Do you want your brand to be recognized and desired by consumers? Would you like people to identify with what you offer and like your brand so much that they advocate for you on social media? Then you should invest in branding.
Branding is the strategy for managing a brand so that consumers identify with it and establish strong bonds. The ideal of any branding strategy is for the relationship with consumers to be more than merely commercial; it’s about transforming the brand into an inspiration , a way of life for them.
But to get there, the brand must be built on a day-to-day basis, in consumers’ experiences at every point of contact with the company. This means it’s not enough to create a name and a symbol that identifies your business; branding goes beyond that; it’s an experience .
So, how do you create a branding strategy and achieve effective results? In this post, we present the key steps to strengthen your brand in the minds and hearts of consumers.
Create your brand’s personality
If your brand were a person, what would it be like? Start your branding strategy with that question.
The goal is to transform your brand into a person consumers can relate to. After all, it’s much more meaningful to identify with someone who shares a similar personality, feelings, emotions, and values to your own than with something cold and lifeless.
In this sense, to define a personality it is necessary to think about questions like these:
- What are the main america phone number list characteristics of your brand? Is it bold, serious, sensitive, conscious?
- What values guide your brand: responsibility, freedom, transparency?
- What is your tone of voice: relaxed, formal, technical?
By answering these questions you build the brand’s personality, as if it were a person.
The role of the brand persona in brand building
Many brands are accustomed to using the brand persona approach. Do you know what it’s all about?
It is the creation of a fictional character that represents the brand’s personality and describes how that person communicates, what they believe in, their values, interests, challenges, and mission in the world.
In some cases, the brand persona is transformed into a real character. This is the case of Tony the Tiger from Zucaritas, an athletic and charismatic character who interacts with consumers and conveys the brand’s personality. Thus, branding is personified.
Define your brand’s purpose
Why does your brand exist? How does it contribute to a better world? What value does it offer to consumers? And if it ceased to exist tomorrow, what would it mean to people? These questions will help you define your brand’s purpose, one of the pillars of branding.
We’re not talking about price or this is a whole topic on its your product’s features here, like the size of a TV or the technology of a computer. Defining a purpose is very different from talking about functional attributes; it’s about the reason for your company’s existence .
For example, a travel agency doesn’t exist simply to sell vacation packages—it exists to provide leisure and fun. A cloud storage service doesn’t just provide a place to store files—it offers security and organization.
These are some examples of types of companies that can focus on their core business to explain how they contribute to improving the world and people’s lives.
The focus of communication should be the “why”
When defining a purpose, you should focus on the “why” of your brand, not the “what.”
This is an important shift in perspective for consumer communication, especially when you understand that purchases aren’t rational . Before even looking at a product’s price or features, there are emotional factors that influence a purchase decision—without people even realizing it.
A consumer may think they’re buying a smartphone because it has a better camera or more memory than another. However, ultimately, the decision is based on what the brand represents to them or what emotions it evokes.
And yet, most companies’ communications focus on explaining what they do and how they’re different or better than others. The result is that consumers aren’t attracted, don’t form a bond, and end up moving from one competitor to another.
For this reason, your communication should focus less on the features of your products or the qualities of the company (the “what”) and more on the reason why it exists (the “why”). This way, you can convey your purpose and truly connect with the consumer. And that becomes a differentiator.
Evidence of branding in marketing actions
Personality, purpose, values: all of these are intangible. You can define that your brand believes in a more just world and that it’s based on values like freedom and trust, for example, but you have to make it tangible so the consumer understands it.
Branding needs to be evident at every point of contact with the consumer. This is where visual identity comes into play , as it represents the first point of contact with the brand and therefore needs to convey its essence. But branding should also be reflected in digital marketing, advertising, social media posts, website chat, product delivery, and more.
All of these moments make up the egypt data consumer’s experience and perception of brand value . Therefore, they must consistently and coherently convey what was built through branding regarding personality and purpose.
This is what Dove does, for example. You’ll never see Dove on social media or in TV ads claiming to simply sell soap. With strong branding, Dove has defined its purpose as empowering women’s true beauty. And this is evident in all its marketing actions, such as its website and social media, which use photos of women as they really are.