Quick question…
What do Oreo, Netflix, Apple and Microsoft have in common? They are all killer brands.
You too can create a killer brand like these companies and the good news is that you don’t require revolutionary ideas. You simply need to inspire trust and loyalty among your customers. So how exactly do you do that?
- Ramp Up Your Virtual Relationships
The world has moved to 24/7. Consumers are busy and most of them have disposable income. They want to shop for their items when they want them. It could be at 2am in the morning or at 2pm in the afternoon.
Is your business online yet? We are not talking about creating a static website and a Facebook page that gets updated once every three months.
Get a domain name that will match your social media sites. This is your brand we are talking about here; it needs to be consistent throughout. If you choose a domain name like “tightbizna.com” then your Facebook page name cannot be “Bizna Tight” while your Instagram account is “Tight Bizna”. You will confuse your customers.
Your website also needs to have informative content. Your customers need to know who you are, what your business is all about, do you have solutions to their problems? Conduct a keyword research and take advantage of search engine optimization to blow your competition out of the water.
Lesson. It’s a fact that 80-90% of customers check online reviews before making a purchase and it won’t be long before everyone is searching for products and services online. Will people find your business online or will they find your competitors?
- Research Your Target Market
Sounds obvious but, you’d be surprised at how many start-ups approach design agencies without key pieces of information and then blame the designers for being incompetent.
A great example of a company that perhaps hadn’t done their research well during its early days was Apple. In the early 90s, only urban professionals carried a smartphone. Apple thought they could burst into the market with their Newton PDA. Well, contrary to what we see today, nobody lined up eagerly waiting to buy their PDA.
First, it had a ridiculous price tag of $700 then its handwriting recognition feature was far from accurate. No wonder comic strips had a field day ridiculing Apple.
While Apple’s Newton PDA faded into oblivion, Palm Pilot and Blackberry continued to produce cheap smartphones.
Lesson: Researching your customers is very important. If Apple had bothered to find out whether their target market was ready for their innovation, perhaps they would have struck gold much faster.
- Looks Matter
Let’s say you plan to open an online store. The appearance of your website will either make or break your sales.
When people browse through your products, they expect to see something that’s esthetically appealing. If you are running an online clothing shop, people want to visualize how great they will look in the clothes that you are selling.
This means you will need to invest in models, a great photographer, a great web designer, a great graphic designer and a great web content writer to write catchy product descriptions.
Just look at how Disney World manages to capture everyone’s imagination. Little girls visiting Disney World go to the magic Kingdom and they see Snow White and Cinderella. That image sticks in their minds. It kind of explains why most women dream about a fairy tale wedding. It’s because the memory they carried in their subconscious draws them back to their Disney World visit.
Lesson: People judge a book by its cover. Visual brilliance is not cheap but the money you invest in it will be worth it in the end.
- Avoid Being All Over the Place
No matter how well funded your startup is, you will always feel short on resources. You should focus all your branding resources and energy on building a single brand instead of creating multiple ones.
When you think of Kenyan companies like Zuku or Faiba, the first thing that comes to mind is “internet service provider”. Now imagine if Zuku started selling shampoo or if Faiba started selling motorcycles. Wouldn’t that sound ridiculous?
Lesson: Don’t confuse your customers. Let your customers associate your brand with one product and then later on you can branch out to related products. For instance, if you are going to start your own motorcycle manufacturing company, you can venture into related areas like manufacturing cars or bicycles but not manufacturing wine coolers, perfumes, etc. You get the drift here.
Do you think we’ve left anything out? Let us know in the comments section below and if you learned something from this post, feel free to share it out.
“Jackie Kalyonge is a SEO content writer based in Nairobi, Kenya. She is the Founder and CEO of Jadite Inc– a SEO content writing service that helps businesses put the right message in the right words for the right audience. You can follow her on Twitter @jaditeinc or like her company Facebook Page, Jadite Inc Content Writing Service.”
