Mediastreet
Tag

Branding

Browsing
In News

Good Branding Stops Your Customers From Switching, Not Good Deals

No Comments

Brand managers, get on it!

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Energy companies in the UK are using specific branding approaches instead of product innovation to keep customers, according to new research from the University of East Anglia (UEA).

While previous research has tended to focus on pricing, this study looked at the branding strategies and personalities of the Big Six energy firms – British Gas, SSE, EDF Energy, E.ON UK, npower and Scottish Power. They wanted to find out whether increasing consumer loyalty results in reducing switching behaviour. The Big Six represent more than 90 per cent of all energy supplied in the UK consumer sector.

The researchers looked at the electricity market between 2013 – when the number of customers switching providers reached its lowest level – and 2015. And, the researchers did find that brand personality consistency over time is important.

Consistent brands (such as EDF Energy) performed better, and their customers decreased switching. This was compared to firms like npower and Scottish Energy, who had significantly changed their brand personality position or communicated inconsistently in this period.

Providers that had a significantly different brand personality position between marketing communication channels, such as their website and annual report, also had more switching than those that remained consistent. Interestingly, the majority of the brands studied were inconsistent on this measure.

Lead author Dr Richard Rutter says that this research demonstrates the long-term importance of corporate branding. “Brand personality does have an impact on customer retention. The Big Six energy providers recognise the power of brand identity when attempting to persuade consumers to switch providers. Rather than doing so simply on the basis of superior financial offers, they are increasingly looking to build a long-term brand personality with which consumers will identify.

“These organisations wish to be viewed as customer-focused and as offering a fair deal to consumers. There seem to be subtle but important differences in the ways that each company is choosing to communicate with its domestic audience and some are more effective than others.”

Concentrating on companies’ communication through their websites and annual reports, the researchers examined what brand personality dimensions – defined as sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication and ruggedness – were communicated most strongly and how consistently each organisation communicated its brand between the website and annual report. They then assessed the organisation’s performance, measured by consumer loyalty or switching behaviour.

They found that brands communicating excitement more strongly, such as EDF Energy, had the lowest levels of switching. The findings also suggest an ideal brand personality for the UK energy sector: low to medium levels of sincerity and competence and high levels of excitement and ruggedness communicated through the website lead to better performance. The authors say the annual report should maintain this, but also communicate a higher level of competence.

Said co-author Prof Konstantinos Chalvatzis, “Under scrutiny from the public and politicians, the energy sector is changing rapidly. Branding within the energy sector has become increasingly important, as energy firms seek to attract and, importantly, retain customers.

“We find that certain energy brands, for example EDF Energy have communicated their personality consistently, while others, such as npower and British Gas, seem to have repositioned themselves. A strong brand personality alone is not enough to prevent consumer switching, rather, particular dimensions of personality are more favourable than others and the relevance of specific personality traits can change.”

The authors recommend that firms should not drastically change their branding each year. Brand managers should also consider how to increase the communication of excitement in relation to their brands without being inauthentic, and ensure that their brand is consistent over time and between different marketing media.

Have you listed your company in our Media Directory? It’s free! Everyone’s favourite price! Click here to do it now.

Read More
By
In News

Branding Online. Branding Offline. What’s the Difference?

No Comments

By David Leonhardt

Most new entrepreneurs see a “brand” as a logo or slogan. For them, Nike’s brand is a swoosh with “Just do it!” attached.

After an entrepreneur has been around marketing a while, they start to realize that their brand is more than just a logo. It is what people feel about them and the impression their customers get that keeps them coming back. Seeing your logo or hearing your slogan is what triggers that feeling.

Now, is there a difference between branding online and branding offline? The short answer is yes. The long answer is explained below.

The fundamentals of branding

Enakshi Sharma lists 10 elements of branding:

  • Brand identity
  • Brand image
  • Brand positioning
  • Brand personality
  • Brand equity
  • Brand experience
  • Brand differentiation
  • Brand communication
  • Brand gap
  • Brand extension

Without getting into a debate over the definitions and merits of each element, I can say that these fundamentals do not vary between offline and offline branding. For instance, a brand that promises an eco-friendly product must make that same promise online or offline.

It is true that a company might have two different audiences. For instance, there might be an older demographic who prefers to shop at brick and mortar and a younger demographic that prefers to shop online. In that case, brand positioning would be different. The question the business would have to ask is whether it’s different enough that it needs two different brands?

A classic example is when Toys R Us branched out into Babies R Us. Two brands in the same “family”, but with a clear difference in brand positioning.

If online and offline positioning are not big enough to justify two different brands, a company has to be consistent in all other elements. Otherwise two things can happen:

  • People who shop online and offline will notice the difference and be confused … and the company will lose customers.
  • The company will lose cross-demographic customers, such as younger people who prefer in-store shopping.

Consistency online and offline

For a single brand, consistency is critical across online and offline branding. That includes:

  • colors on logos, promotional products, uniforms, in-store signage, website banners, etc.
  • language used when greeting customers in-store, on the phone and in live chat, as well as in advertising and on the website
  • messaging about the product’s and company’s image (luxury, fun-loving, environment, frugal, ease-of-use, etc.)
  • style of images used, which should reflect the overall messaging

Some of the most successful branding comes from putting offline products in front an online audience. You must be careful when doing so as you do not want to seem as if you are pushing advertising in front of someone who doesn’t want to see it. Great examples include Kuretake, Lululemon, and GoPro who put their products second while advertising on social media. They spend most of their time engaging with customers as opposed to putting products in front of customers’ faces.

There are differences

There are differences between online and offline branding. One difference is typeface. John Wood shares some interesting statistics on how people read differently offline and online.

Offline, people learned to read with a serif typeface, such as Times Roman. The letters are more clear and obvious, such as the difference between a lower-case L and an upper case I.

But online, people scan more than read, and when they read, it’s often on tiny hand-held devices. They read much better with a sans-serif typeface, such as Arial.

Language is another difference…sometimes. In online chats, customer service should use the same approach to speaking with customers as in-store sales staff would use, whether that is formal, ultra polite, casual, flowery, etc.

Brands also have more options to interact with customers online, and sometimes need to adapt their language to the context of the discussion. Without changing the basic impression of the business, a more relaxed approach might be needed to market on Snapchat, and a less flowery approach on Twitter (although there is more room for flowery with the new 280-character limit than with the old 140 limit).

When we write for businesses, we want to know where something will be published, so that we can tailor that text accordingly. But we are always careful to carry over all the elements of the brand image, regardless of the context.

Another difference is user-generated content, something that doesn’t exist in the offline world. This can include:

  • testimonials
  • employee stories
  • pics of videos from customers

When planning user generated content, make sure it aligns with your offline presence. For instance, make sure employees present the same image online as they do offline. You can’t control the pics or videos that customers send in, but you can control the context, how those images appear, the frames they are in, the pages they are on.

Try to build as similar as possible a customer experience when displaying user-generated content as you do when welcoming customers into your store. Keep in mind the fundamental elements of your brand with everything you do.You might have noticed that the differences between online and offline branding are small. They are no more than tweaks. Your branding works best when customers get the same messages, the same impression, the same feelings about your brand online and offline.

By David Leonhardt

View full profile ›

Sourced from Business 2 Community

Read More
By
In News

Advertising in Fashion Magazines is Dead to us Now

No Comments

Now? Fashion brands are meeting with social media influencers directly.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Hundreds of NY Fashion Week influencers were invited to a party specifically held to put them in front of brands that want some of the spotlight. The party was held by a company called Influence, which connects brands and influencers. Together, they create social campaigns that expand visibility and engage new audiences for brands. The influencer gets paid, and the brands get to reach audiences that they might not be able to access using other methods. Welcome to the “now” of fashion and brand marketing.

Influence is a sister company to the already-successful operation called Newswire. Newswire currently have an online portal that publishes thousands of press releases every day. Journalists and influencers can go straight to company news, by keyword or subject search. This means that they can get their news directly from the companies, rather than have the interaction brokered through a PR agency. This renders the traditional PR agency almost obsolete.

The way the PR industry is changing is similar to the way that fashion magazines are going. Teen magazines and fashion publications are no longer the huge, powerful entities that brokered deals between brands/fashion houses and their audiences. Now, it is the online fashion influencers who have huge sway with their fans, and brands can contact them directly. This circumvents the hugely expensive fashion magazines, whose circulations are falling dramatically.

As an example, a top YouTube fashion influencer is Chriselle Lim. Her channel is growing at a breakneck pace. Her videos reveal how to transform basic pieces of clothing into stylish apparel. Chriselle has support from global brands such as Target and Estee Lauder.

The change in the way brands and fashion are marketed has been incredibly rapid. Fashion magazines? Pah. Now Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube are the place to put brand marketing spend.

But back to the party. The event hosted hundreds of NY Fashion Week Influencers at Manhattan’s chic Sixty Soho Hotel. Influencers and brands from across the globe arrived to share in networking and developing opportunities for campaign partnerships that strengthen an Influencer’s channel and widen content reach for brands. The party was also used to promote Influence.com itself. And it worked, because here you are, reading about this new company.

Said Director of Influencer Marketing, Magnolia Sevenler, “Whether you are an influencer or marketer, the Influence by Newswire platform provides a community to build your campaigns.”

According to Sevenler, the platform has been well-received from both marketers and creators for its simplicity and reach. “It’s exciting to see all the positive feedback…as we enter a new era of marketing, where micro-influencers can be rewarded for their passions and brands can reach new untapped audiences.”

The company has plans to expand its network and add additional features to enhance users’ experience. And it is doing this all because the fashion magazine industry is destined for a papery grave. It’s time to move on, people, and bring your marketing spend with you.

Have you listed your company in our Media Directory? It’s free! Everyone’s favourite price! Click here to do it now.

 

Read More
By
In News

Competitive research: 3 free steps to a better brand strategy

No Comments

By 

You can learn a lot from your competitors. Columnist Sam Welch discusses easy ways to gather data on the competition without using third-party tools or paid subscriptions.

In the course of my work, I get the chance to help companies of all shapes and sizes get on track to achieve long-term, sustained growth. One of my most requested services is the gathering of competitive intelligence. Clients have a fervent desire to better understand the competitive landscape, but they often lack the resources to obtain this information and effectively integrate it into their marketing strategies.

This series of articles will focus on some simple ways you can gather actionable data on your competitors — without the use of third-party tools or paid subscriptions — and weave it into your own marketing efforts.

A few months back, I was having a conversation with a client about competitor research, and he made a comment that stuck with me. He compared the methodology of a project I had just presented to that of a Walmart marketing executive spending most of her day at Target.

In my eyes, this was an apt analogy. Nearly all the data I had gathered was publicly accessible and came from his competitors’ websites. I had spent hours looking at product features, messaging and site architecture and had analyzed it all against his company’s own user experience and product offerings to come up with (I hoped) at least a few actionable insights.

Luckily, I illuminated some not-so-obvious weaknesses that warranted immediate attention from his team. The client was happy, and I got to keep my job.

Simply stated, there is a lot that can be learned from immersing yourself in the lives of your competitors.

And to clarify, I am not recommending you go to your competitor’s office and drink all the LaCroix in their microkitchen. Through this article, however, I will demonstrate how you can leverage your competitors’ strengths, weaknesses and unique selling points to better position yourself in the market.

Gather the data

Before you begin the actual competitor research, take time to refamiliarize yourself with your company’s product offerings, site features, value propositions and perceived competitive advantages. List and categorize everything you can think of, and be as detailed as possible. The granularity will become important later, when you analyze your data against your competitors’.

Below is an example list of features that you could explore. (This is in no way comprehensive.) Note that your categories should be tailored to your specific product.

  • Pricing/cost (examples: a product’s price, a bank’s fees, different financing options for a subscription plan).
  • Site resources (examples: blogs, FAQs, reviews, calculator tools — anything that is not human aid).
  • Customer support (examples: online chat, 24/7 phone support).
  • Rewards/bonuses/discounts (examples: signup bonus, loyalty rewards programs, referral bonuses).
  • Security features (examples: site encryption, guarantees/warranties).
  • Experience/certifications/licenses/awards — pretty much anything that shows off accolades.

If you have multiple discrete products, consider completing this exercise for each of them.

Next, choose up to three competitors you believe to be the most similar in terms of customers and product. Navigate to their websites and dive in head-first. Start recording everything you can across the previously established categories, making additions wherever appropriate.

The goal at this stage is to collect as much information as possible because you never know what might be significant when you perform cross-analysis.

Connect the dots

Now that you have your list of product features and offerings mapped out for you and your competitors, it’s time to connect that information to what your ideal customer cares about and their decision-making process. I recommend making a prioritized list of the criteria customers use when deciding to purchase your product or use your service.

Here are some typical examples:

  • Quality of service/product.
  • Price.
  • Security.
  • Overall ease of the service.
  • Customer support.

A list like this probably already exists at your company. However, I encourage you to conduct your own research to ensure its validity, as assumptions are often made about customers that aren’t rooted in hard data.

Survey your own customer base to learn more about their motivations and how they evaluate your product against the competition. If surveys are not feasible, consider secondary sources like online publications, blog posts, or even customer reviews. A lot of valuable information is revealed when customers voice their satisfaction or discontent.

Once you are comfortable with your list, determine its alignment with your product data and think critically about the implications.

  • Are your competitors doing a better job at speaking to what truly matters to customers?
  • Have you failed to address key customer decision criteria on your website and in messaging?
  • Is there a product feature that differentiates you from the pack that you could bring to the foreground?
  • What are your true competitive advantages? Are they the same as before?
  • Where are your biggest weaknesses?
  • What are the table stakes? Are there things that every company must do well to compete?

These are only a few of the questions you should be asking. I encourage you to find your own meaning in the data and to think about the broader impact it has on your marketing strategy and site experience.

Take action

Congratulations! You’ve made it this far and now have a newfound grasp on the competitive landscape, and perhaps you’ve gained a few insights that will effect positive change for your business.

Take what you’ve learned, package it, and share it with other teams at your company. New sets of eyes on the data might shine light on details or implications you overlooked.

By 

Sourced from Marketing Land

Read More
By
In News

Marketing Survey: Spontaneous Sex is the Best Kind

No Comments

Keep this in mind if you are marketing sexy products.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

What does a company that makes sex products do for their annual Valentine’s sales push? They do a survey, to find out how best to market to their customers. And here are the results.

Valentine’s Day, it seems, is starting to suck for everyone. Singles have made it their own anti-holiday, full of memes and proclamations about the commercialisation of the day. But what about couples? Is it all it’s really cracked up to be?

A company called K-Y undertook a survey to find out how to best market their sex products to customers. And it makes for depressing reading. What was once thought to be a romantic and sexy day has become an experience full of pressure and hype. Pressure to buy the right card, pick the sexiest lingerie and have the most mind-blowing sex of your life – and you only have one day to make it all happen.

According to the Love All 365 survey, half of Millennials feel they are missing out if they don’t have sex on Valentine’s Day, but more than 60% of them report that the sex doesn’t live up to the hype. That’s a lot of lead up for a big letdown.

The survey further illuminates the Valentine’s Day tension by revealing that while 82% of people are more likely to have sex with their partner on Valentine’s Day, 83% report that sex is best when it’s impulsive versus planned. Preparing for sex at Valentine’s Day is certainly a faux pas many couples are guilty of committing in spite of the fact that, as the statistics affirm, our preference is for spontaneity.

The good news is that 97% of couples report that having good sex with their partners makes them feel more connected.

“We don’t want couples saving their ‘sexy’ for special occasions, when great sex can and should happen any day of the year,” said Nadja Korner, Marketing Director of K-Y. “Good sex helps strengthen the relationship, so instead of putting all your romantic energy into nights like Valentine’s Day, surprise your partner with that special sexy something on an unexpected night. After all, the essence of pleasure is spontaneity.”

So if you are creating an advertising campaign using a sexy theme, keep the idea of spontaneous sex in mind. Especially if you are targeting Millennials. ■

 

Have you listed your company in our Media Directory? Click here to do it now.

Read More
By
In News

Targeting Teenagers with Your ads? Here are the Four Personas to Appeal to

No Comments

Academics have identified four distinct personas of social media user that teenagers describe as shaping how they behave on social media.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Young social media users are categorised as either acting like the Geek, the Internet Celebrity, the Victim or the Lurker depending on their levels of online activity and visibility, University of Sussex academics say.

The categorisations are based on interviews the researchers conducted with children aged between 10 and 15-years-old for a new book, Researching Everyday Childhoods, published by Bloomsbury last month.

The interviews revealed many youngsters were increasingly savvy about maintaining their privacy online, often being motivated to protect themselves by unpleasant past personal experiences or negative incidents that affected classmates.

Dr Liam Berriman, lecturer in digital humanities at the University of Sussex, said: “Our research found that concerns about staying safe online created an atmosphere of intense anxiety for young people, even if they had not directly experienced any problems themselves. The young people we spoke to felt a great weight of responsibility for their safety online and were often motivated by the concern of being labelled a victim.”

“While there has been a lot of negative media coverage around teenagers’ interaction with social media, our findings are more hopeful that teenagers are responsible users of social media, are very conscious of the dangers and make considerable efforts to protect themselves against those risks.”

Teenagers navigate between the desire to be praised and recognised online and anxieties over the risk of opening themselves up to criticism and trolling. Among the four personas is the Internet Celebrity who is able to best use the latest trends and increasingly values “visibility of the self” through Instagram, Snapchat, the selfie and YouTube vlogging.

The internet celebrity

But academics also identified how young people are experimenting with and enjoying invisibility online. They describe the Lurker as someone able to avoid peer dramas arising through platforms such as Facebook, whilst still engaging in fun peer activities such as stalking their favourite music bands online.

The lurker

The Geek, meanwhile, uses invisibility to anonymously share and promote their amateur media creations online, such as music videos or fan fiction writing. The academics described how the Geeks’ long hours of labour on projects risked parental concern that their behaviour was obsessive or addictive.

The geek

Professor Rachel Thomson, professor of childhood and youth studies at the University of Sussex, said, “What is distinctive about these active social media users was the entrepreneurial character of their practice, with ‘play’ re-envisaged as a form of economically rewarding work. By gaining an audience, young people are aware that they could capture advertising and corporate sponsorship. The dream is to ‘go viral’, establishing a career as a cultural creator.”

The research also highlights the risks contained in a world dominated by personal visibility with the Victim left to suffer personal exposure and shame following the creation and display of intimate material such as sexting and the loss of control of this material.

The victim

The Victim’s high visibility is often out of their control with their presence and heightened without their consent as private material is extracted from them and exchanged under false premises.

This can vary from the frustration of being tagged in photographs and the creation of an unflattering digital footprint through the activities of others to the more invasive techniques of fraping, where a person’s online identity is hijacked without their permission, or sharing of intimate photographs.

Dr Berriman said, “These examples reveal the impossibility of non- participation in the world of social media. A teenager does not necessarily have to create an online persona, it is something that can be created by others.”

This is great food for thought for anyone trying to catch the attention of teenagers online. You may even need to consider four different approaches when targeting the teen market. Thanks, science!

 

Have you listed your company in our Media Directory? Click here to do it now.

Read More
By
In News

Millennials Are Not All Alike (And They May Surprise You!)

No Comments

New research studying the millennials market has identified five unique subgroups.

A new research study from Zeldis Research Associates reveals surprising findings for marketers which belie the frequent mythology that Millennials are “all the same.”

Unlike many other market studies attempting to better understand Millennials as a single group, Zeldis researchers identified five Millennial segments based on income, attitudes, and other important factors.  This “Seen One Millennial and You Haven’t Seen Them All” study is part of Zeldis’ ongoing investigation into how marketers can better reach and successfully engage this group.

“Despite a lot of the media coverage we hear, Millennials are not one homogenous group, unfortunately and incorrectly characterised by a few negative stereotypes such as lazy or entitled,” said Zeldis Executive Vice President Amy Rey. “Our research shows that there are important differences among Millennials. We wanted to dispel some of the myths and help marketers better understand the nuances that will help make Millennial-targeted outreach, products and messaging more effective.”

Five Identifiable Segments

Based on online interviews with 1000 Millennials aged 21-36, the Zeldis researchers identified five unique segments:  Faithful Optimists (31% of the sample), Struggling Parents (23%), Secular Activists (22%) Tech-Savvy Independents (14%), and Pessimistic Conservatives (10%).  Some of their findings include:

– Faithful Optimists, the largest segment, tend to be joyful, hardworking, dependable, and religious. They are more likely to be non-white and heterosexual.

– Struggling Parents tend to be pessimistic about their lives and about the country. They don’t pay much attention to politics or technology. They are more likely to be white women with children and tend to be less educated and from rural areas.

– Secular Activists are more likely to be politically liberal, and to be pessimistic about the country’s future. They tend to be single, childless, and secular and are more likely to be part of the LGBT community.

-Tech-Savvy Independents are more politically conservative but also environmentally conscious. Optimistic about the economy, this segment has a higher proportion of males and non-whites, and tends to be from urban locations.

– Pessimistic Conservatives, the smallest segment, are likely to be from suburban areas. They tend to be religious and politically conservative. Skewing male and non-white, they have high incomes but are pessimistic about their economic future.

Though holding some attitudes and beliefs in common with other segments, each group showed nuanced differences that the Zeldis researchers believe are important for companies to understand and apply when marketing their products.

The full results are available at ZeldisMillennialsStudy.com.

 

Have you listed your company in our Media Directory? Click here to do it now.

Read More
By
In News

You Might be Paying too Much for ads on Google and Bing

No Comments

Before you dish out money to bid for a top-ranked ad position on a search engine, you may want to pause and make sure it’s actually going to pay off.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

New research out of Binghamton University, State University of New York suggests that instead of just spending to get that top spot, advertisers should be considering other factors as well to ensure they are getting the best results from their sponsored search advertising campaigns.

Sponsored search advertising involves paying search engines, like Google and Bing, to bid for placements on the search results pages for specific keywords and terms. The ads appear in sponsored sections, separate from the organic search results, on those pages.

“The common belief in sponsored search advertising is that you should buy the top ad position to get more clicks, because that will lead to more sales,” said Binghamton University Assistant Professor of Marketing Chang Hee Park. “But the fee for the top position could be larger than the expected sales you’d get off that top position.”

Park, with the help of Binghamton University Professor of Marketing Manoj Agarwal, analysed data collected from a search engine and created a model that can forecast the number of clicks advertisers could expect in sponsored search markets based on four factors:

  • Rank in the sponsored listings
  • Website quality
  • Brand equity
  • Selling proposition

The model gives advertisers a way to quantify the expected clicks they’d get by adjusting these four factors, while also taking into consideration how their competitors are managing these four factors. This could enable advertisers to find a perfect blend of the four factors to ensure they are getting the most out of what they are paying for their ad positions.

It may also indicate that they should be spending more money to bolster their brand or website rather than amplifying their offers in top ad positions.

“Using this model, you may find that paying less for a lower ad position while investing more in improving your website is more effective than spending all of that money strictly on securing top ad positions,” said Agarwal.

This applies especially if your competitor has a poorer-quality website, but is spending more than you on securing top ad positions.

Their model found that poor-quality advertisers that are ranked higher in ad positions drive consumers back to the search results page, leading consumers to then click on advertisers in lower ad positions to find what they are looking for.

In contrast, they also found that a highly-ranked good-quality advertiser results in significantly less clicks for all the advertisers ranked below them.

“It’s more likely that in the top position, all advertisers being equal, you’ll get more clicks. But depending on these four factors, as well as the quality of your competitors, you may find that you’ll get more clicks in the second or the third position,” said Park.

“Conceptually, this is not a new idea, but now the model can help determine this by accounting for multiple factors at play at the same time.”

Advertisers aren’t the only ones who can benefit from this research.

Park and Agarwal’s model found that simply reordering the listed advertisers could result in significant changes in overall click volume (the total number of clicks across all advertisers) for search engines.

“Because they often charge on a pay-per-click model, search engines can now simulate which ordering of advertisers in a sponsored search market results in the most overall clicks and, therefore, most revenue” said Park. “Search engines may want to consider charging advertisers in a way that gives the search engine more flexibility in determining the order in which the ads in sponsored sections are displayed.”

 

 

Have you listed your company in our Media Directory? Click here to do it now.

Read More
By
In News

How to Build a Brand for Success

No Comments

By Jesse Allred 

Your first step in creating a brand is finding your corporate identity.

Are you laying the foundation for your business’ brand, or looking to rebrand and refresh it? Whatever step you are at in the branding process, these tricks and tips will help build a solid foundation for your business.

Any branding a business produces should support and be in line with the “big picture,” or the overall plan and end goals. Elements of branding include colours, fonts, the business’ voice, activity on social media and so much more.

Defining Corporate Identity & Branding

The first step in positioning your company for success is finding your corporate identity. Consider these questions to understand the foundation of your brand:

  1. Where does your company sit within the market? Hubspot recommends the SWOT analysis – look at your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.
  2. What’s your company’s vision? Create a one sentence statement that encapsulates your business’ value, distinctiveness and future.
  3. What’s your company’s mission? This should be straightforward and clearly explain your business’ purpose.
  4. What essence, or intangible emotion, do you want people to feel when they think about your business? Think of words like “safe,” “luxurious” and “inspirational.” According to AMP Agency, a brand’s essence should focus on one or two words, be unique and delivered consistently.

Now you can decide you brand positioning. Keep your identity front of mind, especially when designing your website, social media accounts and content, business documents and other marketing collateral. Incorporating your identity into every facet of your organization will keep your branding consistent and easy to detect.

Branding Your Business with Colours

The colour(s) you choose as part of your branding goes further than just logos. Neil Patel encourages business owners to think about colour when you are:

  • Designing your website
  • Building a mobile app
  • Sending an email
  • Creating a marketing campaign

And more!

It’s important you remember your customer. Although you may feel your business

Different colours can influence different moods, so ensure your colour scheme represents your brand.

should go in the same direction as big brands and choose common colours like black, red or blue, consider your audience. Is your demographic mostly female, so you want to market with pink? Think again. It turns out women actually respond to blue the most.

Read through the entire colour wheel, and how the psychology of a consumer’s brain react to them, with information on Businessing Mag and Quick Sprout. Here’s a helpful summary to get you started picking colours for your company’s branding.

Blue: Did you know blue is universally most people’s favourite colour? Among age ranges, genders and other demographics, blue is regarded as the favourite. Blue primarily conveys dependability and strength, but can also represent calmness and security. Lighter shades of blue are recommended for the friendlier and calmer brands, while darker shades are the right pick for corporations and security businesses.

  • Think of Dell, Intel, IBM and Facebook.

Red: Red represents a variety of emotions: danger, love, urgency, youthfulness, etc. Red is also considered an impulse colour, and is a great colour to target impulse buyers, as the colour red quickens the customer’s heartbeat. Businesses in the food or romance industries should consider branding with red, and all business should consider it for discounting prices or advertising sales.

  • Think of Nintendo, Target, McDonalds, CNN, Coca-Cola and clearance stickers.

Green: Green is symbolic of peace, health, growth, life and harmony. Green can also represent nature, the environment and something new. This is a perfect colour for businesses selling health or environmentally-friendly products and service

Choose complementary colors and two or three colors that represent your brand.

Think of companies like Animal Planet, Whole Foods and John Deere.

  • It is important to stress cultural differences when designing logos and brand images. For instance, while green symbolizes life in Japan, it also symbolizes death in South America.

Yellow: Yellow can mean joy, happiness and warmth. It is a cheerful color, but should be used sparingly. It is, however, regarded as one of the colors least likely to be used in marketing, and is universally unpopular. While this color does not work well by itself, it is an excellent choice for an accent color.

  • Companies that incorporate yellow well include Nikon, Best Buy and Shell.

Purple: Purple is one of the highest rated colors among women, and is most commonly associated with royalty. It is a color symbolizing nobility, romance, luxury and glamour. Purple would be a suitable color for spa, beauty and high-end products and services.

  • Think of Hallmark, Cadbury, University of Washington and New York University.

Pink: Pink primarily represents femininity, encompassing love, sexuality, nurture and warmth. If your brand focuses almost entirely on a female audience, you may want to consider pink – depending on your products and the emotions you’re trying to convey.

  • Brands using pink include Victoria’s Secret, Barbie and Curvy Girl.

Black and White: While opposites, both colors can represent sophistication, luxury and expensive. A balance of these colors, with an optional accent of grey, would work well for tech industries, or even businesses in the food industry.

  • Think of Apple, Wikipedia and The New York Times.

So many colors to choose from! And you’re likely to choose more than one, so really try to capture the essence of your company in the color palette you choose for your branding. For example, if you are a business offering organic bath and spa products, think of using lighter shades of green, blue and white. Or, if your business sells security equipment, a mix of darker blues with elements of black would give your brand that extra oomph.

Branding Your Business with Fonts

Times New Roman or Georgia? Courier or Courier New? Bold or italics? Even if you can’t distinguish between fonts, you should know the value of them. Don’t feel overwhelmed in the sea of hundreds of fonts, check out these 3 Tips for Choosing a Font:

  1. Determine Your Tone: The font you choose for your business adds to the tone of your message and branding. Decide the mood for your business and branch off from there. If you’re looking for something more serious, choose a serif font; for fun or playful brands, choose a script or decorative typeface.
  2. Be Clear: To ensure effective communication with your audience, choose a font

    It’s important to choose a font that embodies the personality of your brand.

    and size that is clear and easy to read.

  3. Be Consistent: Once a font is chosen, stay consistent across all communication platforms. This includes your website, marketing materials, newsletters, etc. By staying consistent, you brand will become more recognizable to your audience.

Now it’s time to wade through some of the options!

Serif: Lines are attached to the letters, or they have “feet.” These fonts are traditional, and convey a more serious tone. It’s

Choose fonts like Georgia, Times New Roman and Baskerville.

Sans-Serif: Meaning “without serif,” these fonts don’t have the extra lines or “feet” as their Serif counterparts.

Choose fonts like Helvetica, Century Gothic and Calibri.

Script: Script fonts encompass all fonts that are stylized with cursive, or handwritten fonts, and the letters generally connect. These fonts are perfect for conveying many different tones ranging from fun and creative to more serious and elegant.

Look at fonts like Brush Script, Bradley Hand and Freestyle Script.

Display: Also known as decorative fonts, these should be used sparingly. More unusual than practical, these fonts are used for grabbing a reader’s attention.

Think of fonts like Bauhaus, Broadway and Chiller.

Establishing Voice in Your Business’ Branding

Now that your fonts and colors are chosen, what about your brand’s voice? The voice you write in — whether it’s for blog posts, social media updates, or press pitches –should consistently convey and support your brand. Think of the personality you want to convey, and use language to support that! Your voice should be a natural reflection off your branding, and should not seemed forced. Practice writing in your company’s voice often.

Put Branding Into Action with Social Media

Social media offers multiple platforms to advertise your brand, and opens the gates for the millions of users waiting to interact with your business; it is the best place to get your branding out there. It seems with every year, a new social media platform gains crazy popularity. So, which one is best for your business? Social Media Week breaks it down:

  • Facebook: The company reported that the site has 2.01 billion monthly as of June 30, 2017. That’s more than one-quarter of the population! This site is utilized by all demographics, and is a must for any business. Think about posting fun, interactive and shareable content to this social media site. To increase brand awareness, take advantage of Facebook’s algorithm.
  • Twitter: Twitter is no longer the second-most used platform, but with over 300 million monthly users, it is a site that should not be ignored. The most powerful tool for raising awareness is hashtags, use them strategically! Visual content is also important, as well as engaging posts like questions or polls.
  • Instagram: With posts including only photos or videos, Instagram is very different among social media platforms, and is widely used by the millennial demographics. Create visually appealing content in line with your branding, while attaching 30 hashtags to it, and it will be seen!

The foundation of a business’ marketing and public relations efforts is branding. Once your mission is determined, every branding choice will add and contribute to spreading your message and mission. By having an updated, and consistent brand, your audience will remember your business and the subtle emotions conveyed through it when making purchasing decisions.
Read more at https://www.business2community.com/branding/build-brand-success-01992979

By Jesse Allred 

View full profile ›
Read more at https://www.business2community.com/branding/build-brand-success-01992979

Sourced from Business 2 Community

Read More
By
In Uncategorized

Buyer Behaviour: Love Trumps Budget When Your Customer is Buying Sentimental Items

No Comments

People will always pay more when being led by the heart and not the head.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Brides and the bereaved beware: You, like many shoppers, may have a tendency to reject thriftiness when your purchase is a matter of the heart, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder.

People are reluctant to seek cost-saving options when buying what they consider sacred – such as engagement rings, cremation urns, or even desserts for a birthday party – for or to commemorate loved ones. The paper, published in Judgment and Decision Making, is the first to examine the implications of this phenomenon.

Even when they identify a less expensive alternative to be equally desirable, people choose the more expensive of two items. They also avoid searching for lower prices and negotiating better prices when the goods they’re buying are symbolic of love.

“People’s buying behaviour changes when they’re making purchases out of love because it feels wrong to engage in cost-saving measures,” said Peter McGraw, associate professor of marketing and psychology at CU. “People abandon cost-saving measures when it comes to sentimental buys because they want to avoid having to decide what is the right amount of money to spend on a loving relationship.”

The findings highlight how wedding, funeral and other industries can exploit consumers, said McGraw.

In one part of the study, which involved nearly 245 participants, the researchers asked attendees at a Boulder wedding show about their preference between two engagement rings. The attendees nearly always chose the more expensive ring when deciding between a more expensive ring with a bigger carat and a less expensive ring with a smaller carat.

“It’s important to be aware of this tendency not to seek cost savings because, over a lifetime, consumers make many purchases that are symbolic of love — whether for weddings, funerals, birthdays, and anniversaries,” said McGraw. “The loss of savings can really add up and put people in compromising financial situations.”

So how can we apply this to a marketing situation? If you are selling goods or services for sentimental events, play up the quality, not the price.

 

Have you listed your company on the MediaStreet directory? Click here to do it now! It’s free!

Read More
By
Load More