Branding

Branding — or how a product interacts with its consumer audience through design, logo, and messaging — is a critical aspect to any business, large or small. You have to find some way to stand out from your competition. It involves more than product development…it involves promoting that product in a way that sticks in the minds of your consumers. Achieving their loyalty is the number one goal here. Think Apple and LL Bean. What do they do that’s so special as to attract a loyal following no matter what their new product is? They don’t have to do too much to get their products to sell. Apple always has lines down the street for days before a new product is launched. Customers do that regardless of what the product is and what value it can give them. They do it because they TRUST that Apple will deliver for them again and again. LL Bean’s customers know they can return anything in any condition, even years later, with no questions asked.

The Art of Pre-Selling

When people faithfully put their trust in you as a company no matter what you make, they will buy from you and only you every time. Your brand = your company. It should be unique only to you. But how do you get to that point? It’s not easy, but it IS achievable. Part of that is to harness the power of pre-selling so your customers want what you’re offering sight unseen. Take a look at the big picture and see the world as your consumers see it: they are constantly bombarded by images on TV, magazines, billboards, radio, and of course the Internet. Staying consistent across all of those communication channels is the only way to capture and retain a strong market position. Branding is the key to all that.

USPs and Inbound Marketing

Unique Selling Propositions, or USPs, are factors presented by the seller as the reasons one product or service is better than a competitor’s, says Entrepreneur. You’ll have to think long and hard about how you can set yourself apart from the competition. Whether you own a retail clothing boutique, hair salon, dog sitting service, or sports equipment store, you have a lot of competition out there. Using your USPs will help convince people to take a chance on you. Inbound marketing strategies are another way to stand out when you use Social Media Marketing, reputation management, PPC, SEO and RWD to your advantage. These are all ways to increase awareness of your brand.

Customer Loyalty

Even the worst company can get a customer to buy something from them once. It’s the truly innovative company that can get customers to come back again and again. Take that Apple example again. Apple isn’t infallible. They’ve had some wins and some losses, with products that don’t always hit the mark. Yet its customers still retain such a fierce loyalty that they’ll stand in line for days just to be the first to own the latest and greatest product. This is an incredible phenomenon: the ability to retain customers no matter what — even through some fails — because they love your brand and wouldn’t go anywhere else for their phones. This is branding at its finest.

Capturing that feeling of fierce loyalty certainly doesn’t happen overnight. Using the right tools and hiring a professional to handle your branding is key. We can help.