Category: Branding

4 steps to build your own unique brand persona | Just like Coca-cola
Do you know what Coca-Cola is? Absolutely, a soft drink brand that serves their drinks all over the world. It is the Brand persona. The image that is created in your mind about Coca-Cola is its brand image. This image is created by Coca-cola with the help of their marketing campaigns, appealing stories, etc.

You can also make your brand like coca-cola in just 4 steps:

Lets deep into these concepts:

1. Research your target audience

Why do you want to build a brand persona?

Answer is for your audience. To accomplish this question, you need to research your target audience.

This is essential because if you start building your brand without any target audience, then it can’t become successful.

This concept is also described by Philip Kotler named as ‘targeting and segmentation’. Therefore, it always starts with market segmentation. A single business can not satisfy everyone.

So firstly, you need to identify the profiles of different buyers in your niche who might prefer your goods and services.

Market segments can be identified by examining:

The firms then decides which segments presents the best customers.

You can take help of a well-known tool- Survey money. With the help of this, you can conduct surveys in different cities according to your niche to research best audience.

After selecting your targeted audience, you need to find that what your audiences mostly prefer to buy? What brands are they like? What they don’t like?

You can our another blog on What is STP? – it will guide you through Market Segmentation.

Let’s take an example of market segmentation of famous shoes brand persona- Nike.

Demographics:

Nike primarily targets consumers who are between the ages of 15-40.

The company treats to both men and women athletes, They are now increasing focus on teens to build long-term brand persona loyalty.

Nike labels this segment by creating marketing campaigns about young adults who aims to be like their athlete idols.

For example, right before the 2014 World Cup, Nike sponsored soccer athletes with teenage soccer players.

Geographic:

Nike uses this segmentation to address nations, regions, cities etc.

For example, Nike focuses on American football and baseball in the U.S.A. It deploys many advertisements and marketing campaigns about football and baseball products.

Psychographics:

Nike also uses psychographic segmentation to target individuals with specific lifestyles and personalities.

Nike targets individuals who enjoy sports to use this variable effectively. It can be playing, watching or simply talking about sports, these activities give insights about personalities and lifestyles.

Nike’s marketing efforts are targeted at creating a “feeling” to g beyond the product. Nike encourage an attitude, it develops a lifestyle.

Behavioral differences:

Targeting based on this attribute is the genius of Nike.

While Nike occasionally focuses on admire particular product features, the company largely focuses on feeling of buyer after using their product. The benefit expectations of the company’s products are clearly defined:

‘You are an athlete. Nike products make you feel athletic!’

2. Create and enhance your visibility

The second step is the visibility of your business. How your business will appear to the consumer whether online or offline matters.

You have to create visibility in a way that people treats as a brand.

To enhance your visibility, you need to focus on the following things:

Let’s elaborate these things for brand persona.

Website:

Combination of web pages is called a website. In this era, having an website becomes a necessary part of building a brand whether your business is small or big. It is like an online shop which shows your all business online.

If you do not own your business website, then you already lost many sales or leads.

Firstly create a effective website for your business which describes your business. You can add your products, services, blogs and other information.

Also, you have to optimize your website according to search engines or search engine friendly. Because, search engine mostly show optimized websites. You can outsource this service.

Professional logo:

Second step for a brand persona is creating a professional logo for your business. ‘Logo refers to a graphic representation or symbol of a company name.’

You have to create a eye catching logo.

You can create logo of name of your business like Coca-Cola or you can select any symbol which represents your business like Nike. Nike has symbol of tick mark.

Also keep in mind the color scheme. You have to choose color which can relate your business. Lets take example of Netflix, it uses red and black color. Red symbolizes passion and energy while black is chosen as neutral symbol.

Social media:

King of branding is social media. It is a platform which you can leverage to build a brand in less time. Social mdia includes facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, quora, Youtube etc.

Now there are steps which you can follow to build a brand:

1. Sign up on all social media platforms.

2. Complete your profile with all information.

3. Upload your compnay’s logo as profile picture.

4. Consistently upload different posts which can relate your business.

5. Engage with your audience.

6. Also, provide some free valuable information to users.

Effective slogans:

Slogan refers to a short and striking or memorable phrase used in advertising.

You can create slogans of your business to make memorable brand. Because some people identifies brands by listening their slogans.

Following are the slogans of some famous brands:
- Nike – “Just Do it”
- Apple – “Think Different”
- L’Oreal – “Because you’re worth it”
- KFC – “It’s finger lickin’ good”
- Coca-Cola – “Open Happiness”
- Dunkin’ Donuts – “America runs on Dunkin’”
- McDonald’s – “I’m lovin’ it”
Five tips to write effective slogans for your business:

1. Highlights the key benefits. It should differentiate your product or service from others.

2. Explain your company’s commitment or purpose.

3. Keep it short.

4. Organize it in a rhyme.

5. Stay honest.

Typography:

It refers to the text or fonts you are using in your business. It should be in combination. The same font you are using in your online presence should also be used in your offline presence.

3. Research your competitors

Third step is to find out what your competitors are doing in the market. What type of campaigns are they running?

You had to analyze what are their strengths and weakness. You can adapt their weakness and the things which they are avoiding in their brand.

The things you need to follow for successful competitor research:
- Firstly, you need to find who your competitors are. You can take help of various tools.
Competition can be in various forms. They can be new start ups or any old established brand or also from other niches who are trying to expand in your category.
- In the second step, we need to research following things:
A. Clarity of message: You need to understand what message they are conveying to their customers.

B. Design and user experience: What type of digital and traditional appearance are they providing to consumers. You also need to find out about their customer support.

C. Channel efficiency: Which type of marketing channels they are using. It can be different social media, banners etc.

D. Reputation : How their customer treats their brands? What are their ratings and feedback?

E. Differentiators: What tools, medium and things they are using to differentiate their brand from others.
- You gathered the all information about your competitors. Now, you need to convert that data into an understandable form.
You can interrupt data in form of charts, diagram and tables etc. This is because; you had to take decisions on the basis of that report.

4. Deliver your message

Now, it is the time to take action. You have done complete research and optimize your presence.

You had to deliver your message to your audience. Message in the sense, why you enter in market? What problems are you solving? What makes you different from others?

You can take help of different marketing channels. But, you had to analyze that channels on which most of your audience is active. It can be online or offline.

You need to run appealing stories can make feel consumer friendly with brand.

One thing also keep in mind that don’t run ads which may hurt any specific category, religious etc.

Conclusion Of Brand Persona

In conclusion, we can say that building band is like creating an asset. For example, apple’s worth in market is 1 trillion, which includes more share of their goodwill or brand.

FAQs Of Brand Persona

What are the different digital marketing channels for brand building?
Ans: Different channels for digital marketing:
PPC (Pay per click)
SEO (Search engine optimization)
SMM (Social media marketing)
Content marketing
Social media advertising
PR (Public relation)
Video advertising

Who can build a brand? (Small or big business)
Anybody can build a brand whether a small business or large business. In reality, Most of the businesses starts from small business and became large business by building a brand.

What is the cost for building a unique brand?
It depends on your marketing budget. It can be from $1 to $1 million. You can also take help of organic growth but it takes too much time.
August 12, 2020
Branding | What is Branding, and why it’s important?
Branding is a steady process of building a link or an attachment between a corporation and the consumer’s sentiment for making for a personal connection that helps to build trust.

The brand is the positive or negative image of the product in the minds of our consumers. It is an emotion or feelings produced towards the organization or its product, which is offered by the organization.

For example, the iPhone is the product of the brand Apple.

The product can be copied, but the brand can never be copied. The brand always remains different and offbeat from other brands.

For example, Pepsi and Coke.

Local coke is found everywhere, but still, local coke couldn’t copy the branded coke. In this case, Coke’s product is similar, but the brand name, logo, tagline, taste, emotion, etc. are different from one another.

It is the marketing strategy that organizations create to sell their products easily. So, it helps people or consumers to quickly identify the company’s product and give them a cause to select their products over the competition.

The main motto is to create a royal image of the product in people’s minds.

Here you will get this:

What is Branding?

Branding is a marketing practice in which a company creates a name, design, symbol, or image, or any artwork that is readily identifiable to the customers. It helps the product to get easily identified by the consumers.

Branding is powerful because it not only creates the images in customer’s minds but also makes the marketing, sales, or launching of any sub-brand easy.

It is a way of marking yourself different from the competitors and simplifying your contribution that makes you a better selection. You should build your face value also to get recognized in the global market, something different from the others.

What is the Product?

Product is anything that satisfies the consumer’s needs that includes physical assets, assistance, happenings, experiences, personalities, sites, features, institutions, learning, and plans.

A product can be a service or an asset – whether tangible or intangible, also it can be a virtual product or in a cyber form.

A product can be anything from a stay in a hotel, security, a course, costumes, cuisine, etc.

‘WATER’ can also be a product. Yes, can you believe, water is one of the most important basic need for a human being.
There are companies which just mineralized the water, pack it into bottles and sell it in the market.

Further there is a vast classification of product, but we will not get into a deep discussion regarding that in this blog.

Who will it affect?

Most importantly, customers and then the Founders/share-holders will be most affected from the practice of branding.

Customers:

It is the most obvious answer, the prime motto of branding is customers, but their feelings also matters a lot.

Branding is not just a way of selling our products to customers. But it’s a brand that provides luxury to the customers (iPhone); it’s a brand that gives a next-level way of life to the customers (Mercedes Benz), it’s a brand that makes people be in the company’s ecosystem (Google and Apple).

It provides the consumer with a choice-making way when feeling doubtful about the same goods from different companies.

Employees/Funders/Share-holders:

Now a days, everyone wants to work with big brands like Google, Amazon, Accenture, Alison, but why?

They give a graduate his identity.

Successful branding procedures and strategies are very helpful in the company’s reputation. This creates market value and brand authority.

This affects a chain of people and creates a new place for your brand.

From customers to operators, investors, stockholders, providers, and wholesalers, it builds respect. People would like to invest more in reliance then in Chandu sim or Chandu mart, or Chandu Bazar or Chandu clothes.

Innovation

This is not mandatory for branding, but it gives an edge, but how?

For Example, Disney, Square, Google, Apple, OYO, Shopify, etc. got an edge because they did some innovation in the existing product.

To establish a point of difference is the great strategy to establish a brand. The point of differentiation can be anything, your service or your goods, or both.

The assertive, and often the most pleasing, means of differentiation for customers are advantages related to achievement.

Offers such as color, fashion, luxury, insurance, discount prices can also support Branding.

Sometimes variations in the purchasing conditions can open up new possibilities to create a means of differentiation.

EXAMPLES-

For example, Pepsico penetrated into rising customer interest in natural and organic outcomes to reposition the lemon-lime soft drink as all-natural with only five components: carbonated water, potassium citrate, citric acid, sugar, and natural flavor.

In the end, the innovation gives an edge as the innovation creates new value in the market and fulfills the new difficulties that no other brands fulfill.

Organizations can fashion appealing concepts that appeal to customer’s familiar and psychological needs.

For example, Marlboro’s excellent worldwide business share (about 32 %) is that its “macho cowboy” image has struck a receptive chord with much of the cigarette-smoking public.

Wine and liquor associations also work tough to develop unique images for their brands.

Even your photo can create your brand image, but for that, your face value should be good in the market. To create face value, YouTube can help you a lot.

Seller’s dynamic space can be a strong image generator.

Hyatt Regency Hotels produced a distinctive image with its atrium rooms.

For getting recognition of your innovation in the market, YouTube is the best place to sell your product and innovation.

Trust Creation?

The most important thing in Branding is the Level of trust gained. Trust in the market place is very beneficial for you to create your brand and to grow.

Trust itself says to commit. You should give the commitment to the customers that your brand will not break their trust.

An expert representation and well-strategized branding will help the organization build commitment with customers, potential buyers, and clients.

Investors are more likely to do funds those businesses which have an excellent and acknowledged imitation.

So you should gain the trust of both the customers and stakeholders.

If you gain the faith of customers, then stakeholders or investors will automatically gain faith in your organization. Customer and content are the kings of your market place.

How can branding be established?

Companies try to use many ways to promote themselves as a brand like from advertisements, or from mouth publicity, etc., but this is just a part of How branding can be established? You have several ways to create a brand:

For example, branding can be created through:
1. Fulfilling the purpose, values, faith of the consumers, this will give you recurring customers.
2. Secondly, Every brand has a short line for its promotion; you have to create that.
3. If you notice in the brand advertisements, they have a jingle in their slogan. That jingle remains in consumer’s minds for a very long time.
4. Name, tone, visual identity, design, are also very important.
5. Logo plays a very important role in making identity. May it be simple, but you should keep in mind your brand color and then integrate that color into your logo.
6. Advertising in commercials like TV, radio, magazines, websites, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, etc.
FEW MORE UNIQUE BRANDING WAYS
1. As I have discussed earlier, the packaging is the best way to influence people. If you have seen the packaging of newly launched Bourbon biscuits, the packaging influence truly depicts from that example.
2. YouTube is now a day, the best place to give sponsorships because they have more conversion rates than TV ads. People trust YouTubers more than TV actors or rather Film actors.
3. After doing all this, you should once check the ground reality also because only board-room meeting does not help to sell your products.
4. You should check the workspace management and working and selling style of people, along with competitors’ strategy.
5. You should do Reverse engineering by evaluating the competitor’s product, you should keep an eye on the competitor’s product and always keep innovating your own product to remain ahead of your competitor.
6. Most important of all is Customer service; it will decide the Reoccurrence of the customers. All branding and marketing will be of no use if you fail to provide the best customer service.
7. If your brand is new, then keep the pricing of your product/service a bit lower than your competitors. And then just keep innovating your product till it becomes far better than your competitor’s product. And then you can slightly hike your product’s price.
Advantages or Importance of Branding

At various different points in this blog, we have already discussed the importance of Branding, but let me collectively recall all the points again.
1. Branding helps you stand out from the game.
2. It gives you and your company a different identity that your consumer can recall.
3. It creates a uniform brand exposure for your consumers.
4. Most importantly, it creates a connection with your viewers and turns those viewers into loyal customers.
Conclusion

I have discussed all the aspects of branding and its strategies. What is the product? Customers segments, Do innovation help in the game, Trust, How branding can be established? Its Advantages or Importance.

I hope you will apply the things that I have discussed, remember one thing, only teaching can’t help, practically you will understand when you apply it.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. What is Branding?
Ans: Branding is a steady process of building a link or an attachment between a corporation and the sentiment of the consumer for making for a personal connection that helps to build trust.

2. What is the Importance of Branding?
Ans: 1). Branding helps you stand out from the game.
2). It builds the identification of you and your company in the market place.
3). It creates a uniform brand exposure for your consumers.
4). Most importantly, it creates a connection with your viewers and turns those viewers into loyal customers.

3. Who are the important factors in branding?
Ans: Your customers and stakeholders/funders are the most important factors in branding.

4. Give some examples of companies that used innovation for branding
Ans: Google, OYO, Disney, Square, Apple, Shopify, Peloton, Alibaba Group, Dominos, etc. did the innovation in the existing or made new product line up.

5. Will trust creation help in branding?
Ans: Yes, Trust itself says to commit. You should give the commitment to the Customers that your brand will not break the trust of customers.
August 10, 2020