Focus On These 5 Elements Of Branding To Boost Your Business’s Image
Branding is one of the most indispensable tools to build a business. It is what shapes the narrative surrounding your company, thus affecting everything in your business, from your sales and revenue to the public perception of your work. After all, surveys show that 46% of consumers are more likely to stick to brands that they can trust. As such, the importance of keeping a positive brand cannot be understated.
There are several factors that should be considered when it comes to building a positive brand. While key identifiers of your business, such as your logo and product packaging, are important in making your brand stand out, branding goes far beyond design. Here, we will look at important branding elements that you need to focus on to make a good impression on your clients and help you retain them as well.
Research Builds Relevance
As with anything, preparedness is one of the roots of success, and one of the key ways to prepare your business for success is to make sure that you do your research. It’s easy to see how research helps a business succeed. After all, by ensuring that your brand is data-driven, you are more likely to build credibility and understand the patterns of the market your business is in. More importantly, research allows you to build a customer-centric brand.
Studies have shown that customer-centric businesses are 60% more profitable than those that are profit-centric. Of course, you cannot just have a customer-centric business without understanding your customers, and the first step in doing so is to study their behavior. This means researching their preferences and buying patterns. By fully understanding your target market, you build a brand that can easily engage with your customers, making your business relevant to them.
So how do you go about in conducting thorough market research? There are several survey methods that you can use, depending on what you currently need. However, studies show that traditional methods still work best, with in-person surveys having the fastest and most accurate response rates at 90%. Keep in mind though that they can be costly and time-consuming. Conducting a focus group discussion (FGD) is also an option, though experts say that FGDs yield more subjective data. Regardless of the type of research that you do, the most important thing to remember is to regularly conduct it to make sure that the data you use for your business is always up-to-date.
Dress to Impress
The phrase “don’t judge a book by its cover” never works when it comes to business. After all, it only takes 7 seconds to make a first impression. Within this very short period of time, people will start making their assumptions, and for your business, these 7 seconds can make or break your chance in establishing a connection between you and your potential business partners and clients. Thus, one key way to ensure that you make a good impression is to make sure that your potential business partners and clients immediately like what they see.
For potential business partners, dressing to impress means just that – dress in a professional manner. Avoid looking over the top, but also make sure that you do not look sloppy, as this can suggest that you are unorganized. It is best to use neutral tones for business meetings. Also, around 70% of communication occurs through non-verbal cues. As such, make sure that you have good posture, look at the person you are speaking to, and maintain proper business etiquette.
Meanwhile, when it comes to potential clients, dressing to impress does not only mean that you look presentable, but that your store-front or office is clean and inviting. This means keeping your entire office organized. As for cleaning, you can use automated materials like self-cleaning glass for your windows or robot vacuums for your floors; however, it is still best to hire professionals to ensure thorough cleaning. The cleanliness of your workspace cannot be understated, especially since 92% of customers look at an establishment’s cleanliness when deciding if they will become repeat customers.
Employees as Your Brand’s Personality
One of the biggest promoters of your brand comes from within – your employees. Getting your employees to talk about your brand is an organic way to promote your business, and keeping your employees engaged by providing them with a good working environment and culture is the way to go. Experts say that employees who are engaged are likely to spread positive thoughts around your brand — be it through word of mouth or social media.
One way that your employees affect your brand is that they provide an unfiltered view of your company. A survey by Glassdoor shows that employees are three times more credible than a company’s CEO when it comes to the working conditions of a company. There is also a clear link between a company’s revenue and employee experience seeing as the stocks of companies included in Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For rose 14% per year from 1998 to 2005.
As mentioned earlier, keeping your employees engaged is key to make sure that they are satisfied. According to studies, the best way to keep employees engaged is to make sure that they understand their role in the organization. Another important way of keeping your employees engaged is to make sure that they are recognized for their contributions to your company. A good employee recognition program can increase employee retention by 51%; similarly, 66% of HR managers also agree that employee recognition helps in creating a strong brand.
Digital Accessibility is Key
While employees help in boosting your brand internally, you can create positive first impressions externally by making sure that your business is accessible to your potential clients. One way to do this is to create a strong digital presence. A Salesforce survey found that 85% of consumers conduct research before making any purchase online. Websites are used 74% of the time when customers conduct their research. As such, your first step in creating a strong digital presence is to build an easy-to-use website.
According to experts, a good website begins with a good name. Make sure that your domain name is easy to remember. It should be short and easy to spell so it creates a good impression for usability and for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes. As well, make sure that your website has an interesting and navigable interface by having a clear site map. Use images that are optimized for fast loading as this will also boost your ranking on search engines like Google. Finally, regularly publish quality content and use SEO best practices to your advantage.
Your digital presence, of course, does not end with your website. It is also important to use social media sites to your business’s advantage. Social media is a good way to increase brand awareness. For example, 83% of social media users say that they discover new brands through the platform. Promoting your brand through social media is also a good way to generate traffic to your website by including its link to your social media profiles.
Transparency Builds Trust
Arguably, one of the most difficult means to promote your brand is through transparency. What exactly is transparency? Simply put, transparency means maintaining open lines of communication between your business and all its stakeholders, including your business partners, employees, and customers. However, this can be challenging, especially since it is quite tempting to simply present your business as a perfect entity. However, that is unrealistic, and attempting to do that will most likely hurt your business in the long run.
On the other hand, being transparent has significant benefits when it comes to boosting your brand. For example, 89% of consumers said that a business can regain their trust when it takes accountability for a mistake and is clear about the steps that it takes to fix the issue. As well, 85% of consumers are more likely to stick with such brands during a crisis.
The first step when it comes to transparency is to make sure that your business is honest in its communications. This means providing accurate information to your stakeholders. You can also take advantage of your social media pages to communicate with your customers, as studies show that 81% of customers believe that social media has increased accountability among businesses. Another way to show transparency is by promoting honest feedback. Open your business for authentic client reviews and make sure that you develop proper responses, especially to those who are critical to your business.
As they say, “Rome was not built in a day.” All good things take time, and the same goes for building a positive brand. It takes time, funding, and effort on your part as a business owner to ensure that all aspects of your business truly represent your vision for your brand. However, as people also say, hard work pays off. By patiently following these steps, you are likely to reap the benefits of having a brand that immediately attracts clients and makes sure that they stay with you for the long haul.
Pranab Bhandari is an Editor of the Financial Blog “Financebuzz”. Apart from writing informative financial articles for his blog, he is a regular contributor to many national and international publications namely Tweak Your Biz, Growth Rocks ETC.
