Guidelines To Build A Strong Brand

• While building any brand, first of all ensure that the following are aligned:A product or service that satisfies some needs of a customer.
• • Identification of the unique promises which the brand can fulfill to the customer.
  • Communication of these promises, benefits and value to the customer.
  • The visual elements representing the brand.
  • The customer experience as promised.
• Be true. Focus on being true to your product’s promised features and benefits which it can really deliver. Don’t make false claims.
• Don’t lie. Communicate wisely and correctly. Writing “the best quality” in advertisements does not make our product best. It has to perform the best.
• Don’t ignore conscious branding practices. If we don’t say anything about our brand, the brand will get created as per word of mouth and we won’t have any control over it. We must take the responsibility of the communication of our brand.
• Don’t copy any other brand. Never. Create your own unique brand property.
• Be patient. Great brands are not created overnight.
• Be consistent with the brand message. Make sure every advertisement, web page, email and letter helps reinforce the same message.
• If you have a logo, use it wherever appropriate, but make sure the graphic and visual quality is consistent.
• Be consistent in brand communication frequency. A few weeks of noisy campaign in every medium and then silence for months will not create long-lasting brand awareness.
• Also, involve your employees. Make sure they believe in what your brand promises. If your people don’t believe or behave as per the brand promise, how will it reflect to the customers?
• Rejuvenate the brand from time to time. Don’t let it get obsolete. Keep it relevant.
• While designing any customer interaction with our brand, focus first on the customer’s experience with us. If we do great advertising, create our lovely jewelry showrooms, but if our employees are rude and behave badly with our customers, our brand will never flourish because in spite of all the outwardly visible right things, the customer does not get the desired experience. That has to be corrected first.
• The ideal position for our brand in the customer’s mind must be at the top. So, we must build and manage our brand with that intention in mind.
• Always remember that when a customer buys some of our products, she is not buying only that product, but she is buying the entire experience of buying and using that product. It is more of an emotional transaction than a logical one.
• Also, be consistent in performance. Make sure that every customer touch point within your business should make customers feel the same way about your brand as it has been promising. For this, you may have to check all the systems and processes of your company and ensure that they are aligned to deliver the brand promise.
• Every point where our existing or prospective customers interact with our business must reflect and reinforce the brand values of the company’s products or services. List down all the interaction points where a customer has some sensory experience with our brand (where she sees, hears, touches, smells or tastes our brand). We must ensure a coherent, unified and consistent brand experience throughout all the points. Following are some of those customer interaction points. Update the list as per relevance to your company’s products or services:
• • The name of the company
  • The names of our products or services
  • Logo of the company or the product
  • Any slogan or tag line
  • Product packaging or outer packaging material (cartons, boxes, bags, tapes, straps etc.)
  • Visiting card
  • Letterhead
  • Envelopes
  • Other stationery elements (Invoices, Receipts, Challans etc.)
  • Price lists, Menu cards etc.
  • Company premises (Reception, Showrooms, Service centers etc. where the customer visits)
  • Furniture
  • Company vehicles
  • Uniforms or dress code of everybody in the company
  • Sign boards
  • Web site of the company
  • Marketing collaterals (Brochures, Catalogs, Pamphlets etc.)
  • Any communications (Email, SMS, Instant Messages)
• Get regular feedback from customers, employees or other people with whom the brand interacts to understand the brand’s reputation and to know whether there are any changes necessary in our branding approach.
• Assign the responsibility of managing the company’s brands to somebody in the company. If there are more than one big brands, assign the brands individually to people, but the overall brand portfolio management must be supervised by someone.
• Also, if the company has more than one product or service, the brand promises of the entire range must be aligned to each other and must not contradict with each other, even if they are targeted towards different customer segments.
• Provide a suitable budget for brand building.
• Remember: abrand develops or gets destroyed in the customer’s mind. That is exactly where your brand resides. In the efforts for brand building, focus only on that important place. Nothing else matters more.

(Expert advice to GROW your business wherever you are, whenever you want.

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