Branding Your Company…it’s an easy no fail building process!
Nike and Starbucks have spent years honing their branding messages and for all small businesses branding your company to stand out above your competitors is essential. The big question is, how do you go about branding your company/ Follow our powerful branding strategy and you will be off to a great start. Remember, branding is not just having a logo, it’s a lot more than that! We will step you through the process.
Branding starts with defining your “WHY”
Your “WHY”is your purpose. As the Marketer Simon Sinek outlines in his book “Start with With Why”, the centre of all your activities start with WHY you are in business. Its what Simon calls the Golden Circle. Branding is not about your product or services but all about what drives you.What makes your company unique.
Nike is an apparel company and Starbucks is a coffee company, but their products don’t define them. Both companies have developed branding that sets them apart from their competition. Nike uses athletes in many different sports as their brand ambassadors. The relationship is built between the regular consumer and the athletes that sport the Nike gear with that very familiar logo and the specific messaging “JUST DO IT”. It’s subliminal messaging that if Tiger Woods or Serena Williams can do it wearing Nike gear, then I can do it too! The belief that YOU CAN DO IT!
Starbucks has the weird mermaid logo, but it is very recognizable. Yes their coffee is good but it’s still coffee! What Starbucks has built is a customer experience in their coffee shops. An inviting lounge to hang out with your friends or do your work while sipping coffees with exotic names and a lingo for the different sizes. Their signature is personalizing your coffee cup by putting your own name on it and calling out your first name when it’s ready. That’s it! Folks this is not rocket science.
You can’t really say their food is that exciting and the food choices are pretty limited. That shows you that the actual products, if you put them under a microscope aren’t insanely fabulous! It’s the customer experience that is the centrepiece of the branding.
So you may wonder what this has to do with your company! What it means is you have to think about what makes your company stand out from the competition and if nothing stands out, what can you do to make it unique and then build around that uniqueness. One of our clients is Blackmore Levy Group, a financial services company. Unlike many of its competitors it doesn’t talk about insurance, mortgages,and wealth products, it talks about helping their clients build a solid financial house starting with a strong foundation. That is their “WHY”.
How important is your WHY? Let’s take a look at Parker Hannifin a global leader in motion and control technologies business. It is a huge industrial conglomerate with many different products and services and has been around for over 100 years. In 2020 it realized that it needed to define it’s purpose. The CEO, Tom Williams, calls defining the Parker purpose the single most important thing the company has ever done. Watch this outstanding Parker video that will clearly define the importance of its WHY (PURPOSE)…why they do what they do!
HOW do you operate?
What are your company values? This is the next foundational concept in Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle from his stellar book “Start with Why”.
For the Parker company their values are clearly defined in the video, it’s how they operate as a company and is how they execute their WHY.
- How we make the world a better place
- Making a meaningful impact on the future
- Making complex things simple
- It takes all of us together
- Enabling engineering breakthroughs that lead to a better tomorrow
If you were a customer, an employee, a future employee, or an investor, you would say this company knows how to operate and knows its company values. Can you define your company values?
WHAT you say, is important in your branding
If your WHY is your belief and your HOW is the value of these beliefs, then WHAT is the consistent messaging to interpret your ‘why’ and your ‘how’. This consistent messaging can have different tones and expressions depending on what type of branding voice you want to use. This depends on the type of product you are selling. For example, a financial advisory company will have a totally different branding voice than an entertainment company.
In marketing lingo this is often referred to as your authentic voice. Does your messaging align with your WHY and HOW? If not, then you need to deconstruct your messaging to make sure you have alignment. How can you get your message to the marketplace?
- Videos
- Podcasts
- Blog Posts
- Case Studies
- Educational events
- Client Testimonials
Has your company established its golden circle? If not, we would be happy to help you define your “Why, your How and your What with a free half hour call. That’s what we do! Connect with us today and book a call. If you would like more information on branding, join our newsletter and download our free e-book.
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XL Consulting Group launches businesses online by creating an inspiring marketing strategy that is unique to your company and implementing the branding with web design, copywriting and social media management.