The establishment of a strong branding framework can be extremely useful for any company looking to increase their brand awareness as it will help you to:
a) Define your niche in an energised market or social context
b) Control how clients and prospects see your brand
c) Articulate your core values simply and easily
d) Determine the key concepts others associate with your products or services
e) Pitch your brand to your hottest prospect in less than 100 words
Great branding strategy is at the heart of all successful business communications
Can you see yourself from your audience’s point of view? Good branding is about building an image and a story which you can use as a starting point for all your business interactions. You may do this instinctively, even spontaneously. Still, keeping the story and image consistent, and helping other employees and support organisations to express your core mission without losing site of your key message, can feel impossible.
Good branding is also about good listening. Whether you are creating marketing strategy, seeking investment, completing funding bids, delivering awards acceptance speeches, or taking advantage of informal networking opportunities, listening and showing empathy are essential communication skills. In deal-closing terms, they mark the winners from the losers. Powerful brands grow from good listening.
What does a branding strategy look like?
A strong branding framework is the best investment you will ever make in company communications. It takes the DNA of your business, your personal drive, vision, invested emotion and hard work, and flips it 180° to show you what it looks like from your ideal client perspective. It empowers you to see your personal achievement as a separate, objective, organic entity, with a life of its own.
It looks like you, on your best day, making your strongest sales pitch to your most prestigious prospect. And winning.
Branding: process and product
Your branding framework filters and distils all your thoughts, knowledge and intuitions about your work into one irresistible story. Scale it down to a tagline or iconographic logo; scale it up to a company message and mission statement.
What you get is an essential, unique, business communications tool box, containing all the language for everything you will ever need to say about your business. With it you will create in-depth case-studies, presentations, reports and articles, or short, sweet, teasers, tempting your targets to discover more about who you are, where you stand and why you do what you do.
At the heart of your branding framework is your brand story and mission statement, and they won’t change, no matter how small you start or how big your company grows.
Online, brands get personal
Operating in the social web without a solid branding framework is like improvising your way through King Lear without having read the text. The cracks show.
The social web is where personalities interact; the clue is in the title keyword: social. That doesn’t mean it’s not a marketplace: but if your business doesn’t have a character of its own with credible motivations, then it doesn’t have a role to play.
Your branding framework personalises your business for your target audiences. It gives your interactions context, history, language, and purpose. It’s the germ of all your client relationships. It contains and suggests all the emotive influencers and triggers which enable customers and prospects to identify with you, recognise your voice and crucially, to remember you in a fiercely competitive commercial marketplace.
Get in touch to find out more about branding frameworks and branding development.
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