All About Branding

In this article i will explain how you can make your brand an succes.

Corporate branding...does not start at your logo and stops at your products. The corporate brand is more than the visible parts, but is very deeply rooted in your company and encapsulates all the customer's interaction with your company.

The holistic perspective ensures consistency in the manifestation of your brand promise, through all media and all levels of customer interaction. You have to approach a brand as a whole.

All who devaluate the important contribution the brand elements and attributes make to the brand, will fail to generate significant value from their branding efforts. Brand encompasses the entire range of the company's corporate identity, products, services, behaviors, distribution channels, technologies, processes, and communication channels. It is the sum total of your customers' experiences and prospects' perceptions.

Tips to create and maintain a strong brand:

» be distinctive, offer something better and different on a dimension customers care about;

» execute this promise very consistently;

» communicate this promise consistently and persistently.

The common goal should be not to only fulfill the needs of your customers, but to exceed their expectations.

Many people ask me what is an brand analysis ?

Brand Analysis Explains "who you are" - "where you are" and "what your condition really is".

Brand analysis produces a clear snapshot of your brand compared to your competitors and its condition in general.

What first surfaces is your current position versus your competition. You have to find out what your competitive share is, through comparing your market growth with the growth of your competitors and study the status quo and the projections for the industry you are in.

These results are complemented by a more subjective analysis gained by interviewing key people and regular staff of your firm and additionally your external partners/alliances. You need questionnaires for this purpose,to get all the right answers from your staff.

Next step is: to explore how the general public sees and experiences your brand. You have to questioning people in malls, on the street and other public places, what you think is important.

You have to conduct a survey with your loyal customers and select the members of your target group and to really get to know them, so you have to develop a specific set of questions to get to the bottom of what you want and need to know. Take care some companies use Pre-fabricated questionnaires, what would be of no good - as each company is different, so that is an problem but also an solution, therefore you have to develop these questions for your company specifically. You also have to talk to the people on the phone, launch a survey on your web site and question them where your products are for sale.

Then proceed to examine if your practiced brand communication is consistent throughout every point of contact with your clientele and review existing product offerings.

This is all necessary in order to develop a comprehensive brand strategy as the next step of branding.

Billy Horner is one of the the founders of Visual Orange Co., Ltd. Offers corporate branding and organizing of Events based in Ayutthaya, Thailand. He has been involved in branding services and marketing for 8 years in Asia and has helped several businesses to succes http://www.visualorange.com

Copyright (c) 2005 Billy Horner of http://www.visualorange.net This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.