In the US alone, about 28 million small businesses are trying to draw the focus on themselves. What’s more, these businesses are not alone in their endeavour. There are medium and large businesses as well, all struggling to be more than just white noise to the average customer.
So the situation is quite tricky, isn’t it? Moreover, it’s evident that without a strong brand, your marketing campaigns will not be successful in any shape or manner. The competition is just too fierce for you to handle if your brand is only average.
Every day, there are more and more advertisements popping up, trying to attract the dreamiest target audience. As such, each business out there has to figure out a way to ensure they stand out from the crowd. It has to make real noise — not white noise.
But how? Well, each business has to excel at seven qualities. Let’s see what those qualities are.
1. Being original
First things first — when it comes to brands, originality is of the essence. Why? It’s because being original is what will draw your target audience in. Thus, if you were planning to imitate your competitor or maybe use sales talk and clichés, think again. You need a message that will resonate with your target customers.
The solution is to find an angle no one has used before, and use it to develop a voice and an image that will be entirely YOU. Of course, that won’t be easy, but it’s a crucial step, as you don’t want to become just another generic brand on the market.
2. Being sincere
Showing the human side of your brand is the next step. Yes, it’s easier to just reply to customers with generic corporate responses. But will that make them trust you? Of course not. In fact, they’ll consider you a machine that neither has a soul nor is really committed to them.
Thus, you’ll have to invest in your brand and develop a personality that will help your target audience see you as a friend, not as a corporation. But don’t worry about making mistakes — everyone makes them. The important thing is to learn from them and implement new strategies to build trustworthy relationships with your customers.
3. Showing understanding
The most popular brands out there stand out on the market by making sure their target audience knows they UNDERSTAND all their issues. They are targeting only their niche market and showing them support in more ways than one. Moreover, they often use messages that are closely related to those same issues; messages that help the audience identify with the brand.
In essence, it’s all about the connection. The more a brand works on its brand-customer relationships, the better the business will be. These understanding relationships lead to more sales, more interactions, better traffic and more conversions. So if that’s something you’d like to achieve, make sure you do your research well. What’s more, research your target demographics often, and build upon your previous knowledge. You’ll probably have to make some changes when needed, as people change all the time.
4. Being bold
If there’s one thing everyone should know about brands, it’s that the best brands are always bold. The boldest ones are not scared of experimenting or coming up with new techniques. They are also not afraid to talk about controversial issues their industry is facing.
Yes, that also means that every brand out there will have fans and haters. But by encouraging respect and loyalty in people who truly believe in what the brand stands for, then the brand itself will never become boring. It will never become a generic brand in which everyone loses interest at some point.
5. Practicing consistency
If a brand wants to avoid audience alienation, then it needs to work on its consistency. That means all messages the brand is putting out there need to be in line with what the brand believes in. Moreover, everyone within the company that’s behind the brand has to be on the same page. They all have to work in its favour.
In this case, familiarity and predictability are your best friends. In order to attract more customers and make them stick around, you need to give them something they can continually identify with. So what can you do? Set all your brand standards in stone before you start drawing in the customers. What’s more, make sure all your team members know how to put those standards to good use and translate them into effective marketing campaigns.
6. Working on visibility
When you have clear goals and a good message, you then have to work on your visibility. That means you’ll have to go through the trial and error phase and figure out what works best for your brand.
Of course, if no one is paying attention to your message because you haven’t promoted it well, you’ll find yourself in trouble. Customers won’t flock to you, which is essentially the dream. Thus, diversify your marketing strategies.
You can use social media, invest in promotional gifts or even use other external publications to boost your brand exposure. Whatever you can do — do it.
7. Providing the target audience with value
Finally, in order to build a powerful brand, you have to make sure you’re providing your target audience with value.
Now, this can be done in various ways. You could simply offer better, high-quality products and draw in an audience that only cares about those aspects. But let’s face it — the highest quality entails more money spent on manufacturing and production. Moreover, it’s not a guarantee — who says your competitors don’t have high-quality products as well?
Therefore, you’ll have to work on your originality even more. Offer your customers something others cannot offer them, like highly personalised customer support or informative content that actually helps them. The goal is to become the most appealing source to your customers so that they trust you and stay loyal for a very long time. Only then can you hope for more sales, popularity and more revenue.
The bottom line?
These seven qualities are of the utmost importance if you want to build a powerful brand that’ll stay on the market for a very long time. However, even if you already have a brand, but it’s not doing well, then consider using the tips we’ve given you to rebrand, or at the very least, adjust your brand standards to reflect some more appealing values.
For that, you’ll have to evaluate the success of your current brand strategy and see whether you’ve been adhering to the original standards. In any case, if you keep the above-mentioned factors in mind at all times, you’ll build a brand that’ll not only stand out but also inspire loyalty and interest in every single customer.
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Brand Management Knowhow – learn more about branding with our collection of educational articles.
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