Building a successful brand takes time. There are no easy routes to success or shortcuts to save time. You might get lucky and garner widespread awareness and attention for your brand, but successful brands depend on customer loyalty. There are no shortcuts to developing relationships with consumers, creating expectations for your brand, and meeting those expectations through every customer touch point.
With that in mind, following are five factors that should always be on your mind when you’re building a brand. They should permeate through all of your brand-building and marketing initiatives.
1. Be specific
Strong brands are focused brands. Define your brand promise in specific terms so it stands out from the broad and vague promises of other brands. Then make sure your brand lives up to those specific promises.
2. Be authoritative
Define your brand promise and shout it confidently to the world. Make everyone else believe in your brand promise, too.
3. Be consistent
Define your brand promise and how you want to communicate that message to consumers (i.e., your brand message and brand image) and don’t waiver. Conflicting messages confuse consumers causing them to turn away from your brand in search of one that makes them feel secure. Consistency is vital to brand building success.
4. Be honest
Consumers are not naive, and they appreciate straightforward, transparent messaging. Don’t promise the world and not live up to those promises. Honesty trumps pie-in-the-sky claims any day of the week.
5. Be relentless
Persistence will be rewarded. Get your brand messages out there and then get them out again and again. Consumers see and hear a myriad of messages everyday, and it’s easy for yours to get lost in the clutter. Don’t give up too soon.
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Susan Gunelius is the author of 10 marketing, social media, branding, copywriting, and technology books, and she is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She also owns Women on Business, an award-wining blog for business women. She is a featured columnist for Entrepreneur.com and Forbes.com, and her marketing-related articles have appeared on websites such as MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, TodayShow.com, and more.
She has over 20 years of experience in the marketing field having spent the first decade of her career directing marketing programs for some of the largest companies in the world, including divisions of AT&T and HSBC. Today, her clients include large and small companies around the world and household brands like Citigroup, Cox Communications, Intuit, and more. Susan is frequently interviewed about marketing and branding by television, radio, print, and online media organizations, and she speaks about these topics at events around the world. You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+.
