Learn how to create a strong emotional bond with your prospect and customer through living your brand in what you say and do.
Episode Show Notes
Introduction To Bringing Your Brand to Life
(0:00 – 1:44) Introduction To Iterative Marketing Podcast: Welcome to the Iterative Marketing Podcast, where, each week, hosts Steve Robinson and Elizabeth Earin provide marketers and entrepreneurs with actionable ideas, techniques, and examples to improve marketing results. The topic of this episode is Bringing Your Brand to Life.
The resources discussed on the show can be found at brilliantmetrics.com, which includes a blog and a LinkedIn group for community interaction.
(1:44 – 3:36) Bringing Your Brand to Life: Branding is a pivotal aspect of modern organizations, but many struggle with effectively implementing their brand strategy. A well-defined brand should be brought to life through consistent touchpoints with prospects and customers, avoiding inconsistencies or dissonance that could damage the brand’s image. It’s important to recognize that a strong brand can attract and repel people, ultimately helping organizations build a loyal customer base.
Polarizing Brands
(3:36 – 5:07) The Benefits of Brand Polarization: A polarizing brand aims to pull in like-minded, right-fit customers and push away those who aren’t a good fit. Creating a more polarizing brand will intensify the emotional connection with your audience, turning them into loyal customers who love and identify with your brand. This approach is more effective than trying to create a brand that appeals to everyone, as it leads to more invested and emotionally attached customers. Effective branding and brand management are essential for consistently delivering the experience that these loyal customers seek, ultimately reducing acquisition costs and fostering long-term relationships.
(5:07 – 5:32) Nurturing Customers Throughout Their Journey: Bringing a brand to life involves more than just marketing to new customers. It requires nurturing the entire customer journey, from when they become aware of your brand to when they become loyal customers and evangelists. By consistently delivering a positive brand experience at every touchpoint, organizations can harness the power of satisfied customers who will sing their praises and spread the word about their brand.
Living Your Brand
(5:32 – 9:22) Aligning Messaging and Actions: To effectively bring a brand to life, it’s necessary to ensure that every touchpoint supports the documented brand position, both in what you say and what you do. Auditing existing collateral and ensuring the messaging and tone aligns with the brand’s personality is vital to this process. This involves not only focusing on the content itself but also on the tone and tenor of the communication. Companies should strive to establish an emotional connection and reinforce the brand’s identity through their messaging, making it a consistent and positive experience for customers across all interactions.
(9:22 – 11:21) Internal and External Communications: Companies should focus on external and internal communications to create a cohesive and strong brand. External communications are crucial for reaching customers, while internal communications ensure that employees live the brand daily. This includes making sure that employee handbooks and other internal materials are written in the brand’s voice, setting the tone for the team. By aligning both external and internal communications with the brand’s personality and market position, companies can achieve consistency and maintain a strong brand presence across all touchpoints.
Charity Outreach
(11:21 – 12:08) Charity Break: Sojourner Family Peace Center
The Key Components of Living Your Brand
(12:08 – 14:47) Empowering Your Team: The most important component when it comes to living your brand is your team. Ensuring that your team understands and is guided by the brand’s values and identity is essential, as they are the ones interacting with customers daily. By empowering your team with the knowledge and tools to consistently represent and promote the brand’s message, you can create a unified brand experience that resonates with customers and strengthens your brand’s presence in the market.
It’s also essential to go beyond scripted processes and procedures. Instead, empower your employees to make decisions that align with the brand’s values and identity. By doing so, your team members can create authentic and memorable experiences for customers, like the Lost Giraffe story. When employees understand and embody the brand’s values, they can deliver exceptional service that fosters customer loyalty and strengthens the brand’s reputation.
(14:47 – 16:31) Reinforcing Your Brand: Ensuring that your brand values are consistently communicated and reinforced within your organization is key to cultivating a brand-aligned workforce. From the very first job description that attracts potential employees to the onboarding process, internal communications, and recognition programs, every touchpoint should embody and reinforce the brand’s values. By doing this, you demonstrate the importance of living the brand and creating a culture where employees value and embody the brand as well, ultimately leading to a more consistent and authentic customer experience.
Investing in Brand Programming
(16:31 – 18:46) Creating New Touchpoints and Engaging Experiences: While brand management focuses on aligning the customer journey with the brand, it goes beyond that by creating new touchpoints for communication. The Lays “Do Us a Flavor” campaign is an example of this, as it engaged customers and improved brand perception by creating unique and experimental flavors. This approach led to increased sales, emotional connections, and better alignment with their target demographic.
(18:46 – 19:49) Aligning Brand Messaging: In certain circumstances, such as launching a new brand, rebranding an existing one, or targeting a previously untapped market, investing in dedicated brand programming becomes crucial. This involves creating media or experiences to effectively communicate the brand and its message, ensuring that the target audience connects with the product or sub-brand in a meaningful way.
(19:49 – 21:13) Choices and Challenges When Addressing Brand Perception Discrepancies: When a brand discovers a discrepancy between its self-perception and how it’s perceived by the public, it’s essential to invest more in brand marketing. This can be done through a discovery process like the brand vector process. Once the issue is identified, the brand has two options: change its communication or change its interaction with customers. The decision depends on whether the brand wants to redefine itself internally or shift public perception. While altering public perception is challenging, it’s not impossible with the right strategy.
(21:13 – 22:55) Adapting to Market Changes: Investing in brand programming is crucial when a brand needs to make a conscious shift in its personality or market position to remain competitive or target new opportunities. This is especially relevant when traditional methods no longer resonate with emerging customer segments, as seen in the insurance industry adapting to millennials. Consistency across all touchpoints, both internally and externally, is vital to ensure that the brand messaging and experiences support a unified brand and set the company up for success.
Join Us Next Time
(22:55 – 24:18) Conclusion: Today’s episode focused on bringing brands to life by creating new touchpoints and aligning brand messaging consistently.
Next week’s topic is persona research, which will help brands better understand their target audience and create more effective strategies.
Have a great week and we’ll see you next time. This concludes this week’s episode. For notes and links to resources discussed on the show, sign up to the Brilliant Metrics newsletter.
Iterative Marketing is a part of the Brilliant Metrics organization. If you would like more information on the marketing services provided by the expert team at Brilliant Metrics, reach out today for a free discovery call.
The Iterative Marketing Podcast, a production of Brilliant Metrics, ran from February 2016 to September 2017. Music by SeaStock Audio.
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