Fundamentals of Branding

Branding is one of the most important aspects of any business, large or small, retail or B2B. An effective brand strategy gives you a major edge in increasingly competitive markets. But what exactly does "branding" mean? How does it affect a small business like yours?

Simply put, your brand is your promise to your customer. It tells them what they can expect from your products and services, and it differentiates your offering from your competitors'. Your brand is derived from who you are, who you want to be and who people perceive you to be.

Are you the innovative maverick in your industry? Or the experienced, reliable one? Is your product the high-cost, high-quality option, or the low-cost, high-value option? You can't be both, and you can't be all things to all people. Who you are should be based to some extent on who your target customers want and need you to be.

The foundation of your brand is your logo. Your website, packaging and promotional materials--all of which should integrate your logo--communicate your brand.

Brand Strategy and Equity of the Brand

Your brand strategy is how, what, where, when and to whom you plan on communicating and delivering on your brand messages. Where you advertise is part of your brand strategy. Your distribution channels are also part of your brand strategy. And what you communicate visually and verbally are part of your brand strategy, too.

Consistent, strategic branding leads to a strong brand equity, which means the added value brought to your company's products or services that allows you to charge more for your brand than what identical, unbranded products command. The most obvious example of this is Coke vs. a generic soda. Because Coca-Cola has built a powerful brand equity, it can charge more for its product--and customers will pay that higher price.

The added value intrinsic to brand equity frequently comes in the form of perceived quality or emotional attachment. For example, Nike associates its products with star athletes, hoping customers will transfer their emotional attachment from the athlete to the product. For Nike, it's not just the shoe's features that sell the shoe.

Defining Your Brand

Defining your brand is like a journey of business self-discovery. It can be difficult, time-consuming and uncomfortable. It requires, at the very least, that you answer the questions below:

What is your company's mission?

What are the benefits and features of your products or services?

What do your customers and prospects already think of your company?

What qualities do you want them to associate with your company?

Do your research. Learn the needs, habits and desires of your current and prospective customers. And don't rely on what you think they think. Know what they think.

Because defining your brand and developing a brand strategy can be complex, consider leveraging the expertise of a nonprofit small-business advisory group or a Small Business Development Center.

Once you've defined your brand, how do you get the word out? Here are a few simple, time-tested tips:

Get a great logo. Place it everywhere.

Write down your brand messaging. What are the key messages you want to communicate about your brand? Every employee should be aware of your brand attributes.

Integrate your brand. Branding extends to every aspect of your business--how you answer your phones, what you or your salespeople wear on sales calls, your e-mail signature, everything.

Create a "voice" for your company that reflects your brand. This voice should be applied to all written communication and incorporated in the visual imagery of all materials, online and off. Is your brand friendly? Be conversational. Is it ritzy? Be more formal. You get the gist.

Develop a tagline. Write a memorable, meaningful and concise statement that captures the essence of your brand.

Design templates and create brand standards for your marketing materials. Use the same color scheme, logo placement, look and feel throughout. You don't need to be fancy, just consistent.

Be true to your brand. Customers won't return to you--or refer you to someone else--if you don't deliver on your brand promise.

Be consistent. I placed this point last only because it involves all of the above and is the most important tip I can give you. If you can't do this, your attempts at establishing a brand will fail.

Branding : Target the Youth Market

As a Brand Manager myself, I always try to find ways to reach a certain segment of the target market, here I have come up with one of those bulk of the consumer market which is the youth, what makes them embrace a brand, recognize and gives preference over other brands.  The Youth market is a big chunk of the market pie and for brands and companies not to understand them is a complete abandonment of one brands goal of staying ahead.

So fundamentally, how can a brand be cool for the youth market? How can it successfully emulate and embrace the youth’s cultural codes of cool?  Here are what I have learned by doing a thorough research on the youth market.  Coolness is key to reach this broad spectrum of the youth culture.  Hope this will serve companies and brand managers to catapult their own brands into this cool, hip market.

1. Act, don’t tell

Brands’ actions will earn respect far more than their words. Channel V’s approach to improving women’s safety through an interactive app instills the brand with coolness, inherently communicating the safety message without being preachy. Cool acts like these are a shorthand that convey a brand’s principles to users.

2. Evolve: It’s the only constant

For the easily bored youth who gets the point in 140 characters or less, brands need to be fast and ever changing to stay interesting. Companies and brands has to do this remarkably well through its consistently evolving brand narrative that stays in sync with what’s top-of-mind for younger generations.

3. Stay true to your roots

While evolution is critical to survival, staying in character is just as crucial. Brands that step too far out of their zones to capitalize on a clever youth story will often face ridicule. Diet Coke tried to be hip with its You’re on Coke brand campaign but ended up with more trouble than it bargained for. Straying from a brand’s DNA is totally uncool.

4. Create tribes

The ideology of the brand combines doing good with looking good, inducing younger generations to sport the brand logo and demonstrate their belief in the brand. This creates a sense of belongingness to the youth culture that they can call their own and identifies to their generation.

5. Give customers control

Brands that act as a platform for youth to express themselves in unique, personal ways often have a distinct advantage when it comes to being considered cool

6. Don’t sell, integrate

Brands that become a seamless part of youths’ lives foster the strongest bonds. Condom brand Skore accomplishes this by connecting to the very progressive and experimental youth generation through its mobile app, providing tips and tricks to spice up one’s sex life.

7. Be humorous and have fun

Bring some fun into the daily lives of the young through adventure, surprise, and entertainment. Gamifying otherwise boring and repetitive activities is one easy way to do this. Brands can also use color and graphics to connect to the youth culture. We accomplish this through brand’s quirky, eye-catching, and bold look and feel.

8. Take a stand

If brands dare to say what others will not or take a stand on a topic that is uncouth, they often grab the attention of the younger generations.

Conclusion

Following the cool toolkit is not about prescribing to a firm set of rules. Rather, each mantra in the toolkit is meant to help brands guide their actions while also enabling them to remain relevant. By considering the mantras in tandem with a brand’s promise, products, target audience, and societal context, brand managers can help increase their brand’s cool quotient and gain new admiration from the youth market.

A word of caution: If you’re trying too hard, it probably isn’t cool.

Content Marketing in my eyeview

Rather than bore your customers with ads, inspire them with content.

People on the Web search for relevant information – content marketing provides it

In today’s digital world, people are inundated with advertisements. As a result, businesses struggle to get their corporate message noticed by consumers. In 2011, a study conducted by the Custom Content Council showed that more than 70 percent of users preferred to get their information from articles rather than from corporate advertisements. Now, to reach their target audience, an increasing number of businesses are relying on a promising new strategy: content marketing.

What is content marketing?

The purpose of online research is to find relevant information and high-quality content. That means that text, imagery and video content have to provide information that is relevant and interesting to people searching for information on the Internet. Content marketing is the practice of creating and distributing content that is entertaining, informative and helpful to potential customers. Good content then directs those customers back to your brand website, where you can capture leads and sell products. Successful content marketing creates positive associations to your brand – without the hassle of product marketing.

Good content endures

Having captured potential customers’ interest, your biggest priority is to continually reinforce the connection between them and your company. Content marketing has an especially long-lasting effect as high-quality content entices users to continue reading, clicking and exploring. A website that has been properly outfitted with good content can potentially generate traffic over the course of months or even years. In addition, Google rewards websites that feature good content with improved rankings in search results.

Content marketing in practice

Looking at this graph, it is clear that the popularity of the search term “content marketing” has risen steeply since 2011.

Because of this increase, many large companies, including giants such as Red Bull and IKEA, have placed their bets on marketing with content. According to a recent survey conducted by the renowned “Content Marketing Institute”, B2B companies in the United States invest, on average, about 30 percent of their marketing budget in content marketing. In addition, an increasing number of smaller and mid-sized companies are taking advantage of opportunities the Web provides for efficient content marketing. Communication channels today are more diverse than ever, meaning there are almost no limits to a publication’s potential reach. Also, it has never been cheaper for a business to publish its own content. For that reason, many companies maintain their own blogs; publish white papers, e-books and infographics; or produce videos to demonstrate their expertise.

The content generated by businesses is as diverse as the types of publication used to circulate it. Web shops offer professional product or purchase advice; members of upper management comment on current developments within the company on the corporate blog; and brand-name product manufacturers publish e-books providing tips on the best way to use the company’s products.

What can content marketing do?

Many marketing decision makers have come to recognize the benefits and efficiency of a good content marketing strategy. According to a study by PR agency Waggener Edstrom Communications, 61 percent of marketers polled noticed increased sales figures after implementing a content marketing strategy. Content marketing also helps businesses to achieve a number of other corporate objectives, including:

Lead generation: If customers are impressed by the content provided, there is a high probability that they will be willing to leave their contact details – whether out of an interest in the product or simply a desire to get to more content.

Increased reach and name recognition: Often, high-quality content that addresses current or controversial topics is disseminated via social networks. By taking advantage of this trend, a company can increase its prominence and reach.

Image development: Releasing high-quality publications on a regular basis allows businesses to establish themselves as thought leaders, which strengthens the corporate brand.

Customer development : Content that offers useful information connects the customer to the company for the long term. By consistently offering good content, companies generate interest in their website and entice users to return.

Checklist for successful Content Marketing:

Checklist for successful Content Marketing: What interests your target audience? From the perspective of content marketing, only content that is truly relevant to a given target audience can contribute to your company achieving its goals.

High-quality content: Well-written, appealing content demonstrates the business’s competence. And it should go without saying that the text be error-free, structured and reader-friendly.

Unique Content: Unique content improves search engine rankings. On the other hand, sites with copied content or content that is of no real use to users is relegated to the back pages.

SEO: Successful online content is not just unique, well-written and focused on a specific target group, it is also search engine optimized with keywords, headlines, clear structure and useful links.

Do you lack the resources to produce high-quality content at scale?

According to the Content Marketing Institute, the biggest challenges facing companies trying to break into content marketing are insufficient time and a lack of opportunities to produce enough content…high-quality, customized content – the foundation of every good content marketing strategy.