5 Branding Mistakes to Avoid
These days crafting a powerful, professional brand is vital to the success of your business which is why we are sharing our top 5 branding mistakes to avoid. It is very important to stand out in today’s ultra-competitive and crowded marketplace and a good brand will showcase your identity.
Often effective branding is a key component of companies that thrive while it can be the undoing of those who eventually dive.
Your brand is the perception that people have of your products, services, organization and ideas. Because of the encompassing nature of a brand, brand building should be a critical aspect of any business as you are trying to create a desired perception with an audience.
Branding Mistakes to Avoid
- Ignoring the importance of branding – Far too many people overlook the power of a brand. An identifiable, appealing brand will help you stand out and can attract clients or business. Conversely not taking the time to work on your brand can stunt your company’s growth and limit opportunities for growth.
- Not showcasing your strengths – Every person or business has different strengths that set them apart from the competition. What are yours? What is your message or philosophy? These are important items to work into your brand strategy to make sure you stand out versus fade away.
- Getting overly complex – You can’t be everything to everyone and you can’t cram everything good into your brand. Your message needs to be strong, powerful and yet straightforward and simple. If you try and become the end-all-be-all it will be so complicated that it will be confusing. A strategy is to make things as simple as possible in regards to logos, color schemes and the like.
- Ignoring feedback – Far too many people let ego run their business and when it comes to branding this can be a big problem. Not everything is perfect out of the gate and many successful companies tweak and adjust their brand as time goes by. Rather than stubbornly sticking to what you think is the best course, actively seek out feedback from colleagues and customers and look for new ideas. You want to make sure that your audience is getting the message you are trying to send and if they aren’t then you need to make adjustments until they are getting a strong, consistent message.
- Not maintaining your brand – Set it and forget it is a common theme out on the digital landscape and it is one that will lead your business in the wrong direction. Even after establishing a good brand it takes work to maintain it, much like any living thing. Posting blogs that continually establish your authority, responding to comments on social media outlets and participating in forums are all ways to maintain your online presence with your brand. You want your brand to grow and just like when you plant flowers, it takes regular work to coax things to full bloom.
What makes for a good brand?
Successful brands have a lot of things in common such as:
- Uniqueness – To create a unique identity you don’t necessarily have to have a revolutionary idea or crazy product; you simply need one special thing that allows you to stand out from the crowd.
- Passion – The best brand are built on passion because you simply can’t sustain a great brand without it in the long-term. It takes hard work to continually provide good, if not great results and that takes passion. Directly related to passion are enthusiasm, happiness and joy which are things customers often feel about a passionate brand which then creates an organic growth that will propel you forward.
- Consistency – Repeat customers often repeat because of either great service or great prices, or a combination of the two. By being consistent with what you provide you gain trust from customers, while inconsistency is often all it takes to make customers look elsewhere to have their needs met.
- Drive – Along with passion, the best brand have a competitive drive to be the best. That drive means you are constantly looking to improve, going above and beyond in efforts to be the best and make the best impact. Brands that have a lot of drive are often known as the movers and shakers of their sector, regularly on the cutting edge of their industry.
Now, armed with ideas of what makes a good brand and our 5 branding mistakes to avoid, you can ensure your own brand will be as effective as possible to make your business thrive!
