Every brand has a personality, whether unintended or planned. Either way, it’s a key element in communicating intangible benefits to consumers.

A brand’s personality impacts on preference and usage, as consumers develop an emotional bond with brands that resonate with them. Consumers often feel connected to brands that have similar traits to themselves, making their purchase decision feel like second nature. Appealing to customers’ emotions and cultivating a bond encourages loyalty, making customers more likely to advocate a brand.

For example, a teenager might prefer a shoe brand that exemplifies a cool image that is accessible (i.e. Converse). A professional woman, however, might prefer a shoe brand that symbolises sophistication and exclusivity (i.e. Louis Vuitton).

The intention behind a brand’s personality significantly increases the likelihood that the brand will resonate with the desired target market. It can, however, often be unclear as to where to start in doing so.

Where do I start?

There are numerous methods you can use to determine and develop your brand’s personality, however, the following resources and tips may help you get started

Discover your Brand Archetype

The book The Hero and The Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes, by Margaret Mark and Carol Pearson, outlines a system consisting of two dimensions: self-focused vs. group-oriented, and order vs. change. This system helps brands determine their personality and create a model that can then guide other brand elements.

The Brand Personality Spectrum

The ‘Brand Personality Spectrum’ can be used to develop a quick snapshot of your brand’s personality. Simply place a dot along each horizontal line, wherever you feel your brand falls on that spectrum, or where you would like it to be. If more dots fall to the left, your brand is more contemporary, fast-moving and energetic. If there are more dots on the right, your brand is more traditional and planned in its approach with set processes in place. If you fall in the middle, then you must make a decision as to which side of the spectrum is most appropriate for your brand, as being in the middle leaves a brand forgettable.

Use Analogies

The ‘car analogy’ and the ‘celebrity analogy’ are both commonly used to identify brand characteristics. That said, many analogies would work. Essentially, this method is about considering if your brand was, for example, a car, what car would it be? Whichever analogy you use, this is about considering your brand as something more tangible with more easily identifiable personality traits. This will help you to then translate any similarities over to brand attributes.

Your brand’s personality has the power to influence purchase decisions, based on how well it resonates with your target market’s characteristics and values. Understanding your target market, their characteristics, motivators and demotivators, will mean you can create a brand personality that aligns.

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This stresses the importance of having a strategic brand positioning strategy. When building a brand, a lot of factors come into play. 

1)      Define Your brand.

Just like a person, your company needs an identity. This identity will be a reflection of your company’s personality and beliefs. As part of the process, the below items must be carefully considered as these will set the tone for the other elements of your brand.

a)      Positioning. Describe your product or service. Define which space it occupies relative to your competitors. Is it budget-friendly or premium quality, functional or lavish, entry-level or high-end?

b)      Value Proposition. This explains why customers should patronise your business. It should answer the questions: What is unique about your offering? How are you going to make a difference in the lives of your customers? What kind of experience are your customers going to get?

c)      Tone of Voice. The tone of voice should reflect the values of the company as well as the people behind it. It should be in line with your brand’s persona.  The tone of voice must be consistent throughout the company, from the marketing to all forms of communication.

d)      Persona. Human characteristics are assigned to brands to make them relatable to people. Examples include carefree, athletic, influential, elegant, thoughtful and family-oriented.

2)     Develop Your Tagline.

Your tagline is essentially a description of your brand value in a nutshell. A good tagline is concise, simple, clear, memorable, communicates a story and most importantly, communicates a key benefit.

3)    Create Your Logo.

Your logo will be the main and most visible representation of your company as it will appear in all marketing collaterals and other forms of communication. Because of this, it is vital that its design is crafted with a lot of thought. Its components must be in line with your brand identity.  At the same time, its elements must consider logo design principles and best practice.

4)     Decide on Your Design Elements.

Various types of marketing collateral will be required for different marketing arenas.  In presenting your product or service, the look and feel of your collateral should be consistent throughout all channels and reflect your brand. In order to do this, certain design elements such as colour schemes, fonts, and formatting must be outlined in the brand guidelines.

5)     Ingrain Your brand in your Company Culture.  

Branding does not stop at design and communication activities. Since employees engage with customers, their actions, appearance, and way of communicating must likewise accurately represent your brand.

When building a brand, you need to develop a brand strategy that encompasses defining what your brand is, developing a tagline, creating a logo, deciding on design elements and tone of voice to use in all forms of communication and ingraining the brand values in your culture.

These brand elements must be consistent at all times at every customer touch point. Branding done correctly has the capability to influence purchasing decisions of customers by differentiating your company, creating loyalty among customers, and establishing your company as a trustworthy and dependable source.

The post Essential Things to Remember When Building a Brand appeared first on Reload Consulting.

What is a value proposition? Simply said, it is a succinct statement that summarises what a brand offers its customers and why consumers should choose the brand over another. To give you an idea, here are some of the examples of brands with a compelling value proposition.

Survey Monkey: “Create Surveys, Get Answers.”
Canva: “Beautiful design in 30 seconds.”
CoSchedule: “The Best Way To Plan Your Marketing, Save A Ton of Time.”
Evernote: “Remember Everything”
Skype: “Skype keeps the world talking for free. Share, message and call-now with group video on mobile and tablet too.
Bitly: “Shorten. Share. Measure.”
Google Drive: “A safe place for all your files.”
PayPanther: “ Helping businesses manager their files/ emails/invoices/expenses/accounting/ life/events/clients.”
Hootsuite: “The best social media tool for business. Manage all your social media marketing from one tool.”
Netflix: “See what’s next. Watch anywhere. Cancel anytime.”

Now, how does a brand come up with a value proposition that will encourage customers to avail of the products and/or services it offers? In developing a value proposition, there are several factors to consider such as the target market, the competitors and the value that the product brings to customers.

Target Market

Assess the demographics and psychographics. The demographics include information such as the age, gender, location occupation (etc) of the target market. On the other hand, the psychographics looks into the values, opinions, habits and attitudes of the market.

Competitor Information

What are the substitutes or products and services that can be used in lieu of yours? Having a clear understanding of the competition and what they offer can help a brand assess what it is up against. In doing so, it would be good to study the similarities and differences of what competitors offer.

Product Value and Features

Equally essential is to identify the value that the product will bring to customers or how it will benefit them or solve a problem. This usually is drawn from having a clear understanding of

1. The product, and
2. The target market/s (their desires and what would entice them to choose a product over another)

The process involves assessing the product or service by laying out all its features and then ensuring that the product or service features and delivery meets the needs and expectations of the customer. For example, for customers who are conscious about cost, this could be the price at which a product is sold. This could also be the quality of the product regardless of price for those that give more weight to quality. In terms of product delivery, the customer’s communication and service delivery preference should be considered as well.

Nowadays, competition among businesses is tougher than ever before. Customers are presented with countless options to choose from for their needs and wants. Having a well written and thought out value proposition can help entice customers to choose a product over another. The process of arriving at a great value proposition involves gaining a clear understanding of the competition, the customer and identifying what they perceive as valuable then composing a message that clearly communicates how the product or service can address their needs.

The post How to realise your brand’s value and how to share it appeared first on Reload Consulting.

Take Toyota and Lexus for example, which are both car brands of Toyota Motor Corporation with very different positioning strategies. A Toyota Camry and a Lexus IS may be comparable in shape and size, but the two models are designed and marketed to reach two different consumer groups. The Camry is for consumers wanting reliability and economy, and the IS is for high-end consumers wanting prestige and luxury.

When you take a proactive approach to your product positioning, you can influence the market on how they perceive your product. Failure to actively promote and position your product will inevitably result in the market doing it for you, and this can be detrimental to your company’s ability to gain a strong competitive position.

So how do you position your product?

First, you need to select the target market that will be most receptive to your product’s positioning. Segmentation decisions are instrumental in developing your company’s product positioning strategy.

Knowing your target market allows you to effectively position your product to meet the needs of that specific market. With this in mind, you are then able to develop and implement more cost-effective and efficient marketing strategies.

Once you have determined your target market and their needs, you need to formulate a positioning strategy that will appeal to the targeted demographic. You must decide how you want to position your product in the minds of your targeted customers.

A solid understanding of your market and your competitors will assist in being better able to position your product. Comparing your product’s features to that of your competitors and identifying your unique selling points is a good way to determine what differentiates your product.

Revision of your positioning should be an on-going process to help refine your position according to changes in the market. Environmental changes or shifting consumer preferences often force firms to rethink their positioning strategy.

How do you communicate your product positioning?

There are a host of resources available to assist you in communicating your positioning statement to your target market.

Social media is an important modern day marketing channel that, if utilised correctly, can give a company valuable, market-specific exposure and vital product related feedback. A social media presence backed by a solid following creates an environment for open discussion on your product.

There are many innovative marketing tools available today to assist companies in achieving their positioning strategies. Different tools will suit different products, but the key to success is choosing the right mix to match your product and the goals of your company.

So, if it has been a while since you last thought about your product’s positioning, now would be the time to do so.

The post Product Positioning: Stand Out From the Crowd appeared first on Reload Consulting.