focus_contributor.
BUSINESS
MINDS
with LAUREN MCALLISTER AND SIMON BANK FROM WEBSTUDIO
CONNECT WITH YOUR PEOPLE AS YOUR AUTHENTIC SELF - THE POWER OF A GENUINE BRAND
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our brand is how your business is reflected to the world - and it’s so much more than your logo and font choice. It’s your imagery, it’s the way you make your product or deliver your service - and it’s your people. By this, we mean all people who interact with your business - your customers, your partners, your employees, your suppliers. Each person who is involved with your brand has a part to play in how it is perceived. When it comes to brand, there are two key things to get right - consistency and credibility. Consistency ensures you are recognisable and able to build trust with your audience. A brand that has a huge ‘wow’ factor is great but if you don’t have consistency, your brand looks unprofessional and people lose interest. You need to have uniformity with your brand elements, and stability with your key messages and tone. This way people feel like they are getting to know you, which builds confidence in your business. When it comes to credibility, buyers are going to relate more to a brand that is faithful to itself, that reflects the values it holds. Your brand needs to sound and feel like you - people will pick up on content that is disingenuous and if it doesn’t feel right - they are less inclined to engage. You should be considering your brand when making key business decisions - like who to collaborate with, who you are marketing to, who your key stakeholders are. If their values
100 GREATER PORT MACQUARIE
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don’t align with yours, you risk betraying your brand - and damaging your reputation. Here are some other important things to consider when it comes to building an authentic brand: Know who you are. So far we have spoken about values and being ‘authentic’. But you can’t portray your true self to the world if you don’t know what your true self looks like. The very first step in establishing your brand should be asking yourself these key questions. What is your purpose? What makes you unique? What is important to you? What is important to your customers? What is our tone? What are our key messages? You need to establish your business’ identity before you can portray it. Here at Webstudio, we offer Brand Strategy as part of our service and we can work through this with you. Know who your people are. How can you connect with your customers if you don’t know who they are? In order to form a genuine relationship and build real trust, your customers need to feel understood. So it’s essential you take the time and invest in research that gives you valuable insights into the behaviour of your customers. What are their interests? What problems do they have that you can help them solve? Jane Hillsdon’s ‘How To Do Marketing Academy’ is an incredible program that will help you implement a tried and tested framework to increase your reach to the right people, create a powerful brand (and ultimately increase revenue).
Create a polished image. In today’s world of short attention spans and information overload, visual representation is more important than ever. You might have three seconds to capture your audience’s attention, so your imagery needs to be on-brand, eye-catching and relevant if you want to get noticed. Vanessa from The Style Vibe Creative can help you create an incredible image gallery through a stylised fashion shoot, with scenes that will capture the attention of your target market. These are assets that can then be used across your socials, website and other marketing. Focus on engagement. The ‘getting to know you’ phase of a customer’s relationship with your business will often happen over social media - and through your website. In this phase, it’s less about ‘buy my stuff!’ or ‘book an appointment!’ - it’s more about casual and fun engagement, to introduce them to your business and generate interest. Your social media accounts deserve their own marketing strategy to drive engagement and build your brand online. Emma from Gem Socials can help you create a strategy that genuinely reflects your brand. This means you will attract the right customers, which are more likely to turn into real leads! As you can see - there’s a lot involved in creating an authentic brand! It takes some consideration and some investment - but if it’s done well, you will build real, long-lasting trust with your customers.
