Brand Building: Develop Your Hype To Boost Your Profits

Your brand is the image that the customer forms about you. You might have done everything correct to build a great brand, but have you worked on the TRUST factor?

Have you built the required positive hype, the excitement around your service?

Hype can be created through targeted marketing and advertising campaigns, however, word-of-mouth campaigns still play a major part.

How would you create the hype around your brand?

Your first impression is REALLY your last impression

Imagine yourself looking at newspaper advertisements of ten food joints. Which one appeals to you the most? The probable answer would be the one that displays a nice, colorful palette and seems to be aesthetically better than the others. Now, you are given some literature that you could read and decide on the food joint of your choice. Would your choice change? The probable answer here would be ‘no’. This is termed as the ‘Halo effect’. You don’t like being wrong, so you substantiate your initial decision only looking at the positives and ignoring the negatives.

Your potential customers need to ‘see’ your brand. They need to ‘feel’ your brand. Think about the first impression that you are creating!

Care about customer sentiment

Can your brand deliver what it promises? Do you portray what your customer wants to see or is your brand focused on your perception only? We can take the example of a drug store here. Would you choose the one that displays all medicines placed properly in racks and a manager who speaks like the IVR? Or would you go with the one that has a professional looking staff talking to you about your needs, helping you find your medicine and ensuring that the billing process is smooth and you are comfortable?

Define your brands sentiments

And then, look at methods to portray these. Think about fonts, colors, logos and blend it all together. Get a vision statement or a tagline that talks about your brand and the sentiment associated with it. LG says ‘Life’s Good’ because they want you to believe that they are creating a good life experience for you.

Create the smoke and mirror effect

As a customer, would you want to do business with a small ten people setup or a large hundred people organization? Make your brand stand out! Make it look larger than what it really is! Mention the extensive knowledge that your staff has – let it be out there on your website!

Display your values in short three to four sentences, and let the key words do the talking. Make it look large!

Focus on the messaging

Keep your messaging short and concise. Avoid the use of technical jargons and make it simple. Bring your brand to life through your tagline. Your customers should be able to experience your product through your tagline. You hear ‘Elegance is an attitude’, and you want to experience that attitude, you want to experience Longines! That is the power of a tagline!

Highlight the benefits

Make sure you are focusing on highlighting the benefits of your business and your customers can see them right upfront on your websites, in your newspaper advertisements etc. If you get this one right, you will be way ahead of your competition and your customers will know why they should choose you.

Re-brand yourself, if needed

A few years down the line, your brand might just not be a true perception of who you are! You might scale up or your competition might just get tougher. It is now time to re-brand yourself! Do not hesitate to ask yourself the same questions again.

Let them ‘see’ you

Now that you have completed the necessary effort in creating your brand, make it visible wherever you can, depending on your budget. Use media advertising, coupons, mailers, social media – wherever you feel you can get your customers talking about it.

Create a sense of urgency

This will encourage customers to act quickly. When you launch a limited period offer or an early bird discount, chances are that you will have more customers knocking your doors.

Use social media to your advantage

Social media can offer word of mouth advertisement in a faster and cost effective manner, use it to your advantage. Do focus on your online brand here.

Is your online presence visible? There are some expensive techniques to pump up your sales through online marketing; some of these include SEO (Search Engine Optimization), direct mail campaigns and pay per click advertising. Some basic strategies that can help you create your online presence without a big budget are:

• Get your website: Since your website is the face of your business, getting it right becomes imperative. Think about how you can enhance your business through your website. Have you built it with SEO practices in mind? Does it have customer testimonials talking about the great service they received? Have you provided links to any recent press reports that talk about your brand? Have you displayed your social following status? Does it boast about the recognitions your company has received and establishes you as an expert in the domain?

• You need a blog too: Your blog can compliment your online branding endeavors. It is a platform where your customers can engage with you, hear your thoughts, share their views, and provide real feedback.

• Use of word of mouth initiatives: Create something that goes viral, a seminar that people want to attend, a freebie associated with your product, an early bird campaign. The idea is to increase the traffic on your site. Use Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest etc. to generate the traffic.

Building your reputation through simple strategies can enhance your sales. All you should do is pretend to be a customer and think if you would use YOUR company’s services or your competitors?

Are you building your brand?