Why Branding?
Branding is key to your success today online and offline. With the complex world of digital marketing and social media engagement, comes another worry – getting your business’s message across. It’s easy to get trapped in the one-lane thought process of getting your brand and company out there, getting an online presence, making yourself known, etc.
But what good is that if you’re not accurately portraying what you’re truly about? Does it look like Inspire To Thrive sells coffee in the image below? 🙂
Sure, it’s a good idea to market yourself and make your business known but as they say “a chain is no stronger than its weakest link”. And for a good reason too.
It’s easy to get trapped in the one-lane thought process of getting your brand and company out there, getting an online presence, making yourself known, etc. #branding #marketing
Click To Tweet
How to Build a More Premium Brand
You’re likely reading this because you’re about to start a new business or want to improve an existing one.
Is it too late to create a more premium brand? Absolutely not! The following information will give you some actionable tips and tricks you can follow to give your new or existing brand a more premium feel:
Upgrade Your Branding
The first thing you need to think about doing is upgrade your branding. It doesn’t matter whether you’re launching a new business or you’re trying to make an existing one appear more upmarket.
What matters is your branding reflects your business and the target market it wants to attract. For example, a logo with a Comic Sans font is unlikely to appeal to high net worth consumers!
It pays to use a professional that can create the right logo and branding for your business that aligns with your goals.
What matters is your branding reflects your business and the target market it wants to attract. #branding
Click To Tweet
Website Branding
While you’re upgrading your branding, you should also refresh the look and functionality of your website. It makes sense to give a lot of thought to the overall design and layout, along with color schemes and font styles.
Those elements alone will make your brand and the products and services you sell more attractive to consumers that happily spend money on high ticket items. A more premium redesign will also give your brand more credibility through better consumer perception.
Offline Marketing Materials for Branding
Another point to consider when upgrading your branding is to look at your offline marketing materials and redesign them to match your new look.
For example, use a luxury business card printing provider to produce high-quality business cards for you and your team. You should also do the same with brochures, flyers, compliments slips, and other materials promoting your brand to consumers offline.
Other offline marketing assets you’ll need to review include banners, trade show stand signs, and other advertising items you might use offline from time to time.
Spare No Expense on Your Aesthetics
Did you know that brand perception isn’t just about the products and services an organization sells but rather how they get presented? With that in mind, one thing you should never do is cut corners on the cost of presenting your brand’s products and services.
You already know that it makes sense to update your branding for promotional and marketing material that you use offline, such as banners and other signage. But, it also makes sense to look at other ways your customers will see your brand and what you sell.
Did you know that brand perception isn’t just about the products and services an organization sells but rather how they get presented? #branding
Click To Tweet
Product Packaging
Some brands like Apple have contemporary styling for their product packaging. There’s nothing “fancy” about the box that houses an iPhone or a MacBook Air. But, one memorable point about their product packaging is how it has a premium look and feel to it.
If your business sells physical products to its customers under its brand name, it needs to adopt such premium product packaging. Again, don’t skimp on the materials used; always use high-quality paper, cards, or other materials for packaging your products.
Retail Store Design for Branding
Does your business have a retail store, or is your startup planning to operate from one when it launches? If the answer to either question is yes, another area where you should spare no expense is the aesthetics of your retail store design.
When your customers walk into your store, they should feel they’ve stepped into a luxury hotel or have got behind the wheel of a Bentley. They shouldn’t feel like they are in a Trader Joe’s retail store.
Hire a commercial interior design to come up with a premium look for your brand’s retail store.
Adjust Your Marketing Campaigns
Whether you’re launching a new brand or are upgrading an existing one, you need to pay attention to how you establish and run your marketing campaigns.
As you might expect, a premium business will only want to target customers from specific niche markets. You don’t want to aim your brand and its products and services to individuals that are highly unlikely to purchase what you sell (or could even afford to buy them).
Spending some time adjusting your marketing campaigns ensures you only capture the right segment of your target market, plus you won’t blow your marketing budget out of the water.
Furthermore, do not forget about social media marketing in your budget. Social media is not really FREE as many assume.
Offer First-Class Customer Service
Have you ever noticed that high-end brands often provide first-class customer service? When you’re paying a lot of money for products and services, you expect to get treated with the attention and respect that you deserve.
Keeping that in mind, offering first-class customer service isn’t an impossible objective to accomplish. For example, you could offer a concierge service, so each customer has a single point of contact that takes care of all their needs or issues.
That point of contact should also accommodate any reasonable requests, such as keeping the customer up-to-date with news on any product repairs or details of upgrades to existing items they’ve purchased.
Consider Creating a Premium Sub-Brand
Lastly, if you’ve got an already established brand, but you want to continue selling to its existing target audience, you may not want to convert that brand into a more premium one. Thankfully, one way around that problem is to launch a premium sub-brand.
Many companies launch premium brands as part of their “group” of brand names. Following such a move could make it easy for your firm to target affluent customers, for example, without needing to spend lots of money on restructuring your existing brands.
Many companies launch premium brands as part of their “group” of brand names. #premiumbranding
Click To Tweet
Sending a Clear Message in Branding
You need to ensure that the branding you’re putting out there is portraying a clear message about what you and your business do, what it can offer people, and why people should choose you. For some at the startup process, you’ll want to think long and hard about how you’re going to portray yourself and what you want others’ first impressions of your company to be.
If you’re an established business, this doesn’t necessarily mean going back to square one. For one thing, simply tweak your website, slogans, colors, logos, and anything else to fit in line with what you represent. Does the image below look more like what the business here does?
Your company’s branding is a critical factor in all manners of digital marketing; it’s the foundation of all of your hard work, time, effort, and money put into gathering and winning business online. And for that reason, it’s fundamental that your foundations are strong.
This may be a hindrance if you’ve already displayed your logos all over your company’s assets, vehicles, pens, website, etc. But you don’t have to completely change everything.
As previously mentioned, tweak your current style to fit in line with what you represent. Consider branding your stationery, employee items, and freebies with that strong message, get your items branded with your message, and keep those foundations strong.
For one thing, simply tweak your website, slogans, colors, logos and anything else to fit in line with what you represent. #branding
Click To Tweet
Example of a Brand Fail?
Recently I went to a Facebook training session put on by Facebook here in Providence, Rhode Island. I was surprised that they gave out several items all branded. Who doesn’t know who Facebook is today, right?
But I will say one thing about the products: They were cheap! The pen was a very cheap plastic pen and the bag was very THIN. The notepad was nice and the little pin was tiny! So if you are going to brand items think if you want to appear cheap with several items or classy with just one really nice item.
Do You Need a Re-Brand?
Perhaps a complete rebrand is what you’re after, which can more often than not, be a gamechanger for you. Therefore, a local web design agency might be the first place to go to help you with that. They can set you off in the right direction, and you can bounce ideas off each other to devise your perfect end goal.
Your website may be the difference between winning or losing that business. So it’s key that your website offers the right tone and first impressions. Once you’re sure that your brand and message are loud and tells the right story, you can then proceed with pushing it out there and getting on with running your business.
This can then often give you that much-needed breath of fresh air to brush away the cobwebs of your old and aged look which can lead to winning that vital custom.
So it’s key that your website offers the right tone and first impressions. #brandingtips
Click To Tweet
Your Image for Branding
Ultimately, your image will set you apart from your competitors. It’s your end goal to make first impressions, good impressions, and take your company to the next level. You could try using video campaigns to showcase your image as well.
Finally, taking a good hard look at that image from a customer’s perspective may give you a better indication it is of the tale you’re really telling. For example, you could take a poll from your customers.
With that, you can delve into what needs to change and why it needs to be changed.
Final Thoughts
There’s no denying that launching a premium brand is a smart and lucrative move. If you’ve got an existing business, creating a premium sub-brand enables you to capture a new market and boost your company’s turnover.
Do you have images and logos that really reflect what your brand is about? Have you done a re-brand? I’d love to know more in the comments below. Please share this one on your social networks too!
