There has been a no-nonsense, plain-as-day approach to advertising that applies to any and every brand across our wide, brown marketing land. No matter what your business, size or budget, from Bruce’s Corner Store to BHP, find your right message, stick to it and drill it, drill it, drill it, until the cows come home.
Now, advertising is just one aspect of your Brand but the same rule applies when it comes to the value, impact and ongoing benefit of Brand Continuity.
Your ads are your key messaging, however your brand’s strength is in its consistent styling, colours, images, typeface, slogan and experience being the same for every customer, every time they see it and anywhere it’s produced. Printed, photographed, videoed. Instore, on vehicles, uniforms, business cards and packaging.
A Consistent Brand is Cri-ti-cal.
You may have a fabulous business card. They see it and they like it. Great! But then they drive past your store or flick past your newspaper ad and don’t see the same style, colours, typography or image, there’s no connection, no recall, no value because no continuity.
Brand inconsistency confuses the viewer, loses familiarity, reputation and, importantly, trust. Worse still, you’ll be forgotten.
Double Barrel Brand Continuity.
Where does Brand Continuity begin? With a Brand Style Guide. Working with an experienced and energised Designer, every aspect of your company’s brand elements gets the design love. Corporate colour palettes, chosen fonts, styled copywriting and strategic brand messaging are compiled into a smartly ‘Branded’ document.
Armed with that, not only are your team fully aware of the company brand and how to consistently reproduce it, your suppliers, including printers, marketers and media are as well.
Ultimately, that all translates into a much more impactful and positive brand connections with your potential customers. Then, like all the major retail, bank and fast food brands, your Brand’s continuity moves them into the brand recall and brand choice (you) phase much faster.
Brand Touchpoints: Touchy, Feely.
Get your products and services and your target market, front and centre! Gladly, all the smart businesses today totally get that and have had a good, solid crack across traditional channels like television, radio, print, transit, billboards and trade shows.
On the scarier flipside, 65% of SME operators still aren’t getting social media. A more productive tool is in the shed, ready and waiting to help your brand reach, touch, grab and hang onto way more customers out there in the marketplace.
Seeing your brand, visiting your website, received your email, seen and read your content, and even spotted your social media and snuck a peak at your brand profile. All well and good, but how many points of contact with Brand You do you need to ka-ching?
It’s apples for apples, but industry sources tell us, the average Aussie business will receive 15 to 20 brand touch points with their audience for your brand and their minds, click.
Daunting? Here’s why. If you were in business in 2013-14, you only needed 4 to 6 brand touch points to make your phone or store door-bell ring.
Why the big change in such a small timeframe? In short, social media. It’s constantly changing, and, with that, marketing strategies on social are evolving with it. And, six months is all it can take.
So, if you haven’t already, get on and get your head around social media now. No matter what’s happening, that’s where customers are… and they’re always looking!
Cookies and Pixels and building your Brandness!
Cookies are tasty little guys but in a digital retargeting way. Too keep it deliciously simple, cookies help your website not only register their visit to you website, they also grab and store basic data that lets you and your server retarget them with your Brand Messaging.
The Facebook Pixel does a similar job, cultivating potential customers that visit your Facebook page or engage with your Facebook content and who have touched your Brand.
And, to add another barrel to your social media, print, direct and other Brand touchpoints, running regular, targeted, informative and incentivised email campaigns is the ideal way to complete the brand & business building. Remember your database is one of your most valuable brand assets. And, after all, 80% of regular business comes from 20% of your clients.