How to create a brand that sells?

A confused brand identity loses its ability to differentiate and compete. If you want to be successful you have to stand for something. Shortsighted ideas will takeover, risk and further deteriorate your marketing or advertising activities and damage brand value.

Branding isn't about being “creative”, it's about generating interest so that people buy your product/service

1. Do your homework if you want to be successful, research can save you time and money. It will help you gain insight about your optimal positioning, target audience, factors that are important in the purchasing decision and business strategy.
2. Give your brand a clear purpose and an image that your target market can relate to. There is a difference between something that looks good and something that has a value. Keep in mind that people pay for the perceived value, not design. If it doesn't sell, it's not creative. Period. 
3. Your brand personality is how you connect with the audience. It isn't just the product they are picking, it's the Brand image they want to associate with. 
4. Consistency is the key, you need a brand custodian who makes sure that the marketing attempts to experiment does not harm the brand foundation. Stick to your brand ideals and people will trust you.
5. No product or service is dull, stick to what worked in the past and build on it, no need to fix it if it ain't broke. The stable personality and an original message creates brand loyalty.
6. Instead of doing it fast, do it right! This saves you a lot of money. Brand awareness works as a foundation on which your marketing campaign will bring results every time. This will create a bigger impact and gain better ROI.
7. Keep it simple. Most campaigns are too complicated, as they try to cover too many things, such campaigns tend to fail. Incorrect brand marketing does more harm than good. 

Know your market to save time and money

You need to do market research, this might sound cliche or tiresome but there is no substitute for it! Know your product or service, the more you know, the better you can tell people about it. Be aware of facts and figures, understand what is it that you are asking people to buy from you. Find out about your competitors, how is their product different from yours and most importantly what are the similarities? Recognise what worked for them and this will give you your bearings.

?Understand your consumer, research about their buying patterns, what do they think about the offerings similar to yours, what factors are important to them, and what will make them buy your brand. If you are too lazy to do this, you may occasionally have some lucky campaigns that perform well but it will never have any long term impact and the return on investment will run a risk of being weak.

What does your product do and who is it for?

Position your brand to stand out from the crowd. Give your brand a purpose so that people know why to buy it. For e.g. Dove is a soap for women with dry skin, OYO is a hotel with basic amenities for people on a budget; Sensodyne is a toothpaste for people with sensitive teeth.

Know your key features to target the potential customer for your product to convey to them why they should buy your product or service. Positioning is the way a company wants customers to perceive, think and feel about its brand, versus competitive entities. While in the concept of positioning, a brand’s communication activity is the major area of reference; it is now emphasized that positioning has a broader market impact and refers to a brand’s broadly de?ned marketing activity. 

Right persona attracts right target audience

This can make or break your brand in the marketplace. Brand personality is your image that you show to your consumers. It's everything from your Name, Identity, Colour, Tone of voice, Packaging, Price, Style of advertising, and the Product or Service itself.

Think about it, why do some people buy Apple Iphones over Samsung or Google? The reality is that these 3 brands have different Images, which appeal to different kinds of people. Brand’s image in mind of the community is often perceived as extensions of our own personas, in relation with how we define ourselves today and who we aspire to be. It isn't just the product they are picking, it's the brand image they want to associate with. 

Stay consistent so that consumers can depend on you

Every communication or marketing campaign with your consumers, should be monitored to make it relevant to the Brand personality. It has to be consistent and portray the correct brand image year after year. And it's harder than it sounds, because maybe you hired a new agency or a change of marketing personnel who wants to make their mark by ‘exploring new routes’. Do not make a change, for the sake of change.

If your social media posts are bright colours and silly but your product packaging is muted and plain, you're sending mixed signals that will confuse consumers and leave them feeling like your brand can't be trusted. According to Lucid Press, the average revenue increase that attributes to brand consistency is more than 20% and consistent brand colors can increase recognition by up to 80%.

Leverage your brand awareness to generate loyalty

Make your consumer aware about your product or service because, unless your target audience is aware of your brand, they will not even consider it, let alone choose it. Correct Brand awareness campaign efforts leads to Brand recognition where your identity plays a major role. Logo, font, colour, design, and visual cues get people's attention and connect with them.

Recognition comes with a sense of familiarity, which results in the buying of the product or services. This purchase creates attachment which makes secure development of a long-term relationship with the customers, leading to brand recall and loyalty.

Simple marketing campaign generate greater ROI

Don't try to add multiple objectives to one campaign. A holistic, integrated campaign on all platforms with 1 messaging works better than communicating 5 different things. It's good to repeat the things which were successful in the past and if something doesn't work, do not consider the sunk cost, just STOP.

Cut your losses, evaluate the learnings and move to the next campaign. Concentrate your time, your effort and money on your successes. Support your winners and abandon your losers.

Brand is not limited to marketing and advertising tactics or business strategy. It also outlines the dynamics of respective industries for years, pushing market segmentation and technology, driving product innovation, and bringing about company’s growth and justification. 

Implementation Example

Dove is an example of becoming the world's leading cleansing brand, while staying consistent for more than 60 years!

Dove started with the launch of the Dove Beauty Bar in the 1950s. It revolutionized the method women cared for their skin. Dove grew as a brand because in all these years their personality and identity stayed the same - ‘Dove doesn't dry your skin the way soap can’ Many of the ads featured the image of cream being poured into the Dove bar to emphasize its moisturizing quality – this signature image still remains a staple today. 

In the 50s it communicated the facial moisturizing benefits of the product, with the introduction of the Dove Face Test campaign. In the late ’60s, Dove first began to use ‘real women’ in its advertising and reiterated the brand's non-drying benefit into the 1970s. Dove cream-pouring image continued to anchor the spots, but the tagline changed from ‘one-quarter cleansing cream’ to ‘one-quarter moisturizing cream,’ keeping the key offering and purpose of the brand unchanged.

They continued to strengthen its original message that Dove won’t dry your skin, adding research to back up the claim. Either with a litmus paper test or a ‘seven-day, feel the difference test’. In the late 80s communication changed to a detailed account of how Dove has improved a woman’s self-esteem as well as her skin– this was the first change towards promoting inner beauty, which it continues to do even today.

Since then, Dove evolved to a brand that believes that beauty should be for everyone, because when you look and feel your best, you feel better about yourself. In the 00's The Campaign for Real Beauty was launched after a major global study that revealed that only 2% of women around the world would describe themselves as beautiful. This sparked a global conversation about the need for a wider definition of beauty.

‘Fifty years ago, women were just looking at product benefits,’ says MacLeod. ‘Today they want to affiliate themselves with brands that are doing something good.’

In 2020 Dove is the world’s leading cleansing brand, with sales of over 4 billion USD. a year in more than 80 countries. And earning the brand value to 6.51 billion USD (source). Even though the Dove bar remains unchanged and the non-drying strategy continues to sell the product, today it markets itself as a social activist.

A fitting example of how if something is working successfully you don't need to change it. Dove’s offering remains the same, however their approach evolved with changing times.