By now you should have known more about the branding essentials but it’s time to go deeper and look at the bigger picture. The first step to developing a strong corporate image for your business is to create a successful brand.
However, if you stick to only this, you will only go so far; and without the proper strategy you won’t be able to round out your efforts. Branding is an ongoing process, and you should consider and see it as such because this is not a “one-and-done” situation but an ongoing process.
Jerry McLaughlin once said: “brand is the perception someone holds in their head about you, a product, a service, an organisation, a cause, or an idea. Brand building is the deliberate and skilful application of effort to create the desired perception in someone else’s mind.”
So, what exactly is A Successful Brand? Well, let’s explore some of their common characteristics below:
Audience Knowledge
One thing that is common among successful brands is how to understand their target market demographics, how they communicate and their interest. Most successful business has a specific target audience they’re pursuing. If a brand does not know its audience and it’s trying to please everyone, this can cause the brand to be counterproductive and diluted. This is why many business makes understanding their target market a focus and goal that needs to be achieved.
Uniqueness
It is also common for successful brands to establish a brand identity that sets them aside from competition. For example, Apple has made itself known for innovative products and aesthetic appeal. Establishing a brand identity requires something distinctive. For instance, Amazon has created a new feature called prime that gets your order to you very fast than any other e-commerce store in the world.
Consistency
The only thing that can make a customer return for a particular product or service is because they expect to receive the same level of quality as they did the first time. No one wants to go back to a company they can’t rely on, example of this is Dominos; Dominos has been known to provide the best pizza and they have retain this for many years. That’s why it’s so important for a brand to adhere to a certain quality standard with a product or service.
Passion
Well, a brand can build in the short term without passion, but that brand will not be able to sustain the test of time. When you think of successful entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg you will find out that they have a serious passion that keeps them working continually to deliver greatness.
Exposure
The ability for your customer to reach you through multiple channels is another big part of being recognised as a distinctive, successful brand. Obviously, big companies tend to have a bigger marketing budget and more existing connections and this has been an advantage for them to gain exposure. They can rank highly in search engine results pages and even pay for television commercials, or featured in globally-recognised magazines.
Building a successful brand is like building trust; it takes time and needs constant attention. It is a mixture of attracting new ideal business, hiring the best people and delivering on your promise day in and day out. And that is how you build a successful brand.
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