Branding is a word commonly mistaken for logo recognition. Logos are part of branding, and if you succeed in your branding efforts, your logo will be very well known by your customers and other consumers. But do you really know your brand? At Twelve12, we want you to understand your brand architecture and your branding strategies and share some important information from our Branding team in Orange County.
One of the most important keys for not only your branding strategies but also for your whole marketing plan is to know and deeply understand your customer and, along with that, your brand. I am going to assume that, for the purpose of this blog, you already know how to identify your target audience. If this is your first time here, and you are not sure about this, please take a look at previous blog entries where you will be able to find a lot of information about niches and target audiences.
Having said that, let’s talk about your brand! If you have good brand architecture, you should be able to describe your brand very thoroughly, as though you were describing a person, with qualities, highlights and opportunity areas. You should also be able to tell us the different levels of your brand and how they relate to each other and their purpose for existing. If you can only name your brand and describe it with one or two adjectives, you should probably take a good look at it and fix this. After all, if the business owner can’t describe their own brand, how can we send it to the world and expect someone else to understand it?
Don’t be nervous! This is not something that’s hard to achieve or that requires a lot of knowledge. You do need to know your customer very well and work from there while you fix your brand. Think about it like this: if you were to redecorate a room, are you traditional, innovative, creative, young, classic, minimalist, professional, funloving, sporty, etc.? When you decorate something, you want to feel good in that place and for that, it will need to show a lot of your personality when you select the furniture, color palette and decorations. So, if you were to decorate a traditional bedroom for an older or very serious person, you probably wouldn’t select pop art and bright colors; you would likely go with neutrals and more conservative and classic decor.
It is the same with your brand! Think about your brand as the whole decoration pack for a specific group of people and you will be able to see if your brand matches your target audience – and why.
If you want to know more about brand architecture and how to improve your brand, give us a call today at Twelve12 and our branding team in Orange County will be happy to help you.