From the Blog
How to Build a Better Brand for 2022 (and Beyond)
You can’t build a brand the way you used to.
What do all of the most successful brands have in common? Tide isn’t just a laundry detergent, Charmin isn’t just toilet paper, and Coca-Cola is more than just a soda. To build a great brand, you need more than a great product and a bundle of compelling features and benefits. You also need more than a well-designed logo or a slick ad. What all great brands have in common is this: they establish a rich brand identity whose values, personality, and the experiences it creates are relevant and emotionally engaging to its customers.
Today, we live in a world where product options are infinite. Competition has never been more fierce. Half-baked brands no longer make the cut.
Most agencies today try to build a brand from the outside in. They use their taste and aesthetic skill to design brand assets that look impressive. That may work occasionally enough to create some nice case studies. But it’s also a recipe for creating a brand that’s more successful as an art project than a marketing engine. And more often than not, when design trends move on, the attractiveness of the resulting brand fades.
What’s the alternative? At Deksia, we believe the only predictable way to build a world-class brand today is from the inside out. When you align your brand strategy with what your customer desires and your products achieve —and express that identity with a captivating personality—you have a chance to create a transformational brand.
The Deksia approach…
When building your brand, we start with discovery. We engage you to uncover the truths of your business and your vision for the future. We perform customer surveys and audit your competitors to gauge how your business is perceived today and why. We also unearth what your customers want, and assess how your company can meet those needs.
We ask five essential questions at the beginning of every branding project:
- Am I communicating with the right people?
- Am I communicating the right message?
- Am I making the right offer?
- Are the visuals aligned with these three considerations?
- Am I making visual decisions based on my taste… or data?
Our goal is to help you figure out how you can answer “yes” to all five questions. We assess the data collected from our discovery process, and then we create a brand strategy.
When Deksia is strategizing your brand, we explore your archetype through a Story Architecture lens. Brands are more clear and powerful when they embody a primary character archetype. This gives life, meaning, and authenticity to their story. And your Story Architecture is the foundation of a brand that aligns your message to captivate prospects and turn them into customers.
Brands built on taste rather than data have a low chance of surviving on the market. Your company’s brand is more than just the logo, it’s the design, voice and experience a customer undergoes when interacting with your brand and service/product. Like the personality of a person, your brand has to be consistent in voice and execution, but flexible in the context in which it engages people. Without a clear personality, voice and message, customers intuitively doubt whether they can depend on a brand to meet their expectations every single time.
Once we’ve defined your brand character and aligned its personality with your customers needs and desires, we then unleash our world-class creative talent to create the external, customer-facing assets that represent your brand. Once your brand is reborn and our marketing strategy is implemented, your company will see an increase in leads and sales.
A brand that aligns the structural foundation with consistent messaging captivates prospects and turns them into customers. But even a company with a great brand doesn’t become successful overnight. A company can’t be successful without customers, and customers are gained through hard work and marketing campaigns.
Strategic brands gain authority, trust & results.
How do you gain authority and trust so that customers click on your brand the next time you appear in a competitive search?
Humans are constantly processing information and images that they are being exposed to. The more people see your brand name, the more likely they are to shop for your products and services, recognize your name when they see it, and choose you rather than your lesser-known competitors.
From the language in your advertisements, to the color palette on your latest billboard, to the material used in your packaging, and to the way your customer service department answers the phone, companies who create strong brands know that their brand needs to be expressed consistently and powerfully in every customer touchpoint. According to a recent study, Secret Life of Search, 82% of customers select a brand they were familiar with when making purchasing decisions. Participants who clicked on the top-ranking brands did so because of the high level of authority and trust commanded by the brand.
Having your brand name out in the world is a way to gain authority, but gaining trust requires a little more work. People want to buy from a brand that they feel emotionally connected to and can solve their problems.
You gain authority and trust by building emotional connections, soliciting testimonials, and “proving” that your product delivers what it promises.
Once you’ve built yourself a strong brand from the inside out and gain trust and authority, your company can become a lead generating business.
A brand that transforms your business….
When you’re going about your next branding project, remember these three key points:
- Captivate Your Prospects. Grab the attention of prospects and pique their interest. Your brand will help you stand out from your competition and be noticed.
- Turn Them Into Customers. An authentic, well-designed brand is the most cost-effective way to demonstrate to your prospects they can trust your business.
- Triple Your Marketing ROI. You’ll be noticed more, convert more, and be remembered more. That’s 3x more ways you get more mileage from every marketing dollar you spend.
Strategizing and marketing your brand is a full-time job. Free up some time in your schedule and let us help you create a strong brand that drives results. Give us a call or fill out a form and find out in 15 minutes what Deksia can do for you.