brand personality Archives

5 signs that your branding is broken

Your brand is your business’s identity. So, your branding is the reflection and culmination of your business’s personality, appearance, voice and overall vibe.

It takes about seven seconds for consumers to make an instant decision about whether or not they like and trust your brand. Keep in mind that consistent branding across all channels can increase your revenue between 10 percent and 20 percent. Brand consistency means that consumers get the same impression and experience when interacting with your business regardless of the marketing or communication channel.

A successful brand is clear, compelling and consistent.

Check out our nine tips if you need to build your brand from scratch.

But it’s entirely possible for a brand to not work how it’s intended, which can impact your overall consumer engagement and sales conversion rate. The following are five signs that your branding is broken.

No brand style guide

Think of a brand style guide as the rulebook for how your business presents itself to the world.

You can use your style guide as a reference to help maintain branding consistency no matter which of your team members is involved. About 59 percent of consumers prefer to buy from brands they trust, and consistency is a huge part of that.

Your style guide would include key branding elements, a collection of visual examples and more, depending on what you want and need.

Check out our five tips to create a brand style guide for your small business.

Your branding is visually inconsistent

Your visual brand identity includes your logo, company colors, chosen typography and any imagery that exudes the look and feel of your brand across all marketing channels. That includes your website, social media accounts and anything else.

As previously mentioned, a brand style guide can make a big difference on this front.

When done right, your company becomes unique and recognizable among your competitors. Visual branding consistency helps put your target audience at ease and builds trusting relationships over time.

Ask yourself:

Does your website reflect who your business truly is?
Are your typography, photo selections, colors and logos matching across all channels?
How do your visuals make your audience feel? Positive or negative?

If the answer to any of these questions is “no,” then you know where to start.

Visuals are powerful. Check out these six ways that visuals can increase your email conversions.

Big drop in the middle of your sales funnel

Acquiring leads simply feels good for any small business. But if your increase in leads doesn’t result in an increase in revenue, there’s a disconnect.

If you’re noticing a drop within your sales funnel, it could mean that what you’re saying in your marketing is different than what you’re actually offering. Your messaging could be too aspirational. Take a look at where that conflict could be happening. Something inconsistent is happening in the messaging with your leads.

That being said, if you’re struggling to even get leads into your sales funnel, that’s a signal that your branding is broken as well. It means that your brand is not resonating at all with your target audience.

Check out the seven benefits of using a sales funnel in your digital marketing.

Obsession with your competition

Understanding your competition can benefit your business and marketing strategies. But there’s a difference between understanding your competition and obsessing over your competition.

If your branding exists mostly in relation to your competitors, who they are and what they’re doing, then you’re living in their shadow and not creating your own presence and identity.

Some signs of this include citing your competition in your marketing messages or spending a majority of your marketing planning discussing your competition.

But again, there is a time and place for analyzing your competition. Find out more about what a proper competitive analysis is and how you can start yours.

Lack of repeat business

If you’re bringing in new business but can’t build customer loyalty, this is another sign that your branding is broken.

Just a 5 percent increase in customer retention can lead to at least a 25 percent increase in profit. You want to keep your customers purchasing from you once you acquire them. But as important as it is, customer retention is a big challenge for many businesses.

There could be a brand disconnect that is holding your growth potential back.

Check out our six tips to improve your customer retention rate and grow your revenue as a result.

In conclusion

If your brand is broken, you can definitely fix it. You don’t have to ride it until the wheels fall off of it and your small business. While rebranding may cost some time and money upfront, the potential to reach more clients and generate more revenue is worth it.

Just make sure that you:

Define your business’s purpose, vision, mission and values.
Identify better, compelling brand messaging.
Upgrade all visual elements as needed.
Develop (and use) a brand style guide.

As you’re evaluating the effectiveness of your branding, consider optimizing your digital marketing process, which includes automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.

5 tips for successful brand collaboration

Successful brand collaboration can help your company grow its online reputation (in a good way) and reach a wider audience.

But if your partnership is weak or not the best fit, your collaboration will fail, which could cost you your reputation or even your profit.

A brand collaboration refers to the partnership between at least two brands or a brand and an influencer to promote a specific product or service to get the attention of your target audience on a larger scale.

About 71 percent of consumers enjoy brand collaborations, so it’s worth the effort to reach your marketing goals.

The following are five tips for successful brand collaboration.

Carefully select your partner brand

Simply put, there is more to brand collaboration than discovering a potential partner brand that is fresh, exciting and has a significant following online.

The goal is to thoroughly research the brand you are considering working with. Will this partnership give you the chance to break out of your brand’s comfort zone and reach a new audience? Or, will this partnership help establish your brand as an industry leader? How can you benefit each other?

You should avoid working with anyone who’s already worked with your competition. You want your brand collaboration to feel natural for both parties, and that won’t necessarily be the case if your partner has worked with your competitors.

Ideally, both brands should bring something valuable to the table.

Unclear of exactly what your brand has to offer? Check out our nine expert tips for branding from scratch. You also can view our five steps to determine your brand personality.

Plan your brand collaboration campaign

Planning is everything. Even before you decide on a partner brand to reach out to and propose a collaboration with, you should have some idea of what you want to accomplish.

Consider your goals and the opportunities surrounding them. Once you have at least outlined a plan, you can better select a brand to partner with and bring solid ideas to the table.

You should give your potential partner brand the opportunity to bring its own ideas to the table, too. The best collaborations are a give-and-take that can help you both develop the best possible campaign.

Create and use a clear contract (and guidelines)

Consistency is key to a successful brand collaboration campaign. In order to achieve and maintain consistency while staying committed to authenticity, you must negotiate the details of how your partnership will work and cement that in a clear contract.

Thinking through what each brand will be doing, how it will happen, how often it will happen and what that will look like should all be included in basic guidelines in your contract. Don’t forget about tone of voice, creative elements and which social media (and other) channels you’ll be using.

Any exchange of pay or coverage of expenses should also be part of your contract.

If there’s anything that’s unclear, talk through it to come to an understanding that works for both brands.

Aim to create something valuable

Successful brand collaborations create something that is valuable or at least interesting for your target audience.

Whether that’s fun or entertainment, or perhaps it’s unique and inspiring. Regardless, think through how your brand and a brand partner can come together to not only catch consumers’ attention but leave a memorable impression as well.

The more engaging you can be together, the more likely you’ll compel your audience to take a specific, desired action.

Measure your performance

Of course, there’s no way to tell whether your brand collaboration is working or not if you’re not monitoring the performance metrics.

Especially if some metrics are only accessible by one brand and others are only accessible by your brand, it’s important to discuss in advance how you’ll gather and analyze all relevant data.

Depending on the length of your brand collaboration, you can easily pivot during the campaign based on the data to better optimize your efforts.

In conclusion

In the end, a successful brand collaboration comes down to active management before, during and after the campaign. There are a number of moving pieces when two or more brands come together to collaborate. Keep everything as simple as possible and promote communication between all partners as much as possible.

As you begin to explore brand collaboration, consider optimizing your digital marketing process. This includes such features as automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.

5 steps to determine your brand personality

Brands have personalities just like humans do. But if you’re a little unsure how to define your particular brand personality, you’ve come to the right place.

A brand personality involves the human characteristics of a brand, which your customers can relate to and connect with. Every brand can and should have a voice, color and other attributes that evoke different emotions.

Without a defined brand personality, consumers will have a harder time figuring out whether you’re the right business for them. That’s definitely not a decision you want to complicate.

On the flip side, a strong brand personality can increase your brand loyalty and customer retention. (Check out our six tips to create brand loyalty for your business.)

Remember, your brand only has seven seconds to make a good first impression.

About 46 percent of consumers in the U.S. say that they would pay more to purchase from brands they can trust. In addition, about 64 percent of women and 68 percent of men have felt an emotional connection with a brand. This can occur when you grow interest, trust and optimism from your potential customers and customers.

Essentially, there are five types of brand personalities:

Sincere, generous, thoughtful, honest, wholesome, cheerful, down-to-earth, warm and value-oriented (such as Cadbury, Hallmark and Amazon)
Excited, easygoing, lively, trendy, imaginative, spirited, daring, intrigued and youthful (such as Mountain Dew, BuzzFeed, Red Bull, Tesla and Nike)
Rugged, rough, outdoorsy, adventurous, athletic, tough and sporty (such as Jeep, Harley Davidson, Woodland and Yeti)
Sophisticated, elegant, luxury, charming, high-class, timeless, glamourous and renowned (such as Dolce & Gabbana, Mercedes, Chanel and Rolex)
Competent, accomplished, reliable, successful, intelligent and authoritative (such as Google, Microsoft, Volkswagen and Intel)

Not only does a defined brand personality resonate with your target audience, but it also can set your marketing strategy path. Once you know “who” your brand is, the opportunities to share that become clearer. Your brand’s personality will help you make the best decisions for every aspect of your business.

The following are five steps to determine your brand personality and better connect with potential customers.

Understand your target audience

So much about branding drills down to the people you’re hoping to reach and serve with your products and/or services.

By digging into the demographics and behaviors of your ideal customer, you can get a better sense of how your brand could relate to that customer. The more relatable you are to him or her, the better.

Keep these questions in mind:

Who is your audience?
What journey are they on?
What are their core desires?
What are their characteristics and behaviors?

Not exactly sure who your target audience is? Our seven tips can help.

Identify your brand’s role

Once you understand your target audience, it’s time to determine what role your brand should fill for them. For example, your brand could be your audience’s guide, motivator, friend, protector, inspiration or something else.

Before you jump to any conclusions, consider how your products and/or services affect your customers’ lives. Here are a few questions to help you identify your brand’s role:

Is your brand more of a leader, or does it play a supporting role in customers’ lives?
What special effect does your brand create in your customers’ lives?
If your brand had a personal relationship with your ideal customer, what type of relationship would that be? A family member? Friend? Someone else?

Brainstorm related characteristics

Once you decide on your brand’s role, list out all the characteristics that role exemplifies as it relates to your target audience.

Don’t hold back when listing characteristics. The point is that you get every thought written down. Quantity over quality.

Once you’ve exhausted all possible ideas, review your list and fine-tune it. Highlight what really speaks to you. Consider whether there are any related characteristics before you narrow down to your favorite characteristics that resonate most for you.

Visualize your brand personality

It’s time to create a mood board to visualize your brand personality, starting only with your favorite characteristics that you brainstormed earlier.

In the simplest sense, a mood board is a collage that contains a variety of images, text and any other items that ultimately will define your brand and communicate your brand personality. It also can help bring this developing personality into focus.

You can easily create a “mood board” using Pinterest, where you can easily pin visuals that represent your characteristics. The goal here is to bring your brand personality to life.

Just like when you were brainstorming characteristics earlier, now is the time to gather more than you need and then fine-tune to what feels best to you. This can include images, colors, visual metaphors (such as a tiger for being “fierce”), art, words/quotes, letters, texture, patterns and shapes.

Also, be sure to include any brand guidelines, such as your brand colors, fonts, logo and any other related brand materials that you have. If you are still developing your official brand, our nine expert tips can help.

Develop your brand voice

Now that you’ve visualized your brand personality, you need to develop a brand voice that supports and conveys that.

How do you speak to your target audience? Once you have an idea, it’s time to outline specific guidelines that highlight your tone, the type of multimedia images you would share and even jargon use, among other considerations.

Check out our eight tips for reflecting your brand’s personality through your brand voice.

In conclusion

Your brand personality can be pivotal in helping you stand out from your competitors. It’s worth the time and effort to understand it for yourself so that you can then communicate it through every asset in your digital marketing efforts and beyond.

Of course, we recommend setting a brand style guide to keep your brand personality, voice and more consistent across platforms and over time. This consistency empowers a stronger digital marketing strategy.

Check out our five tips to create a brand style guide.

As you begin to nail down your brand personality, consider optimizing your digital marketing process. This includes such features as automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.