Using Your Brand In All the Right Places

Branding is one of the key underlying concepts behind the success of many businesses both huge and small. You know Coca Cola by it’s distinctive red color, because of the tagline “It’s the real thing,” and behind the old-fashioned Santa they have used on many marketing pieces for dozens of years. This is Coke’s branding. Let’s look at what you ought to consider for your own branding and then to decide whether you are using your branding in enough places.

The Key Elements Behind Great Branding

Branding is a strategy that can give you an edge in these highly competitive times. Your brand tells people who you’re, what you do, how you do it, and what concepts drives your business. Think of Nike’s easy swish logo and the words “Just do it!” Your brand, like theirs, is a promise to your customer about what they can anticipate from you, so it’s important you touch on the key elements when you create your brand.

1. Have you developed a Mission Statement for your company? It can really stretch you out and refine your concepts down to get your grandiose plans and schemes into one paragraph. Unless you can communicate these concepts to your graphic designer, she can’t create an appearance for them.

2. Can you succinctly describe the features and benefits your clients will be receiving from your products and services? Again, a designer cannot create some graphical element about these benefits unless you can articulate them.

3. Have you surveyed your many (or few) clients to get their appraisal of your products and services? They have the ability to provide many keen insights into what your company is making or doing, and they have the ability to provide many things they wish you would do that would serve them superior more specifically. Then, these additional benefits can be explained to your graphic designer to be incorporated into your brand.

4. Have you decided which one or two qualities your company will stand for? Is it fast service? Is it going beyond what is expected? Is it integrity? What’s it? don’t you want your branding to represent this? Would not you like all of your clients to know this about you via your branding?

Where To Use Your Branding

Once your graphic designer creates a branding look for you, and once you begin to use the branding in many of your marketing pieces, let’s look at some examples of where this branding can then be used.

1. Is your logo just everywhere? Is it on your website, your business cards, your brochures, your PowerPoint template, your newsletter, your employment ads? Is it on the license plate holders of all your employees? Is it on the van your folks use for car pooling? Is there a flag in front of your locations with your logo on it? Do you’ve a ring made from it? A lapel pin? Name tags for your employees? Wouldn’t it be an interesting project for your Marketing Manager to stroll through your facility and discover places where your logo could be instituted?

2. Is your branding reflected in the manner in which your employees answer the phone? Is there a standardized email signature each employee should use? Does your sales force visibly represent your brand in some way, such as the gold jackets Century 21 realtors wear?

3. Have you decided your brand will be formal, snazzy, informal, plain? Does your letterhead and all written communication from your company reflect this decision? Can you have a contest inside the company for your employees giving them a voice in how they’d like to be represented through the communication factor of your branding? I am confident they have the ability to come up with dozens of superb ideas and you’d get their purchase-in.

4. Are you really delivering on the standards behind your brand? No one knows this superior than your clients. Have you surveyed them asking them for their feedback? Do they recognize your branding as real and true, or as needs-improvement? It is crucial that you know what your clients consider you and your branding, your service, and your products.

You can use branding to place you head and shoulders above your competition. Using your branding in graphic design, brochures, book covers, and your all important logo is crucial to accomplish. Branding will help you set high standards and achieve them. Branding states you are consistent and a high performer - that you deliver what you promise. When you produce your marketing pieces, all the elements of your visual identity contribute to your branding process and, ultimately, on your success.

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