"You can't build a great building on a weak foundation." - Gordon Hinckley
Establishing a solid brand from start to finish is beneficial for both the business as well as the customer. Ensuring that you are telling the right story to the right people gives you a much higher opportunity for success.
Our awesome team at NWPC Marketing Solutions has identified the 4 main components of building a solid brand.
#1 - BRAND
Your identity, your story, who you are.
Branding begins with the essence of who you are - your business values and how you provide value to your clients. How your employees treat customers, and how you treat your employees. Broken down, this is the deepest level of your operation, and it's VITAL to accurately display your identity.
After you establish who you are it's time to start focusing on how you want to be seen. Design elements such as logos, color palettes, and mottos invoke emotions when they are associated with a solid brand and are also much more memorable.
#2 - MARKETING
How you tell your story.
Once you have your brand identity and design elements, it's time to show them off. Although there are many marketing channels around today, we like to break them up into 2 major categories: Digital and Physical Marketing
• Digital: The #1 digital marketing tool is a solid website because nowadays it is your digital doorstep and the #1 pre-qualifier prospects use to verify that they want to do business with you. After you establish an awesome website, it's time to utilize other applications such as Facebook, Google, Instagram, and Twitter.
Having an educated marketing team in your corner can pay off big - finding the right fit for your brand amongst the hundreds of digital marketing platforms will ensure that you are getting your message out efficiently and effectively to the right audience.
• Physical: Physical marketing includes such items as commercial printing, direct mail, promotional products, and branded apparel. Although we live in a digital-oriented world, it's still difficult to compete with marketing items you can touch and feel. Effective use of physical marketing materials provides further reinforcement of your brand and targeting can be dialed in just as accurate as digital marketing.
There is always buzz that physical marketing has taken a backseat to digital platforms - our experts have identified that that is simply not true. You can't have one without the other, and the ability to find the right balance between the two is extremely valuable to your brand.
* Simply put: Effective marketing practices combined with an accurate brand identity will drive the right traffic to your business.
#3 - SALES
Your brand and your marketing efforts are working, now it's time to make the sale!
At this point, your branding and marketing should be doing a good job of driving relatively pre-qualified traffic to your business. This is when it's very important that your employees understand and buy-in to your brand. Your sales process should be an efficient system that converts interested prospects into buying, and happy, customers.
#4 - REPUTATION
What are people saying about your brand?
Perhaps the single most important asset you can have is your reputation. When you are busy focusing on marketing and sales, monitoring your reputation can sometimes fall to the wayside - this is a major mistake.
Reputation management has become a major component of the services we provide to our clients. In the digital age, reviews and testimonials allow customers and prospects to talk about your business without you there, and that can be intimidating. However, there are many ways to be proactive in assisting unhappy customers while at the same time letting the world know about all the positive experiences your happy customers have.
NWPC Marketing Solutions is a team of marketing experts dedicated to helping you achieve your goals and BOOST your brand! Our awesome employees strive to build a culture of trust and commitment and work side-by-side with businesses as advisors and consultants.