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Brand Building Tools & Methods For Beginner Marketers

No, it’s not your logo, your product, or your tagline that matters alone but good brand building tools and strategies. Your brand is all about consumers. What do they know (or think they know) about your company? How do they perceive you? Do they hold you in high or low esteem?

The way people view your company—and whether or not they recommend you to their friends—is your brand. And that’s where brand management comes in. Brand management is the process of maintaining, improving, and upholding your brand image and ultimately remaining a consumer favorite.

That means your brand strategy involves targeting the right consumers at the right time (in the right way and the right place). And staying on their good side through advertisements, incentives, goodwill, and more.

And the best brand managers and marketers assess whether their brand strategy is working by conducting brand research surveys, which help them keep track of how consumers view their brand.

What are the Brand Building Tools?

Brand Building Tools fall into two categories – building recognition and managing brand perception. By using these techniques, you’ll get your name in front of more prospects more often. All while leaving people with a more positive opinion of your brand.

Furthermore, savvy entrepreneurs understand that branding and marketing is an important part of the process of running their own business. How your company is perceived by the world is almost as important today as the products you make or the services you provide.

But, identifying and creating your brand is only the first step since promotion is crucial too. Yet there are other powerful ways to build your brand beyond setting your marketing machine in motion.

Why is Brand Research important?

Simply, because the brand building is the act of generating brand awareness, establishing and promoting companies using set strategies and tactics.

In other words, brand building is enhancing brand equity using advertising campaigns and promotional strategies. Not to mention, Branding is a crucial aspect of the company because it is the visual voice of the company.

Brand Building Tools

As an example, consumers are co-creators of the brand. So, their preferences and demands should be meet and strategies should be designed by keeping consumers in mind.

On the other hand, to create a unique and powerful brand there is a need for time and consistency. And so, the brand building is an integral part of business development and involves various strategies and tactics over time. That’s why brand research comes to hand.

There are five major areas of brand management that you can measure through brand research surveys:

1. Brand Awareness

Use a brand awareness survey to find out if consumers are familiar with your brand using brand recall and brand recognition questions.

When you include demographic questions in brand awareness surveys, you can find out who’s aware of your brand (and who’s not) so you can find your target market and customer base.

2. Brand Attribute

A brand attribute research survey helps you determine what characteristics consumers associate with your brand (and your competitors’ brands).

This can inform your brand strategy because you can position your brand advertisements according to what people expect of your brand–and you can try to change how consumers see your brand if you aren’t happy with the way they view it now.

3. Brand Loyalty 

Use a brand loyalty survey to see if consumers trust your brand, think it’s reliable and appropriate for them, and whether or not they hold your brand in high esteem.

Consumers who have faith in your brand and think it’s good for them to tend to stay loyal, so use this brand survey to identify your target market–and troubleshoot your brand image.

4. Brand Tracking

When you want to form a brand strategy around brand advertising, use a brand tracking survey to learn if your ads are making an impact on consumers.

Brand tracking research is useful because you can ask questions that take the pulse of how consumers view your brand—and how likely they are to purchase your product or service—before you launch a new ad campaign.

After you’ve exposed consumers to your ad, you should survey them again to see if your brand advertisements have yielded positive or negative results. Use brand tracking surveys often to keep an eye on how you’re faring with consumers over time.

The most popular brand survey research methods

Although there are many ways to perform brand research surveys, here are the three most common survey methods that marketers use:

Brand Equity Ten:

This method measures 10 attributes in order to assess the strength of a brand. Attributes include differentiation, satisfaction, perceived value, market share, and brand awareness.

Brand Equity Index:

This method is an index of brand equity as a product of three factors: effective market share, relative price, and brand durability.

Conjoint Analysis:

Conjoint analysis is used to measure consumers’ preference for various attributes of a product, service, or provider to gain insight into consumers’ valuation of a brand.

Because your brand strategy relates to how, where, when, and to whom you’re marketing your brand, any of these methods can help you with brand management.

Just make sure that you’re consistent, survey often, and listen to consumers—they’re the ones who have the final say when it comes to customer satisfaction and your success.

Which are the Best Brand Building tools?

If you are an industry veteran, you probably already know the value of having a strong professional services brand.

If not, consider these benefits. Whereby, with a strong Brand you can:

  • Generate leads more easily
  • Command higher rates
  • Achieve a higher win rate
  • Recruit more effectively
  • Have fewer competitive bid situations

After all, who wouldn’t want these advantages? But, the question is;

How do you build a leading brand?

For instance, think of your professional services brand as the product of your reputation and your visibility.

With this in mind, a Brand Building or rather, Branding Tool is a technique that helps you build and refine your firm’s reputation or increase the visibility of that reputation. The best branding tools manage to do both at the same time. All in all, the best branding tools manage to do both at the same time.

 To find platforms that support the brand image. Take the following factors into consideration:

  • Facebook: It is by the far the best platform for promoting brand awareness, as more adults use the site. It’s a great platform for promoting any brand, due to its very diverse user base.
  • Instagram: It is a great option for brands that rely on images, such as clothing companies and retailers. It’s also easier to reach young adults, Hispanics, and African Americans.
  • Pinterest: Is a good social network to reach women, especially for brands selling jewelry or clothing.
  • Linkedin: Finally, if you operate a business-to-business company, you can utilize the platform’s B2B marketing niche. Additionally, LinkedIn is a better choice for promoting business-related content and connecting with other corporate influencers.

Below are more useful guidelines about utilizing some of the best digital online and social media brand-building tools.

1. Social Media Consistency

A brand’s profile on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, your company blog and everywhere else it has a presence online should be unified and in line with the brand essence and style guide.

Be consistent with graphics, color, style and language, and even posting routine. Inspirational quotes on Monday? #TBT photos on Thursday?

Whatever the routine, keep it consistent so followers know what to expect.

2. Use Attractive Colors

By the same token, when we talk of brand building tools, we must not forget colors. Color can be used to give a brand personality and meaning as the graphic above shows and using colors with impact and meaning can help a brand appeal to its target audience.

As in the first point, be consistent with color across all media platforms – online and offline – to ensure a consistent, unified and professional look.

3. Design An Outstanding Logo

For your information, a successful logo is the anchor of a brand and its design should represent a brand’s philosophy.

But, when designing a logo, it’s important to realize, consider what the brand represents, and what the brand doesn’t represent.

4. Brand Voice & Style 

The product or service plus the demographics of the target audience will determine the voice and style of a brand on social media.

Imagine the brand as a person and consider what type of language it would use and what types of things it would share online.

Try and describe this person in terms of age, gender, interests, and personality.

As an example, Social Media Explorer’s Stephanie Schwab’s helpful guide on finding a brand voice lays out several additional factors:

  • Tone. Be clear to followers about what and how the brand will communicate online. Is your brand cheeky and irreverent or serious and formal?
  • Language. What type of language will brand use online? A young and hip brand might get away with more slang, or a niche brand may use more acronyms and industry-specific language.
  • Purpose. Identify the main reason the brand is on social media? Is your goal to educate or entertain?

Finally, put together a social media style guide. It will be a useful reference document for anyone in the company who speaks on behalf of a brand.

5. Try To Talk Normally 

Now, that a brand’s personality has been identified, use that personality to build a brand people can trust.

When it comes to social media, the method that has proved successful over time is to talk like a human being.

Ditch the professionally elevated or corporate-speak and converse with other brand users like a human being would.

for instance, respond to inquiries on a first-name basis (if provided), and don’t be afraid to use colloquial dialogue and humor. Quirky? Witty? Serious?

All in all, talking like a human being with a sense of personality will make a brand more relatable. And if it’s really clever, genuine and entertaining it may even go viral.

6. Be Creative & Provide Compelling Stories

Who doesn’t love a good story?

Storytelling is central to human existence and, in fact, by telling someone a story it can have the powerful effect of getting them on board with an idea.

Generally speaking, it causes the listener to turn the story into their own idea and experience.

In the same way, a brand – or the idea of a brand – can become more compelling by spinning a yarn about it. Involve customers in a brand story and they will engage with it.

7. Be Honest & Transparent

Transparency is the bedrock of any long-lasting relationship, so in the same way, giving customers a glimpse behind the scenes of a brand can prove vital in establishing a healthy relationship.

Use social media platforms to publish information that will help consumers understand the mechanics of a brand better.

Buffer is a terrific example of being transparent on social media and they rocked the business world when they published all their employee salaries (and more) online.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be as radical as Buffer’s, but simply letting customers know future plans or admitting to mistakes is a great start.

Simply put, draw customers into the world of the brand or company.

8. Provide Visual & Relevant Content

Important to realize, users, engage with social media posts that include images more than with posts that don’t include images.

For example, add infographics, photographs and other visual images to posts and take advantage of Pinterest and Tumblr, which can be used to store and share visual content.

But also, don’t post for the sake of posting. Therefore, keep social media posts relevant, meaningful and simple.

Posting too frequently and posting ‘boring’ content are the main reasons people will unfollow and unlike brands. You can learn how you can start using Canva to design a logo.

9. Promote Your Brand Profile

One challenge that a lot of businesses have with social media branding is building initial traction. Getting your first few followers can seem impossible when you don’t even know where to start.

However, if you’ve been in business for a while or have other Web properties (website, blog or other social media accounts) then you should start there.

Unless you tell your current customers, colleagues, and network that you have a Snapchat or Instagram account, how will they know?

Never make the mistake of just assuming everyone knows about all your social media channels, even within your own company.

10. Claim Your Online Brand Name

Trying to be active on eight or nine social media sites isn’t a good idea unless you have a social media team managing it all for you. It’s better to be excellent on two or three platforms than mediocre on seven.

However, just because you’re only going to be active on a few doesn’t mean you can’t set up profiles on others.

By claiming your company name on major social media platforms, you’re securing them in the event that you ever decide to use them.

This is also beneficial for SEO. When people Google your company name, some of the results on the first page may be from sites like Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks.

Takeaway,

As a matter of fact, Brand Building doesn’t happen overnight (Pantene knows this); it takes time and dedication.

For example, it took 15 years for Nike to cement its brand by focusing on maintaining a ‘360-degree delivery.’ Especially, ensuring its brand was consistent across all products, advertising, customer service, and packaging.

So with that in mind, it is important to build a strong and consistent brand across all social media platforms. But if you’ll need additional brand building tools support, please Contact Us.

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