In the I-HR newsletter, moderator Beth N. Carvin asked if the idea of branding could be used effectively to improve productivity and retention. This is an expanded version of my response to her question:
Yes, I think you can use the idea of branding as a tool for improving employee productivity and retention.
Let's approach it from the perspective of a manager communicating with his or her subordinates. If the manager sets out to build a positive reputation over time and over a series of messages, then we might say he or she is embarking on a branding exercise. It's an attempt to create the trust and goodwill necessary to have messages both accepted and acted upon.
Marketers branding products do essentially the same thing: send out a series of messages designed to build a positive reputation over time.
And, when messages to employees generate trust and goodwill, then communication sent after that can be used communication to increase productivity and retention.
For example, in publishing employee newsletters for my corporate clients, I've always emphasized the need to provide articles and information of value to readers (the employees). By doing that, employees come to see their company newsletter as a useful resource, and not management propaganda. That, in turn, opens the door to asking employees to do or not do certain things (safety measures, for instance), and getting a positive response from them.
In a sense, referring to this process of building trust and goodwill as branding might be just a semantic exercise. However, I think that when we put a name to a process, we make it easier to comprehend and follow. And, that may be the real value of referring to branding in the context of employee communication.
Let's also look at this issue in a broader sense, too, because it's important to remember the different roles of communication in productivity and retention. Three generic types of communication figure in our thinking: instructional, contextual, and motivational.
Instructional communication provides information that helps others do their jobs more efficiently. Contextual communication provides the bigger picture, which should help recipients do their jobs more effectively. And motivational communication shows recipients the benefits of responding as we've requested.
To build trust and goodwill, the instructional communication should be accurate, timely, and functional. The people who receive our messages should be able to act on them, and know they can act on them with confidence.
The contextual communication should be relevant and helpful. It should put the issue into a framework that helps others understand how specific tasks or issues fit into the strategic flow.
And, the motivational communication should focus on them, not on you. It should show them the importance of their contributions.
In summary, think of branding as the process of building trust and goodwill, a process that makes it possible to increase productivity and retention through communication.
Branding and Employee Communication
Branding Cures Several Marketing Headaches
Are you trying to attract business with a no-name, no-differences-from-competitors company identity? Branding your company, when done well, not only helps you stand out in a field of similar choices, it also helps you avoid price-shoppers and deliver results to customers that inspire loyalty. Here’s why.
Headache #1: Competitors all seem the same
Put yourself in the mindset of a customer and go shopping for a company that provides what you sell. Do all the options seem pretty much the same? If so, create a memorable difference with branding. Stand for something that will set you apart.
Be faster, longer-lasting, more traditional, more fashionable, more child-friendly, organic, more international, etc. When you put this difference front and center in your company name and tag line, you become the best and possibly even the only choice for your target market.
Some companies make their mission statements available to customers as a way to communicate their operating values. Others embody their values and differentiation in advertising symbols, slogans, signage and store design. Still others rely on media coverage to get across their distinctive message. Some convey what they stand for in their customer newsletter. Standing for something specific (not something vague like "quality") helps your company say “So what?” to all the competition.
Another way to brand the company is to choose a personality for it and embody that personality in everything they do. Here are some options:
· sincere and friendly
· off-beat, fun to be with or exciting
· adventurous or artistic
· careful and finicky
· glamorous and sophisticated
· the strong, silent type
· brash and even slightly irritating
· motherly and considerate
From the company's personality can flow ad campaigns, kinds of special events to sponsor, company colors and typefaces, corporate gift selection, even the talent chosen to record company voice mail messages. With a personality, you’re more memorable than bland competitors.
Headache #2: Price-shoppers and tire-kickers waste your time
When you make pricing part of your branding, you cut down on the number of "tire-kickers" you need to deal with. This occurs whether your prices are high, low or medium. You also rope in many of the shoppers who might otherwise make incorrect assumptions. Some go away without asking your prices because they figure they couldn't afford you. Some guess that your prices are low and conclude that therefore you couldn't be very good at what you do. In the latter case, proclaiming your high prices increases business because clients willing to pay for the best now know you fall into the category of elite firms they want to patronize.
Above all, make sure your pricing fits with the other components of your image. If you charge in the low range, your stationery, logo and delivery trucks shouldn't look classy and expensive. If you charge in the high range, you should be giving out higher quality company gifts and promotional items.
Another good solution for companies bothered by price shoppers and customers seemingly without brand loyalty is to lean more heavily on benefits differentiating them from competitors. The classic definition of business benefits reminds us that people don't really buy 3/4-inch drills, they buy 3/4-inch holes. They don't buy an item or a service, but the result produced by the item or the service.
If you're a financial planner, you really deliver not financial advice but peace of mind and the ability to live well in the future or take care of one's family. If you're a rental car agency, you really deliver not a rental car but the ability to drive around freely when someone's own car is being repaired or is far away back home. Building these benefits into your company name and tag line is smart.
Headache #3: Customer service doesn’t inspire loyalty
Branding can give your organization an image to live up to and therefore help your employees perform better than with a bland identity. This worked so well for Domino’s Pizza when their identity rested on delivery within 30 minutes that they had to pull back on this promise after a jury held the company responsible for an accident caused by a driver rushing to deliver within the promised time. To avoid that pitfall, run your new proposed branding past a lawyer trained to think in terms of worst case scenarios.
Keep tabs on how well your employees are living up to a customer service promise by engaging a "mystery shopper" or "mystery patient" (for hospitals), who interacts with the company incognito and then files a report on their experience. Many of the faults that turn up in such reports can be easily corrected once identified, leading to an improved image.
You can also directly solicit feedback from clients through a survey form. Sometimes the very act of asking for feedback improves your firm's image, since it shows you care about customers' experiences.
When implemented intelligently and visibly, branding sets you apart from competitors, helps free you of price shoppers and gives customers an experience that brings them back to you again and again.
Branding - do you know who you are?
There is such a lot of talk going around about branding, but what exactly is your brand and how do you use it to help you reach more people and market your products or services?
Your brand is the core of your marketing, the central theme around your products and services.
Your brand is not your Logo or your Company Name, unless of course you are Microsoft or the Yellow Pages online directory.
For people to come and hire you, or buy from you in droves, your brand needs to be crystal clear, attractive, exciting and powerful. In fact your brand needs to be powerful enough to rouse your customers into action, and at the same time it needs to actively express you, what you’re about and your uniqueness.
Once you're sure of your brand you also gain a tangible and easy way of talking to people about what you do. It makes it so much easier to do your marketing when you have it clear in your mind what it is you’re selling in the first place.
When you're creating your brand you are creating a memorable marketing message that will inspire people to take action and choose you over your competitors.
Here are five useful tips to help you find your brand:
Your Brand Tip 1
Your brand is the core of what you do. What feelings or emotions does your business inspire in you and in your customers? Did you know that peoples’ decision to buy is based on emotions, not facts?
Your Brand Tip 2
Think about how you present yourself, not just on your website but when people see you, talk to you on the phone, or read your email. Is your marketing consistently saying what you want it to? Are people getting confusing messages from you, or is it clear from the start what you do?
Your Brand Tip 3
Think like your potential customer, try to get inside their head and see your products or services from their point of view. How do they experience what you do, and how does it make them feel?
Your Brand Tip 4
What is it you do that makes you stand out from the crowd? If you don't think you do, then you need to think of a way that you can, because your brand should be somehow different from everyone else's, its not enough to be just the same as others but better.
Your Brand Tip 5
What are your best abilities, do you know your greatest strengths? Choose an unbiased person, who knows you well, to help you decide what your top attributes are; your brand should be based around your unique strengths and abilities.
Ultimately, creating a strong, memorable, compelling and meaningful brand is essential for successful marketing, and something you can do with a bit of thought, and may be a bit of help from your (unbiased) friends.
Brand Development, You Should Improve Your Branding
It might be almost blasphemous to talk about letting go of old brand equity and laying an old brand to rest, but there are times when change is needed. Reformulating and re-designing, or even overhauling an old brand can be a wise decision. If sales are flat and show no sign of growth, you’d better stop kidding yourself and hire a branding consultant.
Brands are an extremely vital element in your product and corporate value proposition. With communications so pervasive today, corporate branding and product branding are becoming fused as one. Corporate brands are increasingly powering product brands and product sales and that pose some substantial risk, as those sub brands can’t be as easily re-positioned when they falter.
Brand Culture
As time passes, culture changes, new technologies and new competing brands appear and they change the perception of value that is available in a marketplace. Old sales propositions won’t fly in the face of 20 or more other competitors offering the same benefits and features. With cultural, economic, technology changes, and corporate changes, your aging brand image and brand equity may end up doing more harm than good. Your former branding successes could leave your brand and company stuck in the past.
A good example of age related branding problem is in the realm of computer products. I recently bought a new laptop computer because my old one just couldn’t keep up with my multitasking and other work needs. At the retail store, there were computers with Intel or AMD microprocessors to choose from. The key matter wasn’t really microprocessor speed or capability. In the past, the Intel logo would have compelled me to buy only computers with their processors regardless of what other features were available in the computer. The Intel brand was clearly in a class by itself. Not this time. This AMD powered computer was low priced and had the memory I required along with other features such as a 100 Gb hard drive, high-resolution screen, numerous ports and adapters and a long lasting battery. It only weighs a couple of pounds and the AMD logo seemed to look better too. It says: AMD Turion 64 Mobile Technology. 64 bits and mobile compatibility. Why doesn’t Intel mention that on the computer they have their products in?
Laptops are hot and prices are falling. My 15-year-old nephew just bought his first laptop on eBay, since they are cheaper and more accessible. So the whole “culture” of shopping and purchasing computers has changed.
Everyone is buying high-resolution screens and I was eager to ease my eyestrain from long hours of viewing everyday. The huge hard drive was great and the laptop looks good too. The old Intel brand just didn’t have the effect it once did, and their competitor, AMD, just sold one of their processors. The laptop is working great and now Intel processors don’t dictate which computer I’ll buy.
To me, the Intel logo and brand brings back memories of old Pentium computers. This is worsened by the fact that today’s processors have changed and they are running at lower speeds. This confuses the speed benefit that Intel had its brand positioned around. The technology change in viewing screens, memory, and processor use in the computer has moved the market away from where Intel was positioned. The Intel corporate brand powers sales of their new processors, but they can call those new products anything they want and it won’t effective my decision.
What Intel needs to do now, is to associate its processors with the features and benefits that consumers and B2B buyers make decisions upon. Computer branding is not all about the processors anymore and the old Intel brand image is deeply tied to old technology. Even the brand name Pentium is associated with the computer culture of the 90’s.
Here’s the issue: the old Intel brand was so successful in 90’s that it’s trapped Intel in a time warp. Intel needs new branding that ties it to the future, not the past. To get there, they are probably going to have to jettison the past.
Google is a good example of modern branding and a brand that is not tied solely to web search engines. The brand is now diversified strategically to associate it with everything people are doing on the web. Google is omnipresent, and its brand image is solely in its relevance to the current Internet culture. Google won’t let its common search engine role diminish its branding power.
Hanging onto to Old Branding Concepts
There’s a lot of reason why brand managers, CEO's, and marketing managers resist rethinking their branding and redeveloping their brands. Most often, they don’t want to leave their comfort zone and risk a short-term blip in profit. Some don’t want to make an investment in hiring a branding consultant to look at the options. Branding experts examine a brand to discover its current problems, the culture of the marketplace, and to determine if a new brand identity or brand positioning would be fruitful. Some old brands are doomed, but most are just stale and not in tune with the target market. A branding consultant can provide crucial insight into market perception, brand value building, brand loyalty development, and to discover the brand value proposition that could breathe new life into your brands.
Branding – the myths and the realities
Branding is easier said than done. Advertising gurus the world over are still mulling over what exactly defines branding. Why does one brand score over others and why does one fail to generate customer confidence despite everything going supposedly right for it?
Is it the logo?
Is it the color?
Is it the design of your ads, your brochures, the packaging of your products/services, the look of your corporate office, etc?
Or is it the promise that a particular product or service conveys – the promise of quality, authenticity and credibility?
Hmm…….actually it is a combination of all this. But primarily, it is the 4th point which matters most – the promise! Why is it that some products or companies are able to build up high brand recall and brand loyalty in the minds of their customers?
Whereas for some others, no amount of big budget advertising and marketing expenditure can help register their product as a brand people may keep coming back to?
Quality + Marketing = Winner
It really depends on two vital things – one, the quality of your product/service and two, the promotional and marketing mix you develop to reach out to your customers.
First and foremost, if you have a good quality product with great performance, coupled with warranties and the right kind of value for money, you have the arms required to win the war. That’s step one.
Now for the ammunition, that is the promotional mix that will position it as a brand that assures reliability. It is not enough to have a slick-looking logo, a trendy color combination, a visually appealing packaging and some hip ads splashed all over the TV channels, newspapers and the internet to win over the customer.
You must first know, what exactly is required to build up brand equity for your product. As an internet guru explains, a brand is like the cherry on top of an ice-cream pie where it conveys the brand’s promise. In fact, how you brand your corporate identity goes a long way in establishing your product/service in customer conscience.
While the ice-cream scoops stand for your products and services, the apples represent your corporate environment and crust in the pie is actually your systems and how effectively they work and respond to customers.
How does a brand convey its promise?
That’s actually quite an interesting way to look at branding. This promise of the brand is conveyed through quite a few factors:
• the product’s reputation (the company’s own reputation also goes a long way here),
• its experience (particularly if the product has been in the market for some time – a perfect material for viral marketing),
• the product’s name – a catchy, easy to remember name helps
• its logo – though innocuous looking, a logo is a stamp of authority
• its positioning in the market and accordingly its pricing
• news and reviews about it – the web 2.0 world is all about sharing notes, information and experiences through social networking sites and what is written about has become vitally important
• advertising – a good tag line or slogan can race into public memory
• marketing collateral – depends upon your product/service and what media suits it best such as flyers, sales letters, direct mailers, and so on)
Developing a promotional mix depends on the character or features of the product/service. For instance for some products/services may just need a direct marketing campaign and not TVCs or print ads at all, such as home-based businesses.
Or some such as debt management services may bank on a well done corporate video production to create a brand presence in business fairs.
Watch out for my next article in which I discuss the vital ingredients needed for preparing an effective media mix, particularly in the context of interactive advertising.
Branding Your Ebiz - Creating A Name Your Customers Trust
If you want customers to spend money with you online, you have to make them feel confident they’re dealing with a legitimate business. They’re giving you their personal information, as well as their credit card number. If your website sends a clear message you run your business from home, they may not feel comfortable entrusting you with that kind of info. That’s why it’s important to create a brand your customers recognize and trust.
What’s a Brand?
A brand is what differentiates you from every other eBiz out there:
• A brand is a set of expectations you create in your customers’ minds in regards to your business. It comprises everything from the quality of your website to your customer service to your actual merchandise. More than just a name and logo, it’s your buyer’s entire experience with your company.
• A brand is a reputation. A good brand adds value to your product—buyers expect a certain quality based on the brand name. If they recognize your brand and have a good association with it, they’re likely to choose it over other similar products, even if it costs a little more.
Your Branding Should Be Consistent
Explains Eileen Parzek, of http://SohoItGoes.com, “Consistently use a brand design throughout all your different marketing material… It gives a sense you’re bigger than you really are.” You need to figure out what your marketing message is and carry that message through all your promotional materials. If you have business cards, press kits, and print materials, they should reflect the design of your website from the fonts and color palette to the logo and tagline.
Your format should also persist through all of your web pages—the layout, the tone of your copy, even your navigation. Having a unified, professional-looking web store can go a long way towards building a customer’s confidence in you. A well-designed site gives your business credibility—customers associate the quality of your site with the quality of service and merchandise they expect from you.
Your Branding Should Be Continuous
Your brand should evolve to reflect the changing needs of your target market—branding’s an ongoing process. It begins, ideally, in your business’ startup phase and continues through the life cycle of your business. Says Parzek, “[Branding] is not something you ever stop doing. You have to be conscious of it at all times.”
Body Branding is Not Free
Advertisers are always trying to think of new ways and new places to display company logos. Now there’s a new advertising medium to throw in the mix: people’s bodies.
Remember the 20-year-old Nebraskan who auctioned off his forehead on E-Bay for a month’s worth of advertising space? The winning bid went to SnoreStop, who paid $37,375 to put their logo on the web designer’s face for 30 days, got quite a bargain for all the exposure they received. Consider it this way: a full-page ad for one day in the Wall Street Journal costs more than $23,000. One full-page ad in American Idol: The Magazine costs $45,000.
But here’s an interesting tidbit about a woman who is yet to receive payment for literally branding herself with a company logo.
The logo placement occurred when a 27-year-old woman fell off her skateboard in Manhattan onto a manhole cover that was searing with heat. The hot metal, which is located over a steam pipe, burned the woman just above the buttocks and on her left arm with part of the Consolidated Edison (Con Edison) logo, a New York utility company. The woman said she heard her skin sizzling and saw and ‘O’ and ‘N’ etched in her skin, according to an article on allheadlinenews.com. The scarring is permanent.
The woman has sued Con Edison for negligence, carelessness, recklessness, and culpable conduct. No word yet on how much Con Edison will have to pay for the partial advertisement.
Branding to Build Your Business
What is branding? Branding in short is the practice of using your business name and logo in marketing communications allowing for the consumer to better recognize you for what products you offer in the market place.
Branding does more than create recognition however, branding builds trust and loyalty among the consumer market allowing you to penetrate future markets with new product offerings more successfully. Successful branding campaigns can expect more sustained customer relationships and sales over longer periods of time than companies not implementing branding strategies.
The largest and most successful companies in the world all have used branding in their marketing communications building their brand equities into billions of dollars. Tide, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Nestle, Ford, Boeing, Kellogs, and many more have all successfully built their brand to the point where consumers know them by heart and trust their products enough to purchase them without debate to the safety or quality of the product.
Branding is a long term strategy for any business but should be strategized and implemented into marketing communications from the very beginning. If your a small brick and mortar business in a small town or city you should still follow branding strategies just the same as if you were a national franchise or corporation. There is no excuse to not use a branding strategy for your business and that includes small e-commerce websites. If you own a business, you need to brand.
Starting a branding strategy does not entail a giant budget or advertising campaign if your low on company funds. You can start small in various different ways, some ways you may have already started using.
1.)Voice mail – Every business has a voice mail for when there is nobody there to answer. Make sure you use your company name in the voice mail twice. Once in the introduction and secondly in the end.
An example might be “Hello, you have reached 1.) Company Z. We're sorry but we are unable to answer your call at this time, please leave us your name and number and we'll get back to you as soon as possible. Thank you for calling 2.) Company Z. Have a great day.”
This reinforces your company name building recognition helping condition consumers and customers to remember your name from all the other names out there and that is what you want to do in ALL communications.
2.)Mail Communication – This section will apply to email as well. Use your company name and logo at the top of all letter heads including email. Reinforce your company name in the signature area after your messages as well. Example:
Sincerely,
Bob Smith
Company Z, Inc.
www.companyz.com
Constant reinforcing of your brand is crucial to the life of your business and once again you see the use of the company name used twice. Once in the Letterhead and once after the signature. Beginning and end.
3.)Phone Numbers – Local or national, a custom number can help do wonders when it comes to sales call centers or retail locations. While finding a custom vanity toll free number can prove to be somewhat costly, you can still use local vanity numbers for your location even if your a national business. You won't always have a short business name but by using industry words mixed with abbreviations for your company you can help reinforce brand image just the same. Be creative and you may find some easy and fun ways to implement your company name or niche into an easily recognizable phone number.
4.)Advertising – In all advertising focus on how to include your company name and logo. Audio advertisements use your name twice. Once in the beginning and once at the end minimally. Display and television ads always make sure you company name or logo is always present and visible. Display ads will include online banner advertising as well. Contextual advertising always use your company home page in the visible URL section to simplify the viewing of your company name. The extension of the URL should not be present as it will distract the eyes from the home page name.
There are many other ways to add branding strategies into your marketing communications, just remember that every mention of your company name is another way to reinforce company image to the consumer bringing recognition for your industry equaling into future sales. Anything that involves your company communication to consumers, businesses, employees, press, peers, etc. should always be branded. You will find that a good branding strategy can carry your business a long way and strengthen your company for future markets and endeavors.
Three Key Ingredients in Branding
Personal Branding can be the most influential tool for success in your self-marketing toolkit. You can identify, package and sell who you are to build a personal brand that results in business growth, influence, and income.
Here are three key things you need to develop a strong personal brand:
1. Get clear on your personal strengths, talents, values, and core area of expertise. Understand how you connect best with people. Consider what your target audience needs and wants, and then identify the value and the experience that you can deliver to meet those needs and wants. Communicate in ways that reach into the hearts and minds of your target audience and connect with their core values and deepest desires.
2. The personal branding process is about having self-awareness of your strengths and talents, and then letting everyone know about your gifts, talents, and experience. It's about giving a clear impression of who you are, what you value, what you're committed to, and how you can be counted upon to act. Your branding statement must provide a clear, concise view of your unique set of strengths and tell why you can do it better than anyone else. You need to be able to state clearly and unequivocally why you are different than everyone else, and what services you offer that make you unique and set you ahead of your competition.
3.Consistency is one of the keys to building a strong personal brand. Be aware of being consistent in every interaction you have, both in what you say and how you respond.
Establishing a Professional Brand is absolutely critical to long term, sustainable business growth. In an overcrowded marketplace, if you're not standing out, then you're invisible. Branding your products and services will give you an edge over your competition and enhance your value to your target market.
What Constitutes Branding?
You may have heard something about 'branding' in regards to marketing, but perhaps you've wondered what that means exactly.
Some people think branding is like positioning, but it is different. The main difference is that positioning is a fluid concept. In other words, you can position yourself at different times in different markets as different things. Branding is more set in stone- it's a hard-core recognition factor.
Branding is more about the following of rules because if you don't follow those rules, things don't look the same and people won't remember you. When you put out your marketing pieces, you want to create a similar look and feel so that people remember you. And you want that similar look and feel on every thing you put out.
The good thing is that you get to make the rules...colors the same, style of lettering the same, logo etc. And there is some flexibility as long as you follow the rules. You can't go too far out of bounds, but you can change some things within the frame of what others can still recognize.
Branding in your marketing has to make you feel something. A technology company can't have an old style font - you might not think they were very far advanced.
Branding is just like the old coat of arms that families used to have connected with their name. It would instill respect, fear, and wealth - whatever. Likewise, a country's flag gets people to feel a certain way about their country.
Think about what message you want to portray. What do you want recipients of your promotion to think about you? What image of your company do you want to put out there? That is your brand. When people see you continually as one thing, they begin to expect the same from you and they get used to you.
Ten Branding Musts
Branding is not just your logo or tagline or the "look" and "feel" of your marketing communications. Branding is the sum total of your customer's experiences and perceptions of your products, services, and employees. In actuality, your brand is what everyone else thinks your company and product are - it's what people say about your company behind your back.
A branding strategy is the beginning of all customer contact behavior. When the budget allows, the branding strategy can become the basis for better advertising communications such as multi-media advertising, direct mail, trade shows, and expanded public relations.
The undertaking of branding may seem scary; however there is strong proof that branding is worth the effort. Listed here are some benefits of a strong brand.
*Branding is what gives your company value and separates you from your competitors.
*Enhanced perceived value allows for top pricing and shelters you from price competition.
*Branding will provide protection in times of negative press.
*A strong brand enables you to launch new products and services more quickly and cost effectively.
Your brand will come to pass with or without your effort. Branding and managing a brand is tough work. Here are some no-nonsense guidelines on how to get started.
*To succeed, you'll need to get everyone involved from top management on down.
*Research the successful competitors. Study their communications and how they position themselves.
*Study what values are most significant to customers. Develop a questionnaire and interview key customers and prospects.
*Develop a strategy from the information you gathered. It must be achievable and differentiating.
*Leverage brand strategy by integrating marketing communications. Check for consistency of all communications from every department. Sending a cohesive message will build brand equity.
*Evaluate and measure performance. Make changes as needed but be patient.