The SMART Way to Strengthen Your Brand

Building a brand is one of the essential ingredients in the recipe for growing your business. With SMART branding, you can distinguish your business from a crowded and competitive market. Many companies sell similar products and services, what separates them is your brand. A strong brand gives you the advantage of attracting the right type of customers.

In today’s economy, companies need to stand out and recognizable against the competition. Here are some SMART steps in creating a brand identity that gives you an advantage over your competition.


Align Your Brand With Your Core Business Values

It is important to understand who you are so that you can align all of what you do with the brand you are trying to project. For example, if you are a business with a real focus on sustainability, it should be in all aspects of the business, not just a product.

When you have a deeper understanding of the value and vision for your brand the better that you will be able to focus on brand alignment. Loyal clients want consistency. A confusing brand can end up hurting customer loyalty.


Clean Up Your Social Media

There’s no doubt that social media is becoming more and more of an integral marketing tool. However, the mistake that a lot of businesses run into is that they’re incredibly sloppy with how they actually integrate social media into their branding.

If you’re throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks, that’s poison to your brand in any online space. Things stay on the internet forever so you need to be sure that, no matter how far back people look for your business, things are always consistent and clear.

By streamlining your social media feeds you can also be sure that the kind of content you put out into the world is a lot more consistent in terms of quality.


Logo and Design

The logo and design that you have on everything from your website to your business cards need to be consistent. It needs to be consistent with your industry and reflect the current time.

If there’s one thing that the vast majority of human beings have in common, it’s that we’re a visual species. We take in the vast majority of information visually and that’s something that you have to be willing to take advantage of in your branding.

This means that your logo and fonts have to not only be eye-catching but instantly readable. Most of the greatest brands in history have been ones you could pick out of a line-up in an instant. From billboards to a ribbon with your branding, customers should know exactly what they’re looking at without having to think about it.

This also means that your visual branding needs to stand out. The last thing you want is for it to end up getting lost in the shuffle of hundreds of other brands. Look into logo redesigns if you haven’t updated your brand in a while.


Do your SEO research

Most people don’t look past the first few results on the search page. SEO is extremely important for your business to get new customers and leads. Research some SEO strategies that are related to your niche, the products or services that you offer, and other best practices.

Implementing effective SEO techniques can help you to increase brand awareness. This kind of research will help to set you apart as an expert in your industry. 


How Customer Service Can Reinforce Your Brand Ethos 

How your customer service representatives treat people is critical to your brand. Companies that have the worst reputation are primarily due to poor customer service, rude representatives, and not being responsive to customers. Customers may not remember the exact product or service, but they will remember a positive and memorable service.

Not only the customer service you provide a positive image for your clients, it can also serve as a way to reinforce the message you want to convey. Train those that deal with customers to be friendly, listen and respond promptly, and live up to the standards that you want to convey to your customers.


Creating A Recognizable Team

Your team needs to be easily identifiable as part of your organization. If your business has physical locations where your customers are able to visit and interact with you, it should be clear that they work there. This does not mean that your team needs a uniform, it just means that there should be something unifying in their aesthetic. You may want to use ID lanyards or badge reels to make your team immediately identifiable. Having some form of dress code may help you.

Create a core program of training that not only covers how you want someone to do something but also understand the why and the message to convey. Find employees that also embody the brand you want to convey, this will help find the right people for your company.


Assessing Brand Standards

There are a number of ways that you can measure and assess the standards of your team’s delivery of your brand message. Using services such as a mystery shopper is one method. Customer surveys, a client working group, and giving incentives for client feedback are helpful.

By monitoring your team against a set of criteria you can see to what extent they understand and are willing to share the company’s goals. These can be used as tools for ongoing training and development across all levels of your team. 

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