How to brand in 2018?
Wow!
What a turbulent year that was! Giving all of us jerks & pauses with big decisions for nations that waved the small business plans that we had! Be it the historic demonetization or reforming GST, my brand owners felt confused and undecided.
Over to the digital era – where the brands saw an influx of videos, google played well with the SEO and Content emerged as the king – only when handled well!
Whatever happened left us with Lessons and Triggers for the future! Nothing went right but nothing went wrong too. But a new year is certainly the time to check on the wrongs to become slightly less wrong than earlier (I like this philosophy of Mark Manson, the NYTimes bestselling author)
Well, that’s exactly how Branding is taking its Shape with the Digital branding shaping ways for businesses – whether you are selling products or services.
The approach note needs to be detailed as far as the clients are concerned.
When you are sold – you need to keep updates easy & frequent. When you are selling you need to detail out as much as you can – so that the person can derive value for money from your quote itself.
The world is becoming interesting.
And so is the dynamics of business. Social media is opening ways of expression and is giving us the freedom to reach out & expand our horizons. But it again depends on what you are, who are you chasing, and how you plan to reach your consumers!
Choices are abundant.
As a brand marketer – we have choices and as a consumer, we have more choices. We choose what we want to see, follow, and even whether we want to be followed by or not by a so & so person.
Advertisements are Pouring.
Yes, advertisements like always are a solution- from temporary bliss & business. And mind you they work too. But the challenge remains the same – is your advertisement sharp enough to create that space in the mind of the consumer?
Will it stick forever?
Was it effective?
Did it influence the prospect to bring out some money and spend it on your product/service?
Have they set the expectations right?
Have we won a sale or a customer?
The answers to the above questions also lead to the answers you need to find out for your Branding 2018. Now that we are all beginning to get into the annual planning for our brands, reviewing the content plans, and working on the strategy, we decided to share a DIY Checklist & set the brand vision for 2018.
This year we decided to ditch the brand guidelines. The year is about Personalization, we need not fit into any frameworks, instead, we need to create our own Brand Frameworks – keeping the brand elements & customers in hindsight.
Make your Content Appealing:
The year is about ditching the old brand guidelines and adapting to the new ones. You need to understand your customers and their preferred mode of interaction. What, Where & How to reach them with their preferences.
The modes of content are details, quick, and in-shorts too. Find out where your audience is – are they reading blogs, surfing emails, love to watch videos, or prefer social spaces like FB, Twitter, LinkedIn or WhatsApp?
Your content plan should be detailed and targeted in sync with your business goals.
Make your communication compelling:
Benefits are not enough! Yes, the modern-day consumer is not inclined to only brand benefits. They look for brand associations; they seek the connect. Is your brand connecting enough to compel an action from the viewers? Create a space for your brand, stop existing. Keep note of the viewer activity.
Where the customer is responding most, which tool is most approachable. Put it more strengths & efforts on that front. Doing it less is only good when less is effective.
Track your Brand Performance:
When it is about sales-driven campaigns you can rely on social media and campaigns. But when you are looking at creating a brand that will grow with the business and is launched with a vision – well-documented brand building is the answer. It is also necessary to share your larger framework with the clients. Short-sighted marketing efforts are mere brand activations which is only a sales & marketing element of brand management.
As a Brand Owner, you need to track the performance & plan your branding accordingly. This could be industry-specific, target market-based, budget bound, or a combination of all.
You need to track if you are managing any leads organically through your branding activity. If not, what are the lacunae or do you need to boost the branding activities to expand the reach?
Make the Brand Work for you:
Customers today follow brands, and the connection is based on a number of reasons. The brand touch-points have increased, they could be the brand story, the purpose of your initiative, the brand promoters, the celebrity endorsers, a social responsibility of the brand that brought together a number of people, the business networking channels, the personal brand behind the brand.
What are they following – your brand / your story or the benefit? You need to understand consumer insight & define your Brand actions basis that.
For instance, there could be an educational brand or a healthcare brand, the brand trust is led by the person behind it. Similarly, in an e-commerce portal or an online business – the customer decisions vary from ease of access, the user experience, the testimonies, and the response time.
Modern-day startups like Josh Talks and SAM Workshops are popular brands among millennials. Their strategy was simple – they knocked on the right doors and caught the right nerve.
Rujuta Diwakar, one of the most popular celebrity nutritionists – needs no introduction but if you look at her last year’s journey the way she has captured the everyday audiences through her social media is a brand case study. I am sure not all her audiences know her as just the celebrity nutritionist of Kareena Kapoor Khan.
In all the above examples, it is the brand which is popular. These brands are trying to reach different target segments with a very focused brand strategy.
Regular Audits & Client Feedback:
Plan regular brand audits – internal as well as external. By internal audits, we mean – auditing the brand communication & sense of belongingness in your organization. You need to plan & audit the internal stakeholders. External Audits involve assessing the external pipeline of branding – be it the communications, design, market pulse, competition, and situation analysis in the external environment.
Apart from regular activity reviews with your brand agency, you need to review the brand impressions with your customers. What value are they attaining out of your brand engagement, communication & interactions? Customer feedback is vital and it is also intriguing as the present-day customers are not only informed but are demanding too; therefore, they come up with a lot of exciting ideas.
You can request an eBook on DIY Brand Audits from us.
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As Brand owners, we must realize that the choices are multiplying each day and that makes it essential to keep the Sales Funnel updated and focused. On that note, we wish you a very exciting new year.
Wanna explore more about Branding & Customer Strategies for your brand feel free to ask@30thfeb.com or fill up the form here for Free Consultation.