So you want to learn how to brand your business so you can stand out from your competitors?
Though I have written numerous blog posts about branding in the past, today I want to focus on how you can really brand your business and get your brand stand out from your competitors.
Anyone can have a color palette and a nice logo, it’s how your brand differentiates from others that is key. Branding your business or yourself isn’t hard to do if you know what steps to take.
Develop A Brand Voice: Your brand voice is how you speak to your customers through social media and other channels of communication. When you brand your business, discovering an appropriate brand voice is important in order to connect with your customers on a deeper level.
Brand Your Business With A Story: Creating a great brand starts with a story. I’ll let you in on something – I already know what the best thing about your story is. And before you even craft your story, you’ve already got an advantage. The best thing about your story, is that it’s unique and completely different than anybody else’s.
In order to brand your business effectively, you need to convey that awesome story, however, is a lot harder, because while you may think it’s great, you’ll want to convince your customers and potential customers that it is great.
Now, when you’ve got your story laid out, what exactly do you do with it? Well for me, I like to keep it on hand and sprinkle pieces of it in my brand.
A part of my story is how I live in Canada for 4 months of the year and Europe for the other 8 months. I’ve got that right in my Instagram bio and have it mentioned on my homepage and my about page.
I always try to incorporate my story here and there, which brings me to my next point.
Repetition, Repetition, Repetition: Have you heard of the Rule of 7? The Marketing Rule of 7 states that a prospect needs to see or hear your advertisements a minimum of 7 times before they will take some form of action. The number 7 isn’t set in stone, but it is important to remember that people will need to see you over and over to remember you. We, as consumers, are constantly bombarded with product placements and advertisements. If you want to be remembered, be repetitive.
Repetition is very important when trying to make your brand stand out from the competition. Repetition can be something such as showing your ads to the same subset several times, or something more subtle like keeping a consistent theme among your Instagram images.
Let me tell you a story about one of my first Facebook campaigns. I was very excited because I had planned this entire campaign out – I had researched my market, nailed my copy, had some professional images done up and invested my entire month’s advertising budget towards this one ad.
I knew I was putting all my eggs in one basket, but I also felt incredibly confident that I would generate a ton of new leads with this campaign.
I launched the campaign and after a week knew something wasn’t right.
My leads were coming in slower than molasses. People weren’t clicking on the ad, and if they were, they weren’t entering their email address.
I sat down and thought about what could possibly be wrong. I had two ads up, in order to A/B test the two of them and could see they were both doing poorly. I made tweaks here and there, but nothing was working. Finally, I cut the campaign short because I figured out what my problem was.
I was targeting a cold audience! These people had never seen my business or my brand before, and suddenly my ads were showing up in their very personal Facebook page feed, and I was asking them for their email address.
Nobody knew who I was and because of this, my campaign failed miserably (but was still a great lesson to be learned).
Give Your Brand A Personality: Everyone is too careful – because nobody wants to accidentally offend someone and overstep any boundaries. So rather than interject too much personality into their brands, people just want to play it safe and hide behind our businesses to avoid showing who we are.
And nothing is wrong with playing it safe and being respectful, but find something that makes your brand unique and shout it from the rooftops, because if you aren’t going to do it your competitors will and you will see them reap the rewards.
You are just as incredible as your business is, so don’t feel the need to hide behind it. People love to see a personal touch to your brand!
Be Real And Honest: I’m a sucker for a beautiful photo but I also know what went into crafting that exquisite image. That’s because I’m also behind the scenes and am creating images that go onto Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and my website.
But your customer’s don’t always know what’s real and what’s not, so instead of posting photo after photo that are carefully crafted, try to make sure you remain real and authentic to your followers and customers. The word authentic is so overused but so important to remember.
If you brand your business based upon authenticity, your customers will be able to see that which will create some serious loyalty.
Focus On The Experience: Business that are properly branded (and who outshine their competition) don’t just deliver a product, they deliver an experience for their customers that just happens to come with a product or service at the end.
An experience doesn’t need to be anything extravagant, but you need to have a well thought-out plan of action to put into place the moment a customer visits your website, sends an email, or takes any form of action in regards to your brand.
Show that you are able to get them results and let them know why you are the best choice for their needs. Including testimonials on your website is a great way to start that brand experience before a potential customer even reaches out to you, because it gives them a look into someone else’s experience and allows them to imagine how their experience working with you will go.
Find Your Niche: Niche it down, folks! I know the temptation to sell to everyone in the world can be there (and wouldn’t it just be easier to make a product that everyone loved so that you could appeal to more people?). But believe me, it’s better to be selling to a small niche market than to be trying to appeal to everyone and their cats.
Take the time to understand your brand and make sue your story is told through it.
With Love | Nikki xo