise where you outline your audience, market, and goals. Upon understanding the pattern of how your customers perceive and engage with your brand, it would be wise to create customer profiles and then come up with key messages that are tailored for them.
Next thing to consider is the visuals that highly impact the level of brand awareness. Though, again, you should have done your research first and know your brand core by heart before even exploring other technicalities. Your visual identity basically encapsulates the imagery, typography, logo, and color palette of your brand. Needless to say, your logo should well represent what your business stands for. Think about it thoroughly and hire a designer. The colors and typography you will be consistently using will also invoke emotions and certain perceptions from your audiences so make sure they’re aligned with what you want to project. It’s the same with imagery where you’ll want to show the positive effect of your brand to both existing and potential customers.
Establish your brand persona. In doing so, you should have a clear idea of the levels of humor, enthusiasm, formality, and respect your brand is willing to take on. You can then create the voice and tone of your messaging without going beyond what’s apt for your brand. Constantly changing how you speak to your audience will only confuse them what kind of brand they’re subscribing to and would lessen the chances of them relating to you.
Make sure that your persona is also consistent across all your platforms. You wouldn’t want to have your website full of technicalities while your e-newsletter is sounding friendly. Stick with one persona that you think your customers can identify with. An approach that you may want to apply is exploring brand archetypes which are easily searchable to evaluate how you can comprehensively establish your own voice. One thing to note is that your tone can change depending on the context of the subject unlike your voice which should stay the same. Add this to your brand guidelines once you’ve finalized your persona.
Audit and align with your team. Don’t be too complacent after you’ve covered your bases. Consistently audit everything you’ve put out there including your social media posts, ads, and flyers among many others. It could be easier to have a tracking software or document that will allow you to see all your assets in one place.
Touch base with your team from time to time as well. Make sure that you all agree on a singular message so that the answer to what your business is all about would be something that is top of mind. When coming up with a concise answer, consider the problem you’re trying to solve and the reward of subscribing to your proposed solution.
These are only four doable ways that can help you and your team avoid brand confusion. Remember to establish the backbone first of your brand before zeroing in on the execution. You can also involve your teammates in planning the best way to project your brand and evaluate the strategy every now and then. Now, don’t waste any time and start your branding journey!
