A business with a bad brand image, even when offering a great service, is going to be majorly crippled. Today the way a business comes off is more important than the business itself for getting attention. Naturally, then businesses need to have a strong presence across the internet and other relevant avenues. Here are two mistakes to avoid in fostering this presence.
The first mistake to avoid is brand inconsistency. Today 90% of brands have inconsistent branding across platforms. What this means is the message, values, and appearance of the brand change depending on where it’s seen. In the worst cases, this can mean a business is child-friendly on one platform and mature in others. More realistically, it can mean a small difference in tone and the desired audience.
There are many downsides to brand inconsistency such as if the market is unclear on what the brand is and who it’s meant for. Sales cycles are slowed and possibly interrupted. And new potential customers can be turned off more quickly. Implementing more consistent branding led to 10% or greater increases in revenue for 88% of businesses. It’s as simple as more critically analyzing each place a brand can be observed and removing inconsistencies. The downsides of inconsistent branding are clear and having brand consistency is a way for businesses to drive success.
Moving onto the second mistake, it’s important to avoid appealing to customers too generally. What this means in practice is two things, targeting groups and hyper-personalizing to individuals. Targeting groups relates to having a clear brand image, the brand should be made for someone. The brand should appeal to who it’s made for explicitly, with values and an appearance that matches this intent. A more modern and hip brand, for example, should reflect this in its appearance and values.
Less commonly utilized but just as important is hyper-personalization. Today businesses, through the use of statistics and analytics, can appeal explicitly to individuals. Amazon, for example, sends emails with product suggestions based on user’s past purchases and habits. Netflix’s home page is entirely personal and is based on an algorithm. These take a lot of data to produce but are extremely effective at increasing retention. 90% of customers prefer personalized content and are also more likely to purchase from personalized ads.
These are the two common mistakes a brand can avoid through simple changes and solutions. They’re not entirely fixable and exist more on a spectrum, but every business should aim to improve on them. A consistent brand that specifically appeals to the right people will be far more successful than one that ignores these principles.
Source: BrandGuard