Your brand is not just your logo.
Rather, it’s the entire story your business or nonprofit tells to each segment of your target audience at every touchpoint.
More than ever before, humans are bombarded with messaging from brands every second of the day. In fact, the average human has to make 35,000 decisions a day. The way the brain deals with this is by making 90% of those decisions in auto-drive (Dual Process Theory).
That’s where effective branding comes into play. A quality brand allows you to help your consumer make decisions more easily and separates you from your competition. If they are having to work every time they decide to engage with your organization, you are not going to win their business that often.
So, what does it look like to have a good brand and brand strategy that effectively tells your story and attracts your target audience?
To start, your brand must have three characteristics. It must be memorable, portable and consistent.
Your brand must be memorable.
When you think of brands, your mind instantly goes to those that you are familiar with. Maybe it’s Nike, McDonalds, LeBron James or your favorite clothing line. The reason you do that is because they are memorable in your life.
Though it seems silly, brands are just as memorable in our lives as the landmarks that we drive by on our way to and from work. Becoming memorable in your industry can be difficult, and it often takes a lot of repetition in the marketplace to do so.
Pro tip: Finding a consistent message and driving it home will allow you to stand out in the eyes of your target audience and become a mainstay in their lives.
Your brand must be portable.
It’s wonderful that your target audience can remember your brand, but it’s another thing for them to be advocates for your organization.
If an individual can put your brand in their pocket, walk across the street and explain it to someone else in their network, that’s where you really start to see growth occur.
Without this portability, the brand won’t transfer correctly from person to person. This is where brand confusion comes into the picture the most because when we are incorrectly represented in public, it hurts our brand and our cause.
Pro tip: Make sure you have bite-sized explanations of what you do, such as a one-liner, that will allow your audience to quickly understand what you do and who you do it for. This will make it easier for them to spread the message about your brand in the correct way.
Your brand must be consistent.
The final aspect of your brand strategy is that your brand must have a consistent tone to it. If you can’t tie your brand together by being consistent, you will lose. This means that the messaging, as well the look and feel of your brand, must have consistency from platform to platform.
If a person goes from your website to your email to social media, they must be able to pick up that this is your brand. If your end user can’t, we run the risk of hoping that your target audience will recognize your brand in the wild. More likely than not, they won’t. And your brand will fade into the noise that is the 2021 marketplace.
Pro tip: One of the best ways to pull off this feat is to make sure that you identify what problem you are trying to solve, the solutions that you bring to the table and the results that you desire.
If you are struggling to find brand consistency or brand strategy, set up a time to talk with one of Firespring’s branding strategists.