When you can articulate the difference between you and your competitors and push your superiority to the customers, you are successfully standing out as a brand. Branding strategy requires unique value propositions. It requires you to compete on unique attributes still unserved by your competitors. However, there’s a basic blueprint that every brand relies on. Research any of the big guns out there and their disruptive branding strategy will be based on some basic tactics.
Today, we will slide down through 5 basic tactics to help marketing teams grow their brand identities.
1. Provide Value to Your Audience (show them what you can do)
The most significant and time-honored strategy is to provide value to your old, current, and even future potential customers. You already ooze class from design to presentation to packaging, but it means nothing without offering value to the customer. Start loyalty programs, offer rewards to your old customers with time, answer them on phone as well as on social media, and think more about them than eating on profits.
Most of the big brands don’t flaunt the flexibility to alter their high price tags. Your brand can stand out by approaching people with low price tags and dedicated customer service. Once people start flocking in more and you have an eminent name in the market, it’s easy to get desired prices for the quality.
Another way is through product innovation. When they say “killer application”, it means an innovative idea loved by everyone. For a brand, it comes from social listening. Customers who follow you can provide valuable feedback on your existing products. You can utilize it to offer custom products with a tagline such as: “On the high customer demand”.
2. Be Original
It’s a lose-lose situation when a million brands of a similar product as yours are already lying around the digital space (and consumers are pretty smart these days!).
Being distinctive can attract a bigger mob and if you’re original, you already stand out as a brand. For instance, a bottle of coca cola will differ than every other soda of every other manufacturer. They did not ask for a billion dollar company when they started but here we have a multi-national brand serving nations around the globe just because of their originality.
You do not have to be original just in your product. The visual data, the content, every area of your customer service and marketing should emit originality. Even an original product photograph angle can win you a potential customer.
3. Use User Generated Content (Leverage Testimonials)
Would you trust a random guy bragging about his expertise or instead a guy recommended by a number of different people?
Let the testimonials talk for you- Publish case studies of your customer handling and record the customer's voice. There is no better strategy than leveraging user-generated data. A brand stands out with long, genuine testimonials.
While we have every other, website jotted with crisper testimonials, you can go for long case studies, videos of customer experiences, and even publish their appreciation emails/ personal messages on social media. That is how many creative marketers createbrands out of small businesses.
You should solicit customer opinions through social listening. Positive endorsements deserve a ‘Thank You’ message. To make it more genuine, locate the customer and ask for the permission to use their photograph and city name in your testimonial section.
4. Contribute To A Cause
It is important to win over the socially-conscious shoppers in this millennial era and what better way than contributing to a cause. Sincere intentions towards a cause can assist you to achieve a stand-out brand name.
A good contribution is a social responsibility of any business. If we go down to the benefits, well, it encourages shoppers to even switch their brand.
It is important to win over the socially-conscious shoppers in this millennial era and what better way than contributing to a cause. Sincere intentions towards a cause can assist you to achieve a stand-out brand name. A good contribution is a social responsibility of any business. If we go down to the benefits, well, it encourages shoppers to even switch their brand.
Moreover, it improves your corporate reputation, helps you conduct a positive social media communication, helps make more heart-warming customer relation, and most importantly it helps you cut through the noise to make your brand stand out.
While some brands have authentic causes, some turn it into a marketing strategy. And that's what a shopper or client perceives first hand. To avoid this common pitfall, display the contribution as a major part of your business success. Shoppers respond positively when they discover your initiative in assisting your profit charts.
5.) Use Strong Visuals
Spotify is the pioneer of gradient colors. Despite being a music streaming platform, the brand largely utilized the use of album arts. Users fell in love with their strong visuals and Spotify is an app standing tall.
Strong visuals are included in marketing packages of several market giants. Graphic innovation has been a key in emails, websites, and marketing campaigns. Utilize high-quality videos, images to retain customers but first understand your audience. The visuals are not for you, but for the shoppers.
There are certain elements you can work on to address visual branding.
Logo: It is not as easy as opening a site and inserting a name into it. Yeah, there are numerous websites offering you a similar service at a mere price. But do you want to be like everyone else, or stand out? Go through it repeatedly. Alter it until it appeals to you as a customer. The Tailor Brands logo maker provides a full solution for the logo design and branding requirements of any small business.
A consistent color palette in everything: Follow a theme. It is important that a brand follows a theme and use it in relief with all their product images (don’t you think of coca cola, when we talk about a brand with “red”).
Font choice: Font speak volumes about your business type. For instance, a serious business will never include Comic Sans in their product descriptions, but light-hearted and fun businesses might want to portray themselves with it. Use an expert on graphics and ask your mentors, customers about the end-results.
Image choice: Don’t confuse your audience. There are brands pushing irrelevant imagery on their website. Your images should address the audience as well as reflect your brand.
Conclusion
Whether you are a recent startup or an old player, making and maintaining a brand name requires you to stand out from the ever-growing crowd. A previously running business can initiate a rebranding campaign while startups can adjust to a brand-standard campaign execution.
WRITTEN BY
Brand Voices