Building brand power goes beyond creating a great logo. Companies with strong brands drive customer loyalty and revenue while differentiating themselves from competitors in the market. With so many businesses trying to establish themselves, taking the time to define and build your brand can give you a significant competitive advantage. Let’s look at five ways to build your brand power to help you stand out in the marketplace and drive customer loyalty.
1. Conduct Effective Market Research
When it comes to research, the more you do the more value you will receive. Answering the following questions encourages you to understand your brand better and helps you set benchmarks for measuring growth.
- Are customers aware of your brand?
- How are you perceived in the market?
- How do customers view your brand compared to others?
- What characteristics do people associate with your brand?
Additionally, conducting competitive analysis allows you to monitor how your competitors do business, including how they speak to their customers, how much they charge for their products and services, and what marketing tactics they use to promote their products, services, and overall brand.
Effective market research helps you identify your brand’s unique value proposition, establishing what sets your products and services apart from your competitors. You can also determine what your competitors are doing right and where they’re falling short to identify opportunities in the marketplace that you can take advantage of. Lastly, reading competitors’ customer reviews helps you learn what’s missing in their products or services that you can add to your brand to make it more marketable.
2. Focus on a Unique Value Proposition
Your brand is a promise to your customers, so it must convey a unique value that stands out. Think about why your customers choose your products or services over your competitors. Ask yourself:
- What problem does it solve for your customers?
- How does it benefit them?
- What qualities set your brand apart from its competitors?
A value proposition is one of the most important conversion factors and can make or break a customer investing in your brand. Therefore, creating a value proposition that accurately represents your products and services and clearly shows why your brand is the best choice is essential. A unique value proposition is critical to understanding the customer experience. An excellent value proposition differentiates your brand from competitors, aligns your product or services with your target audience’s needs, and attracts your ideal customers.
3. Develop a Strong Personality, Voice, and Tone
If you want to connect with your customers deeper, you must breathe life into your brand beyond its logo. When you think about good brands such as Apple, Nike, and Harley Davidson, they create a brand that customers love by having an authentic voice and a clear tone. One survey found that 80% of consumers need to trust a brand before buying from them. To build trust, you must craft an authentic brand that connects with consumers.
It’s critical to align your brand’s personality, messaging, and imagery with the customers you want to attract. When you develop your personality, think of voice and tone as separate tools. Brand voice is the language, style, and personality used in written content. When you start to develop your voice, ask yourself:
- If my brand were a person, who would it be?
- Is there a person or character that behaves the way my brand would?
- If I were to hire a spokesperson, who would speak to my brand best?
Once you clearly understand who your brand is, it’s easier to visualize how your brand would speak and behave. After answering these questions, you can craft the tone by mimicking the language and style of those existing characters. Your brand’s tone will change depending on what you’re trying to accomplish, but it should maintain common tone consistencies. Ask yourself:
- If my brand was a person, what would its role be?
- Would my brand be an authority figure, mentor, friend, or someone else?
- How would my brand act on an average day?
- How would my brand sound in a crisis?
Even though your tone will change from piece to piece, personifying your brand will help you hear your tone in different contexts.
4. Create an Emotional Connection
Humans innately want to connect with others, so you should never underestimate the power of emotions. Building an emotional connection will improve the effectiveness of your brand, helping you develop strong customer loyalty by being empathetic towards people’s feelings. Ask yourself:
- What are your customers’ experiences with your brand, products, or services?
- Is there a topic that your audience wants to hear your opinion on?
- Do you have any unique tips that you’ve used in the past to connect with your audience emotionally?
Understanding your customers’ needs and what encourages them to take action fosters an emotional response. Your brand evokes a strong emotional response if you can make your audience laugh or cry. Tapping into your audience’s emotions increases your chance of standing out in the marketplace.
5. Deliver Consistent Communication
Once your brand develops a strong personality, voice, and tone, you must implement it consistently through every customer interaction across various digital marketing channels. You never want to sound like two different brands online or off. Your brand communications should remain consistent whether you’re communicating with customers in person or through digital marketing channels. Ask yourself:
- Does my messaging align with my brand’s identity?
- How does my brand’s messaging resonate with my audience across marketing channels?
- Do my customers feel connected to my brand?
Brand consistency ensures you deliver messages that align with your brand’s core values, personality, voice, and tone. Over time, customers will engrain your brand’s specific elements into their minds. Additionally, your brand will be easily recognizable across every marketing channel.
The Takeaway
Building a strong brand is less about the products and services and more about how you present yourself to your potential customers. Brand power allows you to elevate your brand above your competitors, focusing on what you have to offer in a unique way. Powerful brands take a product or service and turn it into so much more, a memorable customer experience. Brand power is derived from leveraging your unique value proposition, which builds brand awareness and drives customer loyalty.