Branding is about differentiating your brand from the market and make sure customers understand your brand value and key differentiators. Having branding mistakes could affect your sales and your brand visibility. Here are some mistakes that usually happen and how to avoid them. Check it out!
1. Misunderstand the importance of branding
Branding is not only about the design of the logos, the attractive colours and fonts, the fun advertisements etc. Branding would need to shape public perception about the company or it will not help in sales and visibility of the brand.
How to avoid?
Do research before branding and understand your customers’ needs. Make sure everything is aligned with the company value, vision and mission.
2. Having wrong definition of your target audience
You would need to define and anticipate your target audiences’ needs with everything you do so that you are able to create connection with them if it is fulfilling their needs. Ensure the elements are consistent so it could resonate with the right people and create stronger impact.
How to avoid?
Market research is needed to understand the consumers’ interests. The content should be created after understanding the demographic of the customers. Different content would resonate different group of target audiences with different interests in different geographical area. In this case, market research should always be held to reach a boarder audiences.
3. Logo is just a symbol
Logo should be the first thing that customers recognise and the key identifier of your brand. The colours, fonts, designs are all important to ensure a good branding. However, a brand is way more than just a symbol. In order to build a connection with your customers, a brand would need a complete brand identity that have all the elements to work together.
How to avoid?
Since we should ensure everything to work together, we may need to familiarise with the eight basics of brand identity development, which are the company name, competitor research, audience research, mission statement, brand strategy, brand personality, visual elements and logo. When building a company, think about all these to ensure they all are aligned.
4. Did not “talk like human”
To build brand loyalty and strong connections between the brand and your customers, you would have to build your brand “personality”. It can just simply means to add a dash to your brand as a character in your branding messages or any branding elements, otherwise, you may sound robotics or stiff and it is hard for customers to feel connected with your product and service.
How to avoid?
Avoid bland brand blunder. You can bring out your brand identity and personality easier when you understand your brand value. Take your business as a human or your good friend and think about how it will respond in various situations. This could be fun to think of your brand as a human entity and remember to add in a little humor where there is appropriate.