Welcome to the podcast. Today we’ll be talking about how to brand your company. Branding your company is one of the most important things that you can do as far as establishing a very specific look and feel within your industry. Regardless of whether you’re a manufacturing firm, a technology firm, or any other type of firm, you want to have a unique look and feel–an emotional connection with who you are.
So, for example, if you have prospects out there that know your company name, you want them to have a specific image in their mind of who you are and what you represent. And having an effective brand is one way of helping you achieve that goal. One of the most important strategies that you can put into place when you decide you’re ready to develop a strong brand is to survey and do a little bit of research.
So, for example, you may take a look at some of your competitors, see what they’re doing and see how you stand up to them or how you can differentiate yourself compared to them. Another step that you can take is you can do some industry research and take a pulse of what’s going on in the industry and how you may stack up to that as well.
The third component of this which is very important is you can go out and do some surveys to your existing customer base or potentially your prospects. By conducting surveys, you can ask questions such as: how do they feel about your company, do you have great customer service, what are some of the characteristics that they think of when they think of your company?
And some of the things that you want to try to garner from these questions is the emotional connection that they have with your company. So, for example, let’s say you have just the most amazing customer service, someone calls you or sends an email, and within 15 minutes they get a response.
A good example is taking FedEx when they’re talking about being able to deliver overnight and they’ve established sort of some key messaging and then a look and feel. So, when you start to think about FedEx you know that you will get your delivery within the next day and it’s guaranteed. So, what you’re trying to do as you try to brand your company is, you’re trying to establish some messaging framework and you’re trying to build out a look and a feel that can resonate with prospective customers.
When you go through the surveying process, you’ll be able to figure out what makes you different. How are you different compared to others? How are you different compared to your competitors? And again, once you’re able to get that information, and you can put it into words in a very creative way, come up with some key messaging that will attract attention.
So, I like to use FedEx because they’ve been so successful with their overnight shipping guarantee. And it’s a very easy case study to remember but you actually have an emotional feeling when you think about FedEx. You feel good because you know that if you do business with them, they will get your package to where it needs to get to the next day. And that’s what you want to do with your company.
If we’re trying to break this down into a couple of components the first piece is to do your research, you want to take a look at your industry. What other companies are doing what your competitors are doing? The third piece. Find out how your customers feel about you what they believe your top characteristics and strengths are. And from that you can start to devise some key messaging, you can devise a look and a feel, and you can start to put those two components together in a very systematic clear and concise way.
Which means the third step of that is starting to integrate the graphical elements of your logo, your company letterhead, your trade show materials, your collateral with that key messaging and utilizing the key messaging and the look and the feel in a way that is clear and concise and can get your point across. And it’s very memorable.
So, at the end of the day what you’re trying to do is build an emotional connection with your audience. So, building that emotional connection using a unique selling proposition which could be part of your tagline is one way of achieving that.
In summary here what I would just like to reiterate is to establish a successful and powerful brand, your goal is to number one: do your research. Number two: start to build out a look and a feel, and key messaging, and number three: integrate all of those components into a strategy that you can execute into the marketplace to help you increase sales.
Once that’s done you will be able to accelerate the growth of your company in a very effective way. So, thank you for joining me today for this podcast on branding I hope it helps you and your company and have a great day.
About Millennium Agency
Millennium Agency is a national, award-winning, digital, creative, content/PR, and video marketing firm. With offices in Boston and New Hampshire, our team unites creative branding and data analytics to accelerate our clients’ growth, while combining our clients’ vision with our marketing expertise to increase sales opportunities and drive brand success. From video advertising and web design to social media and PR, Millennium can guide your marketing efforts every step of the way. Contact the professionals at Millennium Agency to learn more!
Linda Fanaras is the President and Founder of Millennium Agency located in Manchester, NH, and Boston. She can be reached at 877-873-7445 or lfanaras@mill.agency.
