A strong brand solves problems for those who need it. When this happens, it becomes an extension of your company and what you value. So what if your brand isn’t as strong as it could be? Well, let me tell you about some common problems that might be holding back yours from being one—and how to solve them.
Brand strategy is everything.
It's not just a document, but rather an evolving process that guides the way you want your brand to evolve and be perceived. If you don't have a solid brand strategy in place, then how do you know what kind of messages or initiatives will resonate with your audience? How do you know if the work that's been done so far on marketing has been effective or not?
You can't build a house without blueprints—and branding is no different. A solid foundation for your brand strategy includes:
If you’re not updating your website regularly, it can look outdated and make your business appear unprofessional. To keep your brand as fresh and relevant as possible, you should make regular updates to your website every 3-6 months. This will ensure that people always know what’s going on with your business and that they see only the latest information about it.
Regardless of your company’s size, it is vital that everyone on your team understands, internalizes and owns the brand story. This is because a clear brand narrative can help stakeholders understand how you see yourself as an organization, which will help them make decisions about when and how to use your products or services. Plus, telling stories about what you do helps people connect with your product or service in a real way—it helps them see why they should care about what you do.
A great example of this is Nike’s “Find Your Greatness” campaign from 2010: The ad campaign featured high-profile athletes such as LeBron James and Serena Williams talking about their own personal journeys toward greatness as well as how others can find theirs. The ads were so successful because they resonate with viewers who have similar aspirations (to be their best), but also show that even amazing athletes have moments where they feel like giving up—and those moments are okay!
If brands want to create content people actually want to consume, then it's key that everyone involved with the brand understand its story at a fundamental level.
Producing enough content is a challenge for most brands. The problem is that you need to produce content that is relevant, engaging, unique and consistent. You also need to optimize it for search engines such as Google.
If you follow the advice outlined in this article, you will be well on your way to producing quality content on a regular basis!
Brand consistency is important. A consistent visual style, voice, tone of voice and colour palette are all part of your brand identity and help convey the same message to your audience no matter where they see it. The logo is an important part of this identity; it should be clearly visible on each piece of collateral you create.
As well as being an integral part of the brand’s look and feel, logo design also serves as a key identifier for customers to use when trying to remember a business or product name.
Your brand assets are stored in silos without accessibility.
Your brand assets should be easily accessible to everyone who needs them, not just the people in your marketing department or agency. If you don't have a centralized repository for all of your logo files and colour palettes, it's likely that branding changes will happen at different times across different offices or departments, therefore resulting in inconsistent design choices and a fragmented visual identity.
To avoid this problem: store all of your brand assets (logos, colour palettes, fonts) in one place so they can easily be referenced by anyone who needs them.
If your team can't share brand assets that are in the right format and resolution, it's a problem.
Here are some reasons why this is a problem:
If you’re not sure how to optimize your branding for print and digital media, here are some tips:
You may think you’re prepared for a crisis, but if you haven’t written out a detailed plan of action and practiced it regularly, you could be in for some trouble.
While it may seem unnecessary or even impossible to plan for every possible scenario, the truth is that planning ahead can help avoid costly mistakes and allow your team to respond quickly during times of emergency. The key is to take the time at the beginning of your campaign or project to outline what would happen in various scenarios so that everyone on your team knows how they should proceed when something goes wrong (or right).
It’s important that this aspect of your brand strategy isn’t only focused on marketing mishaps like product recalls or negative press coverage; rather, it should also cover issues such as environmental disasters like hurricanes or earthquakes.
Consistency is key to a strong brand. A consistent look and feel across your devices, operating systems and apps ensures that your customers don’t have any surprises when they interact with you.
I like to think of a brand as an extension of who you are as a company and what you value. It's an expression of your values, beliefs, culture and personality. Your brand is also a promise to your customers—a promise that they can trust in you because they know who you are and what you stand for. And finally, it's a promise that you make to yourself: that no matter how hard things get or how crazy life gets out there with so many distractions (and sometimes even pressures), I will keep doing my best to live up to the standards my customers expect from me.
You may be thinking this sounds like a lot of pressure on one little logo design! But don't worry: if done right, creating your brand will feel like more fun than work!
The best brands solve problems for their customers.
But what does it mean to “solve a problem”? It's not enough to simply provide a solution: you have to understand who your customers are and what they need from you, then use that knowledge to formulate solutions.
What do I mean by "solving problems"?
Solving problems is about understanding the root causes of someone's issue, then finding ways of addressing those causes through your brand and product or service. When you solve a problem for people, they feel better because of it—and they will come back again and again because of this positive feeling. They'll tell other people how awesome your product is (and often buy more products from you), which means more revenue for everyone involved in the process!
The brands that succeed are the ones who can anticipate and solve the problems of their audience. They do this by listening to what people want and then finding ways to deliver it. Strong brands don’t just reflect our values back at us, they also reflect our future goals too.
