Stand out from the crowd

Branding is the process of physically and emotionally differentiating your company from its competitors. This is achieved by understanding your company's position within a specific market and consistently showing up the same way every time you interact with a potential customer. Having the same visual appearance, tone, and message with potential clients you begin to build trust with them. Staying true to your company's personality deepens that trust and establishes loyalty amongst your brand.

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Branding has endless benefits when trying to standout from the competition. A few examples would be:

• Well-crafted brand creates a positive emotional association with your product or company making making it more recognizable in the minds of consumers.
• Creating a unique brand makes it easier to visually identify and remember your product or company, helping you stand out in a crowded market.
• Strong established brand personality builds trust and loyalty with your customers. This compounds your marketing efforts and can ensure a steady stream of revenue for your business.
• Well-executed branding effort elevates your products or services perceived quality and value, leading to higher prices and increased profitability.

In order to develop a strong brand, you need to clearly define the 4-key pillars to your brand strategy. This includes:

• Brand Personality
• Brand Identity
• Brand Message
• Brand Positioning

While you can improve one without the other, in order to develop a strong brand that maximizes its potential and has a strong foundation to build upon all 4 elements are vital.

A brand style guide is a governance document that clearly establishes the look and feel of a brand and outlines the rules when using an company's visual elements. Think of it as a reference guide whenever you're using company resources to generate internal or external communications. Additionally, it is a great way to establish rules when another company uses your logo or marketing materials in the promotion of their services. For example, an air conditioner manufacturer provides a brand style guide to an HVAC installation company to be able to use the manufacture's branding on their website. This ensures all communications have the same look and feel to maintain consistency.

In order to effectively measure the success of your branding efforts base-line values for key metrics should be established prior to the beginning of the project. As your branding efforts get underway and progress, you'll utilize the base-line values to measure the impact your branding efforts have made. Some examples of different metrics you can track are:

• Customer Loyalty
• Brand awareness
• Sales, repeat sales, or $/transaction
• Number of new customer acquired based on referrals from current customers.