Branding Your Company
The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines a brand as a “name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers.
Put more simply, your brand is how you represent – and how people understand – your business as a whole. It’s the way people envision your business values, mission, services, and products. Brand is your company personality.
Identity is another word often used when discussing business brands. Your identity is made up of the visuals and other items associated with your brand. Identity includes your logo and tagline, the color palette in your retail stores, your letterhead, product packaging, signage, and even such items as a sound signature that is always heard in your commercials.
A logo is the unique mark or icon with which your business is identified. Logos are simple and easy to remember, and appropriately related to your business. Even the way a business name is written can be a logo, or a part of the logo. For example, Facebook doesn’t have a particular mark, but the name Facebook is set in a specially modified font with particular colors.
When you are working to build a brand, you begin by answering some big questions about your company. Once you can answer these questions, you’ll have a great starting point for building a solid brand strategy.
• What makes us an incredible company?
• How are we different from our competition?
• What are we really known for?
• Who, precisely, is our target market?
• What does our target market believe about our company?
• What do we want them to think?
• How can we engage the emotions of our audience?
• Where do we want our brand to be 5 years from now?
• What kind of investment of time, effort, and money are we willing to make to power our brand expansion?
• Who do we need on our team in order to help us take our brand where we intend to go?
Answering these questions with your business partners and marketing team will help you begin to understand which marketing tactics you want to employ as you build your brand.
The basic items you will most likely need to put on your task list will be to get a company logo, tagline, and related collateral. If you expect to be doing a lot of video marketing, you’ll probably want a sound signature and short, animated video “bookends” to put at the beginning and ends of your videos. There are online resources for all of these which you will find with a quick search or two.
Don’t try to skimp as you begin to build your brand. There are great reasons logos don’t cost $5, and if you neglect or give scant attention to the most basic building blocks in your marketing campaign, your business is likely to suffer.
INSIDER TIP: The most powerful brands regularly market by using an emotional angle on their marketing. Consider the incredible success of Coca-Cola’s Happiness Truck video. They aren’t delivering a soft drink that tastes a particular way, they are selling happiness!
Need help getting your company branded or extending the reach and engagement of your brand? Calvert Creative puts conversion-driven marketing power behind business initiatives. Contact Calvert Creative today and get a free consultation.
