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Branding - Words Matter!
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Steps to Make Branding Work with Digital Marketing:
- Create your Visual Identity
- Add your Logo
- Create your Brand Manual
- Determine a Style Unit
- Have a good Strategy
- Create Brand Personality
- Set the Tone of Voice
- Find out which Channels you will work with
- Have Good Content
Branding: what it is, tips, best books and how to manage your brand
Discover the strategy used by major global brands to win the minds and hearts of consumers, with ideas to apply in your business and in-depth books
Branding is the set of actions aligned with the positioning, purpose and values of the brand. The purpose of branding is to awaken sensations and create conscious and unconscious connections, which will be crucial for the customer to choose your brand when making a decision to purchase the product or service.
Think for 1 minute about a brand. In addition to thinking about the name, the colors, the letters, the shapes, the sounds, did you also think about the sensations and memories?
This is exactly the function of branding: awakening sensations and creating conscious and unconscious connections, which will be crucial for the customer to choose your brand when making a decision to purchase the product or service.
All the moves a brand makes, from creating a logo, choosing the font, speech, tone of voice, company values, jingles, people it will represent, all of this helps to build a brand’s personality in the mind of the consumer. Through perceptions and sensations.
Now take a look at how to strengthen your branding:
These practices help create value beyond the product. It’s more than the product, it’s who the brand is. It is the creation of meaning through symbols.
“A brand is a set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that together are responsible for making the consumer choose one product or service over another”
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01. AFFILIATE MARKETING
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01. AFFILIATE MARKETING
8 Advantages of Affiliate Marketing In 2022
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What is the Importance of Branding?
Globalization has increased competitiveness and it has become necessary to demonstrate a brand differential, in addition to having a purpose that goes beyond positioning.
According to research carried out, when a brand manages to truly connect with its consumer through its purpose, price perception can change: 67% of respondents said they were very willing to buy a product from a brand that connects with them in a way a common purpose and are willing to pay more for it, as they see real value in this acquisition.
Having a brand with personality and purpose, creating identification with people, with their stories and causes. Thus, promoting good brand experiences is the key to recommendation, which today is one of the most powerful weapons for attracting new customers.
An article that can complement here and that may be useful for you is this one: How to generate qualified leads using your value proposition.
How to Make Branding Work with Digital Marketing
Branding is a concept that came before Digital Marketing. When the internet did not yet exist, brands expressed their positioning and interacted with the public through conventional advertising (radio, newspaper, TV).
With the scenario being transformed by technology, Digital Marketing has brought new branding possibilities. Some experts talk about the concept of digital branding, which is basically branding in the digital environment.
Today, a brand can choose super personalized channels at a lower cost to relate to its audience, in addition to offering different forms of purchase.
There are several ways to work branding on the internet. We can divide the initiatives into two groups:
1. Visual Identity
It’s the visual representations of your brand that help create an identity in the consumer’s mind: logo, photo style, fonts, colors, etc. The more aligned it is, the more likely and faster the association will be in the minds of those looking for brand options.
Add your Logo
It is extremely important that when creating your brand, it is also designed for the web. The file formats used for printed materials are different from those used for the Internet. So, think about the application of your brand, the ease of reading and understanding the name when it is in reduced versions.
Create your Brand Manual
The manual must contain all the colors that the brand can have, which font was used in its creation, what are the color codes, how it should be applied to materials, vertical and horizontal versions, etc. Want an example? Consult the digital results brand manual.
Determine a Style Unit
Look for examples of photos that have the same line and that serve as an example for the style you want to adopt for the brand. Try to stick to one style, as it will communicate a lot about your brand.
2. Strategy
Strategy plays the role of conveying non-visual values, it’s how you convey your purpose. The creation of perception through strategy occurs at a deeper level, where the consumer identifies not only with the style, but with the values of the brand, creating a stronger connection.
Brand Personality
What is your brand personality? What adjectives does it have? If she were a person, what would she be like? These questions help create a clearer mental picture.
Voice tone
How is the brand language? Is it relaxed? Is it specialized? You need to adapt the language to the audience. Research which terms your customers use in casual conversation and adopt those that make sense for your brand. Written language and emoji is a very strong connection tool.
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Channels
Where is your audience? What channels does he use to relate to other brands and people? There are several channels where you can relate, such as WhatsApp, email, social networks. Remembering that you don’t need to be present on all channels, but on those that have a strategic role in the growth of your business.
We recommend that you start by creating a website to include your business in the search results that customers perform. Remember that all new releases by your brand must be on your website at the same time.
The second step is to create a fan page on Facebook, which today is the largest online community in the world. It also allows full integration with other social networks in the Facebook family, such as Instagram and WhatsApp.
Facebook is a great channel for customer relationship and outreach. If you want to learn more about how to use the world’s largest social network for your business, read our Facebook Marketing e-book.
Contents
A good content strategy not only helps your brand stand out in searches, but also makes it visible and gains authority in the medium. You can learn how to create a content strategy in the Content Production: Theory and Practice kit.
Applying branding visual unit concepts, remember that your content should be personalized with your brand identity across all channels and materials.
Brand Management: the New Marketing?
In an interview, an expert spoke about the crucial role that branding plays in building brand image, and commented that “being a good company is the new branding”.
The speaker started the presentation by saying that the world is VUCA, which are the initials of 4 words that characterize the new world, where brands must be attentive to changes and especially open to them:
• Volatile: everything changes very fast all the time;
• Uncertain: we have no guarantees, we have many uncertainties;
• Complex: it is not linear, it is confusing and anxious;
• Ambiguous: We have many options and boundaries have dissolved.
In this scenario, the ability to adapt to the new ecosystem that is emerging is the main quality of a company of the future.
The new cycle of brand value lies in the ability to unlearn what they already know and relearn from this new scenario. Today, purpose has become value itself.
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The 3 Waves of VUCA
The great challenge for companies is to adapt to the VUCA world and from this new paradigm, generate value. This is happening and divided into 3 waves:
• 1st wave: brands whose speech is focused on sales, promotion, price, recognition and profit.
• 2nd wave: brands that can create emotional connections with people and their stories, that are relevant and generate value.
• 3rd wave: VUCA brands, which work with the idea of creating a value ecosystem with purpose and people engaged in it.
And it is precisely in the third wave that the companies that have added the most value with brand management in recent years are located. If you’re not in it, maybe it’s time for you to rebrand your brand.
The expert cited Airbnb as an example, which is a company that meets all the requirements of a VUCA brand, with the clear objective of “making you feel at home anywhere”.
In addition, it is truly committed to a social cause related to assisting refugees around the world. And even with the crisis it faced due to Covid-19, Airbnb did not abandon this cause.
Branding as a Differentiating Strategy for Your Business
A branding expert, he challenges people’s basic notion of exactly what branding is. He does not accept the concept that limits the term to a company’s graphic mark and related visual elements. His definition, given at the Business Summit, is as follows:
“Branding is the relationship between brand and customer, and between the brand and the community in which it operates.”
The professional also believes that your brand needs to have a declared enemy!
Brand Differentiation
Right at the beginning of the presentation, the specialist proposed a challenge. He called a member of the audience and asked him to rate how much the same pair of diamond earrings cost at three different jewelry stores. Showing images of each one of them, he showed how the perception of value varies not only with the brand, but with everything that surrounds it.
Patterns should be avoided and deconstructed, according to the speaker. He cited the case of a natural gas supplier, an invisible business. How to use something that cannot be seen for branding? The solution was to connect the brand to energy, in the sensorial sense of the term, differentiating itself from the casual market.
He also commented on the case of Havaianas. For decades, it was just sandals that “don’t warp, don’t loosen the straps, and don’t smell.” That is, marketing focused on the physical characteristics of the product, which created the association with something cheap and to be avoided by the upper classes.
Today, however, Havaianas have won the world and are distributed, for example, in bags with gifts at the Oscars. What started attracting the biggest celebrities on the planet to rubber slippers? Originality, the cool way to be. This is currently the brand name for the product, which remains essentially the same.
Delivering What You Promise is Branding
At different times during the lecture, the specialist insists that a good branding strategy only survives if the company fulfills what it promises. It is not an advertising promise, but a complete relationship with the consumer.
This involves constant concern for the brand’s reputation. Delivering on early promises gives the customer future confidence that you will deliver again. For him, this is also branding.
He recalled the recent case of a juice company and another of popsicles that were sold as alternatives to the big commercial brands. They had a storytelling that harks back to the “old days”, with almost organically produced inputs.
The stories, however, didn’t quite match reality and the process wasn’t all that “good”. The products were, in fact, of good quality, but what moved consumers was the branding. You can’t make up this kind of promise:
“Why invent something when you can be something?”
Brand Management Can Turn You into a Friend
In the era of social media, friend recommendations play a key role in consumers’ buying decisions. The old word of mouth is amplified to thousands of people, whether on Facebook or Instagram.
The expert pointed out that branding can make your brand look like a friend. He used as an example a political fanpage, which became a success by lightly approaching municipal administration matters, even the most bureaucratic ones. To this day, it is a reference for social media accounts of public administrations.
“The branding process is more than being known and being liked, it is becoming trusted”
However, a communication strategy that is not linked to the actual service is useless. The speaker recalled the case of a bank that started using “miguxa” expressions on social networks, which are in complete contrast with the serious style of branches and service in real life.
As said earlier, it didn’t deliver what it promised and therefore it didn’t work.
Branding is Purpose
He used a video from cosmetics brand Lush to talk about purpose. In it, the actors enact what would happen if humans were subjected to the same tests that animals are used in the cosmetics industry. The intention was really to shock.
Thus, Lush presented its purpose and its enemy at the same time. It identifies itself as a company that produces soap without resorting to cruelty. The stores are beautiful, the presentation of the products is charming, but what defines the brand is this cause, without this purpose, Lush does not exist.
“Brand goes beyond what we see, it is what we feel.”
Several other companies transform their businesses based on their purposes, even if they are not activists. Nike, for example, sells sporty style. Tesla Motors makes computers on wheels. These are examples of how the branding proposal influences culture, values and strategy.
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5 Branding Books You Must Read
As we have seen, Branding is increasingly fundamental to the business. It is necessary to know how to draw up strategies to manage a brand in the best possible way, ensuring that the message is captured (and disseminated!) correctly by the public.
To help you in this mission, we have separated seven Branding books that are mandatory reading. Check it out below!
1. Strategic Brand Management
Written by Kevin Lane Keller, professor of Marketing who taught at renowned institutions such as Stanford and Berkeley, the book is a reference on the subject.
Mandatory reading for Marketing and Communication professionals, the book is a classic. It is always present in the bibliography of disciplines and courses on Brand Management, being a reference not only for managers and entrepreneurs, but also for students and academia. It is ideal for those who seek greater support in theories to make their decisions.
2. On Branding
David Aaker is considered a Brand Guru. He is a professor emeritus at UC Berkeley, California, and has written several books and articles on brands and their management strategies.
In On Branding, the language is simple, and reading can be done by topics (according to what you want to know first) or linearly. The book addresses the 20 main principles that, according to Aaker, contribute to building a strong brand.
“Much more than a name and logo, [a brand] is an organization’s promise to a customer to deliver what the brand represents not only in terms of functional benefits, but also emotional, self-expressive and social benefits. (David Aaker).
3. Emotionomics
In Emotionomics, Dan Hill explores the relationship between feelings and business opportunities. In general, the author shows how emotions are the key to any decision-making.
Hill also analyzes that what people say and do are often dissociated, and points out ways to correctly identify feelings. According to him, emotions are a strategic way to develop effective marketing strategies.
As Branding is directly related to the consumer’s experience and what impression the brand will leave on the public, this work has a lot to teach about the subject.
4. How to Build Leading Brands
Another book written by Guru David Aaker, but this time in partnership with Erich Joachimsthaler, author of several works on digital strategies, innovation and Branding, and founder and CEO of Vivaldi.
Inspired by global brands from the US and Europe, the book is a great study of these brands and shows the main strategies that can be used to stand out from the competition and create a lasting brand.
Although the work focuses on foreign and large companies, this work brings useful and relevant tips that can boost the brand management of any business. It is worth mentioning that when we talk about branding, the maxim “act locally, think globally” also applies.
5. What if You Were a Brand?
“What if you were a brand?” is a book that will address the issue of Personal Branding, based on the proposition that the greatest asset of any professional, regardless of the area in which he works, is himself.
Throughout the reading, Wandersman addresses the various professional positioning strategies that can be adopted to stand out in such a competitive market. And, in the case of digital agencies, the work is even more interesting, as it talks a lot about how to promote your image in the digital environment.
And Rebranding, How Does It Work?
If branding, as we’ve said so far, is a set of actions that aim to create a universe around the brand, then what is rebranding? The rebranding has a very clear function: to present a new positioning of the company in the market.
It is worth mentioning that the brand is not just the logo, therefore, rebranding actions can involve several factors, such as: name change, evolution or revolution of the logo and change of vision or business objectives. In this way, the rebranding process involves a lot of strategy and attention, so you need to know the ideal time to do it.
How Do You Know When It's the Right Time to Rebrand?
You don’t have to wait 10, 15 or 20 years in the market to rebrand. After all, this process has nothing to do with time to market, but with business strategy. Therefore, looking inside your company and understanding the moment it is experiencing is essential.
Here are some situations that can be a guide for anyone thinking of going through a rebranding process:
1. When the Current Positioning Does Not Match the New Vision of the Company
When we talk about strong brands and branding, we are consequently talking about positioning. Therefore, one of the moments to carry out the rebranding process is when there is a misalignment between brand and positioning.
2. When There Is an Imminent Risk of Bankruptcy
The world changes and so does the market. Thus, anyone who becomes stagnant or too comfortable can suddenly go bankrupt. Therefore, one of the factors that can motivate the rebranding of a brand is to row against this crisis.
A classic example for those studying marketing is the case of Havaianas. In the 1990s, the company realized that it was losing market share and heading towards a crisis. To turn the tide, it carried out a series of actions ranging from the creation of new products to the inclusion of artists in advertisements.
With the restructuring of the brand, Havaianas remained active and on the rise. It has even become a global brand, with its flip-flops costing around the world.
3. When You Have an Image Crisis
Another common situation that motivates the rebranding process is an image crisis. This situation is feared by many companies, because if it gets worse, it could turn into a reputational crisis and nobody wants that. To prove that rebranding is much more than a logo change, let’s take the example of McDonald’s.
The most famous fast food chain in the world is often associated with unhealthy food. One of the reasons for this is that, in 2004, the documentary “Super Size Me – The Clown Diet” was released. To avoid new crises, McDonalds began to review its positioning and make changes, including its menu, which today has salad options, lighter sandwiches and even fruit.
4. When You Want to Change Your Target Audience or Niche
Another factor that can trigger the rebranding process in the company is the change of public or niche. Let’s assume that when analyzing your business, you and your team decide to target a segment. What will this transition from a generalist company to a niche company look like? In that case, rebranding is essential.
With a set of strategies, you will create a more qualified audience. Thus, he will detach himself from an audience that is no longer strategic or essential. Therefore, many people will leave the brand because they no longer identify with it. Consequently, you will have an impact on your business.
So be ready to let go as your business will change. If you believe your company is going through a similar moment, rebranding may be the best solution.
Branding: Start with good Digital Marketing
Millennials, or Generation Y, as they are often known, are revolutionizing the job market and redefining relationships between companies and consumers.
More concerned with social and environmental issues, this generation shows great interest in understanding the production process of the goods they consume, as well as what ideas and values companies defend. It is necessary to understand what is being consumed along with the service or product.
Additionally, the explosion of social media has given shoppers a lot of voice. If in the past the media was primarily responsible for disseminating information about products and services, today this role is much more in the hands of consumers.
The best way to start talking to these consumers is through Digital Marketing. To take the right steps along this path, visit our Definitive Guide to Digital Marketing. Just fill out the form at the end of this post to receive it for free and get good insights for your brand!
FAQ – Frequently Asked Questions About Branding
1. What is a Branding strategy?
2. How to have a strong Branding?
3. Why is Branding important?
4. What is the company brand?
5. What does Branding mean?
Conclusion
Enjoyed learning about branding?
Brands are alive. And often, they are just not what business owners want them to be.
Brands are what the public sees.
That’s why the best branding and branding strategies aren’t the ones where funny TV spots are created, or pieces that go viral on the internet.
It is of no use that the scope of these actions is enormous if they do not collaborate to achieve a greater objective.
It’s like a company post on social networks breaking a record of likes, but with content that has little to do with the product or service being sold.
What happens is that branding does not need strategy.
It is complex work, involving a lot of thought and should not be taken lightly.
By following our tips, you’ll be prepared to consistently build your personal brand and boost your career, whether as an employee, manager, entrepreneur or freelancer.
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