A Brand is so Much More Than a Logo or its Visual Elements

David Ogilvy, the father of advertising described, which in-turn defined branding as “the intangible sum of a product’s attributes: its name, packaging, and price, its history, its reputation, and the way it’s advertised.” In essence, your brand is everything your company is made of. It’s what you stand for and it’s what you promise to deliver to your customers.

Today, everything is branded. Everything we consume is a brand. The experiences we partake in are brands. The people that inspire and delight us are brands. Let’s face it, brands have become an integral part of our society. As consumers, we use branding elements to help determine why something may be different, perhaps even better for us than another. As individuals, we use the brands we are associated with to find and fit in with like-minded individuals.

Great brands will always be problem solvers and people pleasers. They find a way to fulfill a need, whether it be physical, physiological or simply to offer someone a sense of belonging. They clearly communicate to the public, this is why they exist. This is their purpose for being in business. The best brands tell someone what they can expect from their company and define what sets their offerings apart from their competitors.

The trick with branding is to attract and retain loyal customers by always delivering a product or service that is aligned with what your brand promise is. Successful branding is about delivering that promise while still staying agile and constantly moving in line with market trends and emerging channels. I am here to help you create the meaning, message and momentum for your brand.

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Branding is a Blend of Strategy, Insights and Creative to Make Insanely Loyal Customers

The difference between marketing and branding is branding is the compilation of your company’s characteristics, values, products and/or services. Marketing is the process of communicating your ‘brand’ to the world. Your brand will always remain in the hearts and minds of a customer long after a marketing campaign has come and gone. Because of this brand development should precede any and all marketing efforts as branding ultimately encourages someone to not just buy a product but to continue a relationship with your brand on a long-term basis.

I know finding a branding partner that can help you navigate through the ever-changing business landscape can be overwhelming. You’ll want someone that can deliver on both brand strategy and design at an equally high level that’s in line with your brand’s bigger picture. I understand that there is always a deeper business reason motivating a creative project. I’ll help you realize and accomplish your visions and goals by first discussing your problems, fears, wants, hopes and dreams.

I’m well-versed across many channels and mediums and will be able to imagine and implement ideas across various touch-points. This is all done to help create a seamless experience for your customer, which will ultimately help build your brand and grow your business.

Brand Development Services

Brand Assessment & Goal Setting

ASSESSMENT

Every successful strategy starts out with an honest internal full market assessment to evaluate the environment in which you operate in. A full review of your company’s financial health, market trends and a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) will help clarify what’s working.

VISION SETTING

I said it before and I’ll say it again; If you don’t know where are going, how will you know how to get there? Setting a vision for where the company is headed allows the key players to have a clear understanding of their purpose as well as help them stay on the chosen path when the time comes.

GOAL SETTING

Without goals, your vision will never become a reality. Setting goals helps to answer that ever important question “how will you know how to get there?”. When setting goals it’s not just about figuring what you want for your company, it’s about understanding the logistics needed to reach those goals.

STRATEGY SETTING

Strategies change as a business moves through various cycles. A growth strategy for young companies looking to build upon a recent success in a stable or thriving market will be different from a company losing market share that needs to pivot. With insights and goals in hand, we’ll help set the strategy.

DEFINING YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE

Your brand will never be able to appeal to all the different consumers in the marketplace. And, even if you had a brand with wide-appeal, with the influx in advertising costs, no one can afford to target everyone anyway. It is just too expensive to try to reach everybody these days. Even mass-market global brands are re-imagining their marketing strategies by acquiring small, niche and sometimes homegrown companies to extend their reach by dipping into smaller, more defined segments.

When a brand markets to a target audience, it allows that brand to focus its marketing dollars and messages to a specific audience who is more likely to buy from you. Having a defined, targeted audience will help you prioritize your efforts and allocate the proper resources into initiatives which will have the greatest impact on sales and growth.

Knowing your target audience will also help you build and improve the brand, the product and the experiences around the wants, needs and desires of your target customer. Having a customer-centric company is more profitable than companies who have to run out and spend most of their resources on finding new customers to replace the ones they had, but lost. While sales and growth initiatives are usually aligned with finding new customers, customer retention is the best way to increase and maintain profits as the cost to keep a current customer is much lower than the cost to acquire a new one.

TARGET AUDIENCE

Customers are the lifeblood of a business. Without them, any business, no matter how great it is, will fail. Customers allow us to exist. And they know it. This is why defining and finding the right target audience is key for every brand. Because of this, I collect, compile and analyze customer data, market research and competitor analysis to pinpoint the demographic, psychographic and behavioral characteristics of your target audience and ideal customer.

CUSTOMER PERSONAS

Once I understand who your target audience is, I will begin to learn everything I can about their specific buying habits. I work through the entire life-cycle of your current consumers (if available) from identifying who they are, where they live, what are their habits, behaviors, interest and what drives their buying trends.

SEGMENTATION

People have different wants and needs, and because of that, they will respond to messages based on their personal desires. By understanding exactly who your customers are,  how they may differ from each other and where they ‘hang out’ will help me create tailored, segment campaigns that will appeal to a specific niche audience.

FINDING THE RIGHT CHANNEL

One of the biggest challenges companies face today is finding the new customers. Knowing who your target audience is one thing, finding them is a different story. With so many channels to reach B2C customers on and so many barriers to finding appropriate B2B buyers, it’s no wonder that finding ideal customers is one of companies biggest pain points. We use research, insights and an unbelievable amount of trial and error to test theories and to find your appropriate audience in real life.

Crafting a Communication Strategy

A communication strategy is a tool used to help organizations align their business goals with their marketing goals while focusing on reaching a predetermined set of results. It helps to identify what the core company’s message is, and it helps to determine if that message will resonate with the core audience. This is all done to drive purchasing decisions and build brand loyalty.

Your communication strategy will be the written plan, or roadmap, that describes the project, identifies the business objectives and defines the specific deliverables. It outlines the desired customer response that will solve the business challenge (awareness, sales, etc). It will include a target customer definition, profiles and should capture the essence of the message your company wants to distribute. All of this should be consistent with your brand’s overall strategy and have the ability to solve the brands business challenges.

SITUATIONAL
ANALYSIS

It takes a combination of solid insights and well-developed assets to execute a successful marketing campaign. Because of that, a situational analysis is the first step to building a successful communication strategy. This is done by conducting an in-depth review of all your current communication activities, the overall insights used to create those messages and the creative assets used to execute.

COMMUNICATIONS
OBJECTIVES

Defining the practical and measurable communication tactics needed to help you achieve your corporate goals is the next step in crafting your communications plan. These objectives will help you raise your brand’s visibility and add value to your organization. It will include suggested activities and initiatives to generate and support sales, create and build relationships, increase brand awareness and position.

BENEFITS &
MESSAGING

How you communicate ‘who you are’, ‘why you exist’ and ‘why a customer should choose you over a competitor’ is a messaging strategy. Well-crafted messages will highlight your unique (and true) benefits, target your key audiences, support your mission and highlight your value. An underlining keyword strategy allows your messages to be ‘found’ by the right people, at the right time.

CHANNELS,
PLAN & COSTS

Once the objectives and messaging are determined, a calendar of activities with target audiences will be defined. Channels will be identified, budgets will be set and the metrics to measure success will be created. This will be a living, breathing document which can be affected by external circumstances such as a crash in the stock market, new regulatory oversight or a new competitor in your space.