Branding in Marketing: 15 Ideas to Supercharge Your Marketing

As marketing types, we confess to having a visual bias when it comes to an expression of branding in marketing. We tend to experience a brand primarily through our eyes, by watching how it draws us into its world.
branding in marketing
Branding in marketing.
And when we’re working with clients on a creative branding project, one of our first steps is to create a book of selected pictures and graphics.
We are particularly looking for ones that create a feeling of the brand’s character.

Many brilliant ideas come to people off line, in dreams, or in surprise moments when they’re not trying to figure things out. What happen is this: the conscious, problem-solving part of our mind hits a wall and gets stuck. That’s when the problem gets turned over to our subconscious mind.

That’s how Elias Howe’s invention of the lock stitch sewing machine happened. That’s how Rene Descartes came up with the Scientific Method. And that’s what Seymour Cray, the inventor of the Cray Supercomputer, attributed his success to — the ability to walk away from a problem and let his subconscious mind do the work.

Where and when do you get your best ideas away from work?

 Check out our thoughts on creative marketing.
Do you express feelings and emotion often with your customers? Are you aware of the ways you are can influence brand attention?
Well, remember this: the more feelings and emotion you express, the more attention to your brand. And the more influence it can create.
Not rocket science is it? But without it, you will be losing attention to your brand.
As long as it’s positive, there is no such thing as too much brand attention.
If you play your cards right, you can roll all of that great attention into growth for your company.
The front line of any brand is not the advertising, packaging, or product design. It is the interaction that the customer experiences that determines the brand’s reputation to a large degree.
Instead, it is human and emotion. At the critical time when a customer engages with one of your employees, someone in your channel, or even one of your products, your brand will either be enhanced or diminished.
So you see it’s not about what you think. And people will form opinions about your business whether you want them to or not.
So why not take explicit branding actions to influence these opinions.
Makes sense then that you spend some energy making it something you believe will positively impact customers. Do not just let it happen, right?
We need to influence positive opinions by positive actions. Influence is the key operative word here.
Meaning to inspire desirable and measurable outcomes. Build an emotional connection to products and services.
Why emotional?
Simple. Most purchase decisions have critical emotional connections.
So what is changing most about branding in this new age of marketing?
It is simple and right before our eyes. It is some new channels that now exist to display your branding.
Let’s dig further into this important marketing topic.

IMPORTANCE OF BRANDING

The ‘surplus society’ has a surplus of similar companies, employing similar people, with similar educational backgrounds, coming up with similar ideas, producing similar things, with similar prices and similar quality. 
  • Funky Business Forever

 

We like to quote from this book Funky Business Forever when we discuss brands or branding with our clients.
It is not easy being different, is it? But all the more important.
One of the truths of modern business is that there is almost nothing that your competitors can’t duplicate in a matter of weeks or months.
If you have a great idea, you can be certain that somebody will copy it before long.
And not only will they follow your lead, but they may also be able to do a better job or sell the product or service at a lower price. The question then becomes, “What competitive edge do I have to offer that cannot be copied by anyone else?
The answer? Your business brand identity.
No branding, no long term differentiation. No differentiation, no long-term profitability.
Brands can activate a passionate group of people to do something like embrace an important community issue. Products or services can’t do that.
Most brands sell products or services. GM sells cars. Amazon sells books. Real estate brokerages sell homes.
Killer brands, however, satisfy the desire to get at the emotional heart of the matter.
Let’s review five killer brands and what they stand for. This is the best way to appreciate the importance of branding, emotion and most importantly, brand identity.

 JetBlue

JetBlue’s brand success centers on the achievable – the simple things. They knew these would make a difference for their guests.
This set the stage for direct TV and XM radio, the provision of first-class seats to everyone, more legroom, great snacks and high-end service at lower end pricing.
No other airline offers these value propositions. They are different, and their brand stands out because it represents those differences.
Simple. Attainable. Targeted. They deliver.

 

Nike

Nike is the name of the winged Greek goddess of victory, and the logo represents the spirit of this goddess. It is wrapped in emotional appeal.
Ask anyone who works in marketing what Nike stands for, and you’re likely to hear the same three words: “authentic athletic performance.”
Their goal is to be associated with customers that desire to be high performance, high notch athletes, achievers, and winners.

Zappos

They don’t sell shoes. They deliver that extra dose of love we all need from time to time.
There is no secret here. Zappos became Zappos because of the fanatical customer support it offered. That is the company’s brand.
As Tony Hsieh, the Zappos CEO, puts it, back in 2003, we thought of ourselves as a shoe company that offered great service.
Today, we think of the Zappos brand as about great service, and we just happen to sell shoes.

Ritz Carlton

Ritz Carlton’s desire is to create guests for life. The brand desires to represent stories of extraordinary service and random acts of kindness.
Ritz Carlton focuses their attention on impeccable service standards to separate themselves from other hotels.
What Ritz-Carlton has done so well is operationalize it so that culture and brand are one. Much like what Zappos has done.
Related post: How to Frame Marketing Messages for Optimum Engagement

FedEx

Simply put, the FedEx brand is synonymous with “reliability.”
Define your benefit to customers in the most straightforward terms possible. If your promise is reliability, then you need to offer reliability in everything you do.
Reliability from your products and services to your website and communications.  It is a peace of mind.
FedEx famously built its brand around a singular idea.
This idea means coming through when something  “absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.” 
So is this what killer branding is all about for companies?
We think so.
Not just about business. But also by making it personal for customers.
A great way to stand out.

How Creative Branding Helps Marketing

Social isn’t a new way of marketing; it’s a new way of doing business.
So what are some of the best ways different businesses use their creative branding to market their products and services?
Let’s take a close look at some the best uses of branding forces:

 Differentiation

There is no more powerful component of a brand’s force than its differentiation.
JetBlue’s brand screams out how it is different. And better. Free Direct TV and XM satellite radio on board their aircraft. Leather seats. Unlimited snacks. Great legroom.
Think of these discriminators, and you’ll think of the JetBlue brand.
examples of branding
Examples of branding.

 Unique positioning

Businesses should always be looking to reinforce their unique positioning.
Like Best Buy and its employee expertise in home electronics.
They have continued to strengthen this unique positioning with their Geek Squad and Tweep Force.

 Positive experience

The Starbuck’s experience. Certainly, defines a positive brand feeling for its target customers.
Unique products. Unique store atmosphere. Experiences to stimulate all the senses … visual, hearing, aroma, taste, and touch.

 Unforgettable

Have you ever been in a Whole Foods store? Not your average presentation style of culinary products.
Helping customer visualize the full store and product experience.  And taking grocery shopping to an interactive and collaborative new level.
Unique and unforgettable. No wonder more top of the line grocery chains has been quickly following Whole Food’s lead.

Positive image

Create positive mental images? In our opinion, no one is better at this than Zappos, the on-line shoe and clothing retailer.
Focused on delivering happiness and being the best in the business in customer service.
There is lots of value in surprising customers with random acts of kindness and special service.

 Communications

A brand communicates every time it touches the customer … the moment of truth.
It communicates with words, stories, emotions and its personality. Yes, its personality.
Marketing needs to manage all of these communications, making marketing responsible for each ˜moment of truth”.
We include everyone in the marketing realm. No one does more of this communication management or does it better than Google.
They live and breathe their personality.

Immersion

Customer immersion in the products and services.
Disney World is certainly very good at customer immersion in its entertainment themes.
Bass Pro Shop is very good at immersion in its products by setting up areas around its stores where customers can go and try their skills.
Testing their skills with Bass Pro Shop products. A unique branding style.

Giving back

As Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream brand puts it: “There is a spiritual aspect to our lives, when we give we receive.
When a business does something good for somebody, that somebody feels good about them.”
And that emotion reflects positively on the brand.

 Trust

Not many customers think about what company’s processor is on their computer.
And it is not because they don’t care. They just assume it is an Intel product.
They buy the best technology and its reflection of customer trust in the brand and its products.
Remember this last input. Markets and customers are constantly changing.
Therefore a business must constantly adapt its branding to the changes in the marketplace.

Branding in marketing …. Making your brand stand out

Be useful or entertaining … or be ignored.
We focus on five areas to make a brand stand out … just 5.
Think about the following areas for your brand.

Distinctive voice

When we’re working with clients on a creative branding project, one of our first steps is to create a book of selected pictures and graphics. Ones that create a feeling of the brand’s character.
The next step though is the expression of the brand through words. The message, we feel, is just as crucial and maybe more so.
Taco Bell isn’t a luxurious brand, and it doesn’t pretend to be. Instead, the brand’s voice is one of a trusted friend that will never fail to make you laugh.
Just look at their sauce packets, which feature unique messages that have diners staring at their condiments for far longer than normal.
Fun phrases such as, “Pick me!” and “Will you marry me?” manage to bring humor into the fast food experience.
Their Twitter account carries that same fun-loving attitude — even when their customers complain.
The account doesn’t feign pretentiousness, and by having a genuine brand voice, Taco Bell adds a human side to their marketing.
The decision to use those terms is the first step on the way to creating a corporate story that differentiates and distinguishes. It’s just that most companies never take the next step and end up sounding like every other company in their communications.
When you tell your creative branding story, create a distinctive voice with unique images … dare to create different feelings and emotion with your communities.
 
What is your favorite brand voice?

Reflect your culture

The front line of any brand in the marketplace is not the advertising, packaging, or product design. It is the interaction that the customer experiences that determines the brand’s reputation.
It is human and emotion. At that critical time when a customer engages with one of your employees or someone in your channel, your brand will either be enhanced or diminished.
Who does it the best? We would say Zappos.
We are BIG fans of Zappos and its company culture and brand.
Zappos is well-known for its culture and customer focus, and its company culture is built around maximum, personalized customer engagement.
Want to know one of the most effective examples that Zappos uses to build its brand and create reciprocity with its customers?
By surprising them!
People like getting things for free. Even more they like them even more when they are viewed as ‘favors.’
But even more, they love receiving these favors as surprises.
For instance, did you know that Zappos automatically upgrades all purchases to priority shipping?
This is without so much as even a mention on the sales or checkout page.
Why give away this sort of benefit without mentioning it?
Simple … a company like Zappos recognizes the benefits of surprising people with a next day delivery.
That’s not even mentioning the fact that this shipping creates immense goodwill between Zappos and their first-time buyers. (I still remember my first order.)
Here another great example of how Zappos uses the element of surprise so effectively.
Note this story is told by the customer:
When I came home this last time, I had an email from Zappos asking about the (returned) shoes, since they hadn’t received them.
I was just back and not ready to deal with that, so I replied that my mom had died but that I’d send the shoes as soon as I could.
They emailed back that they had arranged with UPS to pick up the shoes, so I wouldn’t have to take the time to do it myself.
I was so touched. That’s not the company practice.
Yesterday, when I came home from town, a florist delivery man was just leaving.
It was a beautiful arrangement in a basket with white lilies and roses and carnations.
Big and lush and fragrant, I opened the card, and it was from Zappos. I burst into tears.
I’m a sucker for kindness, and if that isn’t one of the nicest things I’ve ever had happen to me, I don’t know what is.
Those kinds of examples are justified by almost any cost and the cost hit Zappos takes by doing this is paid back multiple times over by the customer loyalty they generate from making people happy.
So … a company’s brand communicates every time it touches a customer.
To truly change an external brand, you must change the internal company culture that is so critical in delivering the brand experience.
In other words, brand and culture go hand in hand. You must align employee culture with business strategy.

Customers crave a consistent brand experience

Much like the user-friendly and intuitive interface enjoyed on Apple devices, the clean Apple Store design makes the space easy for consumers to navigate and find what they need.
From the employee enthusiasm that welcomes you into a store to innovations like geek chic gadgetry, all of these factors work in unison. They are all geared to deliver a brand consumer experience.
The ultimate lesson here is simple. Invest in quality internal communications and inspired brand training for your teams.
Your employees are the advocates who keep the brand promises. These promises deliver the consumer experience a brand needs to thrive.
Take advantage of what your competition forgets.
Repeat after me: “culture and brand go hand in hand.”

Customer personalization

Explore the use of customer personalization to create WOW from your customers to create a stronger market branding.
Have you ever used customer personalization to improve the experiences your customers receive from your business?
If so, have you noticed its impact on your market branding? The process of personalization is amazingly powerful.
In a study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, researchers tested the effects that mints had a control group (where no mints were given) to measure their effectiveness in increasing tips.
Think of tips as a measure of great customer experience.
The results were surprising, to say the least:
  • The first group studied had waiters giving mints along with the check, making no mention of the mints themselves. This increased tips by around 3% against the control group.
  • The second group had waiters bring out two mints by hand (separate from the check), and they mentioned them to the table (i.e., ‘Would anyone like some mints before they leave?’). This saw tips increase by about 14% against the control group.
  • The last group had waiters bring out the check first along with a few mints. A short time afterward, the waiters came back with another set of mints and let customers know they had brought out more mints, in case they wanted another.
That last group is where waiters saw a 21% increase in tips … They still were bringing out only two mints.
The researchers found that it was the perceived personalization of bringing out the second set of mints and mentioning it to customers (Hey, I thought I might see if all of you are satisfied or if someone could use an extra mint.) that made the difference.

It wasn’t the mints; it was the personalized experience that they created. It made it clear to customers that the waiter was thinking of them.
Be sure to incorporate this into your offering.
How can you follow up with customers in a personalized manner with free support, training, or reward for trying out your product or service?
The power of personalization is not only important in helping you understand how to create repeat customers.
It is also how to keep your customers incredibly satisfied and supportive of your business market branding offering.
what is branding strategy
What is branding strategy

 

Branding in marketing … brand personality

A brand personality is set of human characteristics that are attributed to a brand name.
It is something to which the consumer can relate.
An effective brand will increase its brand equity by having a consistent set of traits. This is the added-value that a brand gains, aside from its functional benefits.
The truth is many companies fail to recognize the importance of creating brand experiences through brand personality.
They bog down their online persona with boring corporate speak and industry jargon.
Or, they blow it by not keeping the experience consistent, ultimately confusing customers or making them feel as if something is amiss with the company.
 

Branding with visuals

Like creating music, creating a visual brand is subjective, highly dependent on personal aesthetics and goals.
Just as I am not a music producer, but I know good music when I hear it. I am not a visual artist, but I know good design when I see it.
As a long-time professional corporate marketer, unfortunately, I know all-too-well the importance of a well-executed, consistent visual brand.
I was spoiled. In the past, I worked with agencies and their “creatives” on logos, colors and overall visual branding.
We focused our visual branding on the tagline and visual logo.
These would represent the product on the box and printed marketing materials and giveaway product-related merchandise. Merchandise such as T-shirts, pens, and golf balls.
For any business, a brand is much more than just visuals. The visual elements are so important in marketing. Why?
  • Human beings are highly visual, and neuroscience tells us an image is more quickly recognizable than text.
  • Now more than ever, in this age of social media, visual content is king.It’s a critical element of any brand’s online presence.
  • An image expresses much about your genre and what you want to convey.

Building a branding strategy

 Stop interrupting what people are interested in, and be what people are interested in.
Your marketing plan must include a branding strategy. This is how you’ll apply your brand strategically throughout marketing over time. At its core, a good branding strategy lists the one or two most important elements of your product or service, describes your company’s ultimate purpose in the world and defines your target customer. The result is a blueprint for what’s most important to your customer.
Don’t worry. Creating a branding strategy isn’t nearly as difficult as it sounds. It builds on what we have described so far. Here’s how:

Know your target customer

As in every marketing process, you must be in the know about your target customer.
You’ve probably already gathered demographic information about the market you’re entering. But you need to think about the actual customers who will walk through your door.
Who is this person, and what is the one thing he or she ultimately wants from your product or service?
After all, the customer is buying it for a reason. What will your customer need from you?

 

What will you stand for?

How will you show customers every day what you’re all about?
A lot of small companies write mission statements that say the company will “value” customers and strive for “excellent customer service.”
Unfortunately, these words are all talk and no action.
Dig deeper and think about how you’ll fulfill your brand’s promise and provide value and service to the people you serve.
If you promise quick service, for example, what will “quick” mean inside your company?
And how will you make sure service stays speedy?
Along the way, you’re laying the foundation of your hiring strategy and how future employees will be expected to interact with customers.

Differentiate and position your brand

Before embarking on brand building, you have to take the time to differentiate it so that you can attract attention and stand out from competitors.
To differentiate your brand, you have to create a unique advantage in the mind of consumers. Advantage not merely by getting attention in brand building colors or logos or other superficial elements.
Think about the intangible qualities of your product or service, using adjectives from “friendly” to “fast” and every word in between.
Your goal is to own a position in the customer’s mind, so they think of you differently from the competition. Which word will your company own?
Once you come up with a unique value proposition, you should use a good branding strategy. One that will position your brand to help consumers see the greater value of your brand over competing ones in the market.
A new hair salon might focus on the adjective “convenient” and stay open a few hours later in the evening.
How will you be different from the competition? The answers are valuable assets that constitute the basis of your brand.

Personalize your brand

If you want your brand building campaign or brand to be successful, then you have to personalize it.
Let consumers see and experience the personality of your brand in its entirety. Look at your brand as something that a consumer wants to identify with as they would with their favorite cars, cell phones, or computers.
As you engage in brand building, you should also invite customers to be co-creators of brand values. You want them to feel that they also own it and relate to it.
When you personalize your brand, you give consumers a reason to participate and engage with your brand for a lifetime.

Be consistent

Now that you have decided your key brand attributes make sure it is clear and understood through all your communications — especially inside your company.
Don’t talk about things that don’t relate to or enhance your brand.
Added a new photo to social media? What does it mean for your company?
Does it align with your message, or was it just something funny that would, frankly, confuse your audience?
If it doesn’t tie back to your brand’s message, why do it?
 

Connect emotionally

Customers can either think rationally about your product or service, or they can think emotionally about it.
How else do you explain the person who paid thousands of dollars more for a Harley rather than buying another cheaper, equally well-made bike?
There was an emotional voice in there somewhere, whispering “Buy a Harley…open road…tough.” It’s the way the brand makes you feel.
You feel like you’re part of a larger group that’s more tight-knit than just a bunch of motorcycle riders.
Where do you think HOG came from? Harley Owners Group.

 

Reward and cultivate

If you already have people that love you, your company, and your brand, don’t just sit there!
Reward them for that love. These customers have gone out their way to write about you, to tell their friends about you, and to act as your brand ambassadors.

 

Be flexible

In this fast-changing world, marketers must remain flexible to stay relevant. On the plus side, this frees you to be creative with your campaigns.
Old Spice generated quite the buzz because it took its old brand and made it relatable to a new generation.
Old Spice still held true to its brand; they just did it in a different, buzz-worthy way that opened them to a new customer market. I’m still talking about them, and that horse left the barn long ago.
So if your old tactics aren’t working anymore, don’t be afraid to change them just because it worked in the past.
Take the opportunity to engage your followers in fresh, new ways. Are there some out-of-the-box partnerships your brand can make?
Are there attributes about your product you never highlighted? Use those to connect with new customers and remind your old ones why they love you.

Review your brand

Your brand is not static; it will go through a range of motions in its lifetime. Depending on your brand strategies, your brand will either grow in strength, or remain dormant, or recede with time.
In the brand cycle, new events, changes, and circumstances bring challenges and opportunities to enhance the value of your brand or re-establish it.
As your brand name grows, so do the responsibilities and expectations to continue with brand building.
The best way of ensuring brand growth is reviewing your activities and evaluating your successes through metrics such as levels of brand awareness and levels of engagements.
Regular reviews will help you seize and exploit new opportunities while upholding your commitment to remain true to your vision and brand strategy.
It will also help you steer your brand in the right direction and keep it relevant as you move into the future.

 

The bottom line

So you see it’s not about what you think that makes the brand. It is what consumers think and feels about you.
And people will form opinions about your business whether you want them to or not. So it is critical to take explicit branding actions to influence these opinions.
It is an essential component of your marketing foundation.

SMASHING BRAND IMAGE

                                Looking to create a smashing brand image?
Need some help in capturing more customers from your branding design strategies? Such as creative branding ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?
 
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?
Do you have a lesson about making your brand marketing better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
 
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+FacebookTwitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change.  We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
  
More reading on brands and branding from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
New York Yankees … 11 Awesome Lessons From Yankees Brand
The CVS Rebranding Strategy: a Case Study
Building a Brand … A How-to Guide for Small Business
6 Favorite Brands and Why I Like Them So Much
Brand Management … 12 Ways to Humanize the Brand to Build Trust
Walmart E-commerce Strategy … 6 Reasons Why It Won’t Beat Amazon
 
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+FacebookTwitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.

Marketing Branding: Know Secrets to Continuous Improvement Strategy?

marketing branding
Brand marketing strategy.

Is your business doing very well, but you are still wondering whether you should be making changes for continuous improvement? Like for a marketing branding strategy for continuous improvement? We recently received that question from Grace at Fresh Books. It is a frequent question we receive from clients.

Related: Target Market … How to Target for Best Marketing Campaigns

First, a word about Freshbooks. They are a cloud-based accounting software service designed for owners of the types of small client-service businesses that send invoices to clients and get paid for their time and expertise. From my research on-line, they appear to be doing incredibly well. And so I would conclude that their brand, branding, and brand marketing must be doing well also.

Brands are verbs. What they do matters much more than what they say.

Let me point out that Freshbooks is not a client of ours. Grace simply asked me to take a look at their on-line presence and answer this question for them in the way of a blog that I post on my consultancy’s website. This is what I agreed to do because I believe it is such a pertinent topic to many businesses. I will do this task by simply studying their on-line presence, with no further discussion with them.

But first, let’s first be sure we share a common understanding of brands and branding. There is a brand, and there is branding. One is a noun, and one is a verb.

But the funny thing is that when it comes to what defines a brand and what defines your branding, the noun and the verb are switched. Branding is defined by things like a logo, look and feel, website copy, and all the visual details that go into managing the brand. It sends out a vibe, and it’s made up of many things.

A brand, on the other hand, is defined by a company’s actions. How do you serve the customer? What interesting service do you offer? How do you approach relationships with business partners and vendors? A brand is also by what you want to stand for.

The most important thing to remember, it’s not about you in the sense that you are in control. You are not. But you can influence.

Marketers tend to like big, bold actions that grab attention and spew off metrics and the March on Washington would definitely qualify as that.  Yet, all too often, we ignore the more mundane work that comes before.  To market a product or an idea, you have to change minds and that’s the real lesson of the Civil Rights Movement.  Marketers need to learn from it.

Your brand represents a collection of your customers’ perceptions of how they see you, how they feel about you, and what they say about you. It communicates and influences every time it touches a customer.

A significant portion of a company’s value is intangible, so a strong brand is a significant competitive advantage. As Philip Kotler wrote:

The art of marketing is the art of brand building. If you are not a brand, you are a commodity. Then the price is everything, and the low-cost producer is the only winner.

Brands, marketing, and communication have long been highly related. From TV ads and press releases to events and endorsements, the way consumers view a brand will influence their decision making, so crafting and reinforcing a brand image has long been a top priority for marketers.

In a world of abundant choice, such influence is crucial for business success. So despite Freshbooks’ brand marketing success, there are always ways to be better. Let’s examine some ideas on this subject:

Marketing branding … purpose

The objective here is to define the company’s existence above and beyond making money. What does Freshbooks stand for beyond being a successful software company? None visible. As they step up their game, now would be a great time to build and market this brand purpose.

What is branding strategy … compelling value proposition

Freshbooks does a very good job of defining several very good value propositions, such as user-friendly interface, ease of use, and award-winning support team. You can check out free invoice templates reviews and see how this brand helps businesses in doing their invoices efficiently.

We suggest going deeper with these statements by validating details from customer users. A great way to do this would be to use customer stories to extend the value propositions beyond the products and services. Become defined by what you make happen, focusing on the customer’s end state resulting metrics.

make a difference
Make a difference.

Branding marketing strategy … make a difference

Making a difference builds on your value propositions. Strong value shows the difference that the customers see.

We recommend adding to your list of value propositions and supporting them with details of proof from customer results.

 

Brand marketing strategy … deliver on promises

Freshbooks uses many great customer testimonials and referrals. However, they could do a better job of pointing back to brand promises.

We believe Freshbooks could make explicit promises in their value propositions. Feature metrics and offer guarantees behind the promises. They should use actual customer experience to find the best metrics.

engage customers
Engage customers.

Engage customers

Great brands drive greater engagement by creating emotional responses. They make learning about their products and services fun.

Freshbooks offers free 30 day trials of their products, which is excellent. They can make this more engaging by offering a customer support team to work with these potential new customers.

Customer trust

Customer trust in this world is everything, isn’t it? Freshbooks must be doing it pretty well.

We suggest Freshbooks take a page from the FedEx brand by becoming synonymous with “reliability.” Define your reliability benefit to customers in the most straightforward terms possible. Offer reliability in everything you do — from your products and services to your website and communications.  Make your promise peace of mind for your customers.

 Help consumers help themselves

The best brands offer lots of help/advice …giving value in every interaction. You see this very often with on-line brand marketing, and Freshbooks does this well also.

We believe our earlier idea on using customer support heavily in the free trial could be an excellent way to highlight the customer support team.

 

Highest quality customer service

We don’t have any results to examine here, but we recommend Freshbooks steal a page from the Zappos Brand. There is no secret here. Zappos became Zappos because of the fanatical customer support it offered. That is the company’s brand.

As Tony Hsieh, the Zappos CEO, put it, back in 2003, we thought of ourselves as a shoe company that offered great service. Today, we think of the Zappos brand as about great service, and we just happen to sell shoes. Freshbooks could easily do the same to strengthen its brand marketing

 

Website design

 

To the best brands, design is more than a shiny wrapper. It is the brand. Freshbooks needs more emphasis in this area with visuals and more professional visual influence.

The bottom line

To be effective in this new era, we as marketers need to see our jobs differently. No more just focusing on metrics like clicks, video views or social media shares. We must successfully integrate our function with other business functions to create entire brand experiences that serve the customer all the way through their experiences throughout the business.

We can do better. Much better. But first, we need to stop seeing ourselves as crafters of clever brand messages and become creators of positive brand experiences.

Related post: 12 Fundamental Laws of Content Marketing

There can never be enough focus on continuous improvement on brand marketing, independent of how well the business is doing. It seems Freshbooks is looking to take their success to a new level. This is an excellent time to make a statement with their brand marketing. Changing before you have to is always a good idea.

brand_strategy

Would you like to participate in a free evaluation of your business marketing where our output is published in our blog like Freshbooks? If you are interested, please send us an email to Mike@digitalsparkmarketing.com.

 

Need some help in capturing more customers from your branding design strategies? Such as creative branding ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?

 

Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.

Call Mike at 607-725-8240.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?

Do you have a lesson about making your brand marketing better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

 

Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+Twitter, and LinkedIn.  

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change.  We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.

  More reading on marketing  strategy from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:

11 Steps to Media Framing Messages for Optimum Engagement

Digital Storytelling … 4 Ways to Employ for Message Persuasion

 

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