Estimated time to read: 7 minutes.
It can be difficult to know where to start in building or adapting a brand's identity. The best starting point is to identify how the brand is perceived online using monitoring and analysis tools. This analysis will make it possible to adapt and position the brand image of your company according to its audience and its results.Table of content:
- What is brand image and why is it so important?
- Do serious market research
- Define the brand's core values
- Choose a brand name that clearly expresses your message
- Create an emotional connection
- Build trust
- Permanence
- Coherent communication
What is brand image and why is it so important?
Branding is how the outside audience sees your brand. It is your own identity, what characterizes you and sets you apart from your competitors. Its wide scope makes it a sometimes-complex notion to grasp when trying to know how to build a brand image. Indeed, it does not just boil down to your offer, your logo, or your website. On the contrary, the brand image, also called “branding”, goes much further: it appeals to your universe, your personality, your values ... In short, all the elements that reinforce the brand perception by your target and make your unique business.
Do serious market research
Before you start, you need to do an introspective investigation of your business. To do this, you must ask yourself the right questions:
- What solutions does it offer its customers?
- How is his method unique?
- How does it stand out from the competition?
From these answers will emerge what makes the essence of her company, and how it differs from others.
Define the brand's core values
Once the identity is broadly defined, we can then create a message that the company will convey through all aspects of its communication, including internal communication, even for a small business. To create this message, you must ask yourself:
- What does its brand have to say, or even to bring to its market?
- How do we want it to be perceived by its customers?
- What are the values and in what ways do we want them to be delivered to customers?
Here, it is a question of bridging the gap between:
- A starting point (the identity of the company)
- A point of arrival (the vision that we want customers to have).
The ideal message should allow you to promote your business without sacrificing either of these two parameters.
Choose a brand name that clearly expresses your message
After determining the needs and wants of your customers and designing products to meet them, you need to choose a brand name that clearly communicates your message.
Better to be specific. For example, consider giving each product or service a different brand identity, rather than just repeating your business name.
You must also endeavor to define a visual style in accordance with its message and its brand image, by defining:
- Graphical chart
- Logo
- Policy
- Colours
They should appear in all communication elements. The visual style is very important for the brand image: the goal is to convey, via external communication, an emotion in line with the message of your company
Create an emotional connection
How to build a distinctive brand image? In highly competitive sectors, finding an identity that hits the mark is not always easy. To make a difference, nothing beats an audience-centric approach based on a content marketing strategy. Faced with the deep disenchantment with advertising, this communication strategy stands out as a real marketing lever to create an emotional connection with your target audience. In addition to humanizing your brand, this technique of producing useful, high-value content strengthens your credibility. Infographics, white papers, blog posts, interviews ... When you consider that consumers have a better image of a business after reading personalized content about it, the potential of content marketing is undeniable.
A hint of storytelling, long feature articles embellished with practical briefs, a big ladle of honesty and a committed tone: this is - in part - one of the keys to a brand's success. An intelligent communication strategy based on trust and transparency that allows a company to create a beautiful community around its brand.
Build trust
A relationship is above all based on trust. You need to present yourself to your community as you really are. You need to make them explicitly part of your goal. Why do you want to create a community around your brand? Develop your sales, improve your brand image, better understand your consumers? Post your goals and educate your community about them. As in any messed-up relationship, members of your community will sense the lie, the manipulation, and the lack of frankness. Therefore, they will flee you like the plague!
Permanence
Your communication must be regular. To build a real lasting relationship with your community, you must think about it all the time. You must remember his good memories over and over. You should not go overboard and suffocate them, but you should pay attention to your members on a regular basis. Otherwise, your competition will do it for you and your community will look elsewhere!
Coherent communication
After you have developed an effective branding and corporate image strategy, you should apply it consistently to each of the "points of contact" with customers, including advertising, signage, and public relations efforts.
A winning ingredient is to rally your employees. They are the most ardent promoters of your brand. Creating an internal branding model will help them understand your key brands. They will thus be better equipped to communicate this brand message to your customers.
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