Your brand is one of the most essential elements of your business.
It should have taken time, consideration, and possibly much money to conceive, refine and launch your brand. It is an entity that represents your products, services, goals and values. Your brand speaks to your audience about who you are, inviting interested parties to learn more and follow you on a consumer journey.
Your branding campaign is an ongoing process. While you may have established a voice, style, logo and persona, your brand needs to be working every day to attract customers and keep others engaged.
So how do you ensure that your branding campaign stays the course? Here are 4 simple rules to remember at the core of every campaign so that your business is represented in the right way.
1: Know Your Audience
You need to tailor your campaign to get the attention of your target audience. To do this, you need to continuously research, read the news and be in contact with your preferred consumer.
Your customer persona should be an evolving personality. If you are working in the youth market, trends move fast and you need to be ahead of current affairs and understand the dialogue coming from your customer base. You need to be careful that your company values are aligned with the rhetoric from your customer base, or consider ways to change the conversation if they are not.
Your audience is not a static entity, and nor is your brand. Your campaign goals should include a dedicated social media plan that responds to rapid developments in current affairs and agreed on responses – or even a discussion about if it is necessary to respond to all issues.
2: Make Your Brand Unique
You need to brand to stand for one thing, to conjure a single adjective, for people to associate you with one value.
This is established not by simple repetition, but through clever use of messages given through colours, voice, images and associations. Trust and reliability are two of the most desirable qualities brands strive to communicate, however, luxury, prestige and quality are worthy qualities and even environmentally-friendly and rights aligned brands are very influential. The important thing is to understand what your brand value is and communicate it clearly and consistently.
3: Know Your Goals
Each branding campaign should have a goal based on data. This measurable goal forms the basis for all the work you do as part of your campaign strategy for the term of the campaign.
Not only will having a clearly defined goal help you and your team to stay on point, but it also gives a focus to all your work. Sending a cohesive and certain message shows that your brand is established and valued, which is a quality customers trust in a company.
4: Track, Evaluate and Refine Your Campaign
Setting KPIs as part of your campaign strategy will ensure that you are not chasing a bad lead. Your data is at your fingertips and it can be used to inform the direction of your campaign at any time.
If your social media strategy is off balance due to changes in the world, it needs to be recentered fast. You can test if the adjustment is working by measuring your results using your indicators set at the beginning of your campaign.
Conclusion
Your branding campaign is not a set of rules, it is a guideline to direct your marketing efforts. Be flexible with on the path. The only rules you need to follow are outlined above.
- Know your audience
- Know your brand
- Know your goals
- Know the mood
