Your brand describes you! The way you build your brand helps people in understanding what kind of value system do you have and what is the idea behind your company. Just designing an impressive logo, having a business portfolio, and having social media platforms are not enough for a brand. To exist in the real world, brands need to invest a lot of time and energy into research, professional consultation, and in understanding the competitor’s strategies. Before marketing your business, every entity should know what exactly branding is and how it should be done!
Ensure you do not make the following mistakes while branding and it goes for both- the existing ones and the new business houses.
- Taking Competitors Lightly:
Knowing your competitors is extremely essential for new businesses. When you research about existing big fish in the same market that you want to work in, then knowing what they have done in the past, where did they fail, and what works for them can help you to understand what edge you can give your business and make it different from the rest. Remember, the research you are doing should include the target audience, products, their website, and how they use their social media pages. Once you study these elements through and through, you shall be able to understand your competitors better. If you think that you can skip this step then you may end up implementing the same marketing strategy as them or you may not understand their business model.
- Do Not Know The Target Audience:
Sales is a long process and pitching the wrong audience may ruin the entire process. Before you begin with your selling process, ensure you know who you need to pitch. Always study the pattern of your targeted audience – which brand they prefer, what are their needs and demands, what connects them, and how useful they see a product for themselves. Also, when you identify your target audience then putting across the business message correctly becomes easier via branding and packaging.
- The First Impression:
Never underestimate the power of the first impression. Trying to increase your sales without actually being seen in the market is totally useless. Branding helps in entering the market and one should study the elements of branding thoroughly before expecting to generate some revenue. The first impression can only be made the way you package your product. Do not think that buying container and package supply are more than enough for creating a powerful first impression.
- Non-Reliable Feedback:
Sometimes we end up giving up on our dream because the feedback is negative. However, in most cases, we forget to analyze the source of this feedback. Maybe the feedback we generated was from the wrong audience and we did not consider asking the feedback from the right ones. Also, sometimes we rely on our closed ones for feedback but, they usually provide us a positive feedback without acting neutral. Therefore, before relying on the feedback from friends and family, make certain you choose the audience who can give you an honest review of your product. If you are seeking one for your business then try social media platform and various review sites.
- Logo Re-Designing is Not Enough:
Let us be clear on one thing – branding is more than just getting the logo designed or adding a tagline to your business. Branding means putting the soul of the business in marketing. Once your business message is different from the others then you will be able to target your audience as well. Companies spend millions of dollars on redesigning their logo and rebranding their business. However, this is not enough. The biggest example of it is the Yahoo – it thought by changing the logo it will be able to brand itself better, however, nothing of this sort actually happened.
- Uniformity:
Companies that are steady and consistent in branding never fail. Remember, you should never change anything that works for you in business. Here is a big example of it – Coca-Cola has not changed its logo from the past 130 years and has been consistent in doing its branding. The way it packages its products has also been almost the same since its birth. This eventually has led in creating a mark in the world. And today, it has billions of social media followers on its page. You will agree; when summers are around and you want to have something chilled, Coca-Cola is what hits your mind every time.
Remember, always have a plan B for yourself in case plan A is not working for you!