Now more than ever, consumers prioritize experience and connection to a company more than anything. It is crucial for a business to establish a brand strategy including logo, coloring, fonts, personal and product branding, and more. Your brand strategy decides how customers will interact with and perceive your business, which is why first impressions are important. Keep reading to find out how to solidify your business branding.
What is Branding?
Brand Marketing Strategy is an ongoing effort made by businesses to give meaning behind products and the company itself to differentiate from competitors in the market and attract and retain a loyal audience. It involves strategic decision-making and consistent implementation across various areas, including advertising, packaging, online presence, customer service, and overall brand communication.
Brand Visuals
Everything from colours, fonts, logos, and images are a part of a company’s branding strategy. It is important to keep your mission statement in mind when creating your visual assets.
These assets are more powerful than you think when it comes to customer attention as they are 81% more likely to remember a brand’s color than its name. There are certain colours that customers associate with emotions such as green with freshness or purple with royalty. Fonts also have a similar effect where a brand can tell a story through a font with tone and aesthetic. For example, Software Usability Research Laboratory at Wichita State University conducted a study and findings were that Arial and Times New Roman are perceived to be stable and mature where Comic Sans is deemed youthful and casual.
It is important to create brand guidelines to ensure the consistency of the visual assets across all mediums and platforms
Brand Messaging
Crafting compelling messages forms a brand’s voice, tone, and key messages. These include a slogan, tagline, social media voice, and brand narrative.
Tone of voice is how your brand speaks with its intended audience. It should directly reflect the brand’s personality and align with the visual assets that were mentioned above. Tone humanizes your brand strategy and allows consumers to develop a connection with the brand and create a sense of community and culture. Just like how you can distinguish people’s voices and tones from others, you can for brands as well.
There are many different tones and ways to get across your brand’s messaging. For example, Nike has a confident and motivating tone, where Old Spice is humorous and masculine. It is easiest to pick a tone for your brand after the mission statement and core values have been determined.
Brand Experience
Every part of branding helps the customer create a personalized experience with the brand. This can be accomplished with advertising, packaging, product quality, and customer service.
Through successful branding, you are able to point the consumer in the direction you want them to experience. For example, a consumer who buys a Yamaha motorcycle may want to experience something youthful and trendy versus a consumer who buys a Harley Davidson motorcycle who wants to experience something more edgy, manly, and daring.
Final Thoughts
Branding shapes perceptions, differentiates the brand from competitors, and creates positive and lasting impressions with your target audience. Visual branding involves creating a cohesive and recognizable visual identity that represents the brand, while branding messaging focuses on crafting compelling and consistent communication that conveys the brand’s mission statement, values, and story.
Brand strategy is essential for the success and longevity of a brand. Reach out to us here if you have any questions about branding or want to start developing your branding guide today!
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