branding strategyDo your customers recognize your company logo? Do they remember your tagline? Do they associate a positive image with your organization? If yes, then your branding strategy must be on point. However, if not, then don’t worry – we are here to help. Creating a branding strategy is essential for any business to succeed. Your company’s brand means everything – it creates a first impression and maintains a reputation for whenever people hear, see, or interact with it. Branding is what makes you stand out against the crowd. Let’s get started on how to set yourself apart from competitors!

Defining Brand Objectives

Defining your brand objectives is the first step. Setting these objectives help guide expectations and improve your current branding strategy. What are your goals for the company? What is it that you are trying to achieve? Are you seeking to boost awareness? Increase sales? Set these goals for your company, establish your target audience, and understand what they are looking for. Branding all comes down to the customers. Therefore, you need to listen to their specific needs and figure out a way to engage with them and create brand loyalty.

Focus Groups

A great way to conduct your market research is through the use of focus group testing. Focus groups consist of around 8-10 people and the idea is to get people to share their honest opinions and feelings towards your company brand. However, make sure that the focus group facilitator demonstrates formalization to avoid skewed results. Basically, do not have the CEO of the company or anyone who could possibly influence thoughts or create bias facilitate the focus group to ensure that you are receiving the most honest responses and collecting the research that you need to move forward. Ask participants questions like, “What do you think about our logo?”, “What do you associate our brand with?”, or “How can we better our company?”. Find out exactly what your target audience is looking for and use this information to create ways on how to improve.

Re-building Your Brand

After you conduct the focus group and analyze the results, take this new-found information to redefine your brand and create an improved branding strategy. Use the collected responses on your brand, logo, tagline, reputation, etc. to develop your unique value proposition. This is the value that you bring to the market and what sets you apart from the competition.

For example, Amazon has branded themselves so well that almost everyone either has used their services or knows someone who has used their services. They did some research, found out that people want a convenient and fast way of purchasing a large variety of products, and fulfilled those needs. In doing so, they managed to create a memorable, reliable brand that customers trust. Let’s face it – your brand comes down to people’s perceptions of your products, services, etc. Therefore, it is integral to create a way to strategically position your brand to attract the customers you want, in addition to fulfilling their specific needs.

Find your brand identity and what it is that makes your company unique. Take those findings and establish a logo, tagline, reputation, and overall brand that reflects that. Discover your company voice and be sure to stay consistent across all platforms to keep a unified brand message. By establishing a strong brand strategy, your company is sure to create brand loyal customers, a positive brand image, and overall brand awareness.

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About S.J.Hemley Marketing
S.J.Hemley Marketing is a marketing and sales consulting firm focused on driving tangible results for professional services firms. Brand matters, but not without ROI. With over 20 years of sales and marketing experience within staffing and recruiting, we have helped to drive successful branding, sales training, lead generation activities as well as defining marketing strategy for top organizations.