5 Steps To Infuse Creativity Into a Brand Strategy
Brand strategy promotes more than just your product/service, it also stands for your organization, company moral, and its personality.
A thorough branding strategy helps your organization discover meaningful ways to approach business with the following factors for consideration: competitive positioning, pricing model, website(s), sales material & tools, messaging, corporate identity, customer relationship management, trademarks, copyrights, and company holdings.
In the initial phases of your branding strategy, it is important to allow yourself some level of creative direction to position your company in the marketplace.
Here is why!
In order to capture market share, your target audience must be able to identify with your company. Consider the following such as your competitors marketing/advertising presentation, sales materials, messaging, corporate identity…etc.
You should ask yourself the following questions:
- How have they creatively positioned the brand?
- Are they visually demonstrating their capabilities and core competencies?
- Is there a visual meaning you can find within their corporate identity?
- What about the color scheme, how does it relate to color theory?
Step 1: Developing your brand with emotional impact
It is human nature that drives much of our decision making, especially when it comes to selecting a brand name. For example, Apple’s innovative approach with the release of the iPod, iPhone, and the iPad. They single handedly designed a unique selling proposition, and conveyed advertising messages that created an emotional impact and benefit. How many people do you know that get excited about Apple’s latest product innovation?
Kick Start Questions: Why would my target market purchase our product/services? What is the emotional response I want them to have upon purchase?
Step 2: Define Your Brand
Your brand should consider the qualities that can define an individual. Such qualities include but are not limited to the following: personality, voice, character. traits, and mannerism. It is important to outline a positioning statement that can be utilized in various mediums for your company. Select colors, fonts, and visual elements that match the personality of your brand. Finally, decide how your employees will interact with prospects or customers to convey the personality of your brand. Depending on the business, brand personalities can be conveyed with uniforms, dress code, code of conduct, and training.
Kick Start Question: What are the personal qualities of my brand and how can I best convey these qualities to my customer?
Step 3: Create Unique Marketing Messages
Use steps 1 and 2 to craft unique marketing messages for your brand. The focus should convey messages that not only create an emotional responses but also portray the more human-like qualities.
At this stage, it is important to write a brand stylization manual. Take the time to document the requirements of voice, tone, style, and vocabulary – such that the marketing messages are consistent. Consider providing a few examples for reference.
Marketing messages include but are not limited to your elevator pitch, market positioning statement, tag-line/slogan, mission statement, as well as various marketing materials.
Kick Start Question: What tone, voice, style, and vocabulary are best suited for presenting your brand?
Step 4: Sales Process
In order to stay in business, you need to have sales to ensure both stability and growth. This measure should be evaluated in greater depths, than what is addressed in this post. This step serves as an introduction for your potential sales process.
Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, consider how your customer will find your product/service. A sales process is defined as a series of steps that need to be followed from initial contact to the point of purchase.
This process maybe as simple as the following example:
1. Prospect responds to campaign and requests more information about your product/service
2. A sales rep calls the prospect and furthers the discussion
3. An in-person meeting is scheduled
4. Your team submits a proposal
5. Your prospect agrees to your bid and and signs the contract
Kick Start Questions: How does your prospect go about a purchase? How do you want the shopping experience to be for your prospect? What are the touch-points that the prospect will interact with? What is your sales process? How can you innovate or improve your sales process to maximize revenue?
Step 5: Corporate Identity & Visual Demonstration
Your corporate identity is an extension of your brand, in addition to your logo, business cards, envelopes, letterheads, mailing labels, email templates, fax covers, proposal templates, invoice/statements, memos, signage, and promotional items. You get the idea.
Each of the aforementioned is a touch-point with your core market and should be carefully developed to address the company’s personal qualities that are to be carried out through a centralized message.
Kick Start Question: How can you effectively design each medium to communicate with your market, while simultaneously building brand equity?
Building a brand strategy can take weeks, because it must be planned carefully placing creative strategies as a priority. Companies often hire design firms or advertising agencies because of the creative nature that is involved. Contact Creative Intellects should you be interested in a proposal from our firm. We would be happy to discover new and creative possibilities for your business.
The Power of Call to Action
A call to action or CTA can be summarized as a marketing message that includes a very finite and specific appeal to your target audience. In other words, your goal is to ensure that the audience takes the action following the receipt of the intended message. A call to action can be utilized in print, radio, outdoor, and television advertising. However, it is very commonly used in Internet marketing strategies that are tailored to specific audiences.
Why Create a Call to Action?
Advertising has two primary components. One is to get the marketing message in front of your audience, and the second is to get them to act upon it. Both of these elements can allow for a return on investment. We have outlined a few techniques to create your own ‘call to action’ that will have your telephones ringing, web conversations increasing, and finally your ability to innovate your profit margins with real time sales graphs.
Trial/Introductory Period:
Persuasive techniques indicate that allowing a user to try a service or product throughout an introductory time period can build loyalty quickly and help to establish credibility without the feeling of the classic buyer’s remorse.
No ‘Risk’ Purchase:
Various audiences seek out opportunities for the ‘no risk’ purchase in the event that he/she tries your product/service. Inform your audience about the simple cancellation policy within the first 15 or 30 days of initial purchase.
Price Increase:
Large enterprise organizations have been utilizing this technique to lure in more customers. Let’s face it, everyone is searching for a great deal on purchases. Let’s think ‘Black Friday’, as it is one of the retailer’s largest marketing ploy to lure mass consumers into their stores. This applies to both your brick and mortar and online stores. Consider this principle to bring in increased sales in a short period of time.
Upgrade Offers:
The automotive and consumer electronics industry are notorious for this simple call to action. Upgrades can boost sales performances with greater added-value. Upgrades can occur as a free incentive or can be furnished with paid options. After-all who doesn’t want a top of the line product/service?
Free Giveaway:
This technique is common and can be spotted in numerous marketing campaigns. Buy a computer and get the printer for ‘free.’ Buy this acne cream and we will throw in a second bottle for ‘free.’ These offers can drive high volume of sales in a short period of time.
These techniques can be combined with creative and meaningful copy that attracts your buyer. Provide a simple marketing message that will allow for your market to really hone in and listen.
Examples:
- Contact us today for a free white paper on Wealth Management
- Get a free market analysis on your home
- Sign-up now and learn how to protect yourself from identity theft
- Learn how to choose the perfect engagement ring and avoid costly mistakes
- Purchase a season pass to avoid long lines
- Read how to fall asleep if you suffer from insomnia
- Call today and find out what the IRS looks for in your tax returns
- See how we are helping small businesses manage cash flow and become profitable
A simple call to action can demonstrate a unique capability for the business and position itself for growth. Provide a solution and phrase your ‘call to action’ with the intent to attract your intended audience.
Why Advertising Should No Longer Be Called ‘Advertising’
Advertising, at one time once was defined as the embodiment of mass media that reaches a market through communication forms of outdoor, radio, print, and television. Advertising grew as organizations found creative ways to reach their core audience, influencing their market to make a purchase for an intended product or service. Advertising became a science where brands increased marketing budgets to reach top of mind awareness with their core market.
Certainly, advertisers were happy and media companies were equally content with high billings for the media expenditure (Think Superbowl commercials). As for the brands, everyone knew about the large brands. Who didn’t? They seemed to be everywhere with a consistent message across all verticals. Whether you turned on the radio, driving down the freeway glancing at billboards, or even watching your favorite television programming, advertising was everywhere. If you happened to be reading a newspaper, or magazine, advertisers were able to get your attention there too.
For example, The McDonalds’ ‘Baa ra pum pum pum’ signature tune Is inherently recognizable, but you see it on TV and can listen to the ads on radio. The Nike commercials were created to increase product demand with athlete endorsements.
You knew it was McDonalds just from the ‘Ba ra pum pum pum’ tune they play on both TV and radio or just by the placement of their logo. You saw Nike commercials and they created product demand with a super star athletes’ endorsement. If Michael Jordan wears Nike’s, they must be great shoes.
Nothing has really changed has it? Other than brands cutting budgets with mediums such as: TV, radio, print, and billboards, they have shifted their spending on the World Wide Web. Marketing budgets are focused towards social media and mobile enabled devices so that consumers can interact with a brand. In today’s digital age, consumers are interacting with products and services; it is not about pushing the marketing messages. It is about listening and interacting with the consumers, and allowing for both negative and positive feedback. Consumers consume messages at their will; all it takes is motivation from the brand.
How is that not advertising?
Some call it interactive advertising, others say digital engagements, all of which boils down to fancy terms for on demand consumer interactions. We cannot call it advertising, as we are not ‘pushing’ our communication channels. We are now in the digital age where consumers provide us permission to ‘feed’ them our marketing messages. Content rich environments are forcing brands to re-think how their brands are being perceived. Consumers have been given the power of voice and opinion, and if the sentiments are positive then consider your brand on a consistent growth curve.
We may feed messages to the intended audience through the following mediums: video, blogs, podcasts, social media sites, and more importantly remain connected through rich Internet and and mobile applications. Consumers can interact with brands on an non-intrusive level, and for the first time in history brands must continuously innovate to remain relevant in the eyes of their audience.
If you are still advertising, think again. Shift to the digital landscape and your return on investment will be that your business is still in the market. That is what we do at Creative Intellects. We ‘feed’ branded messaging to core audiences, generate buzz and positive sentiments about the product or service. We maintain and manage web presence and keep organizations relevant in the market. If you want your business to exist in five years, contact us. We would love to hear from you and see how we may partner for growth.
