How to make a consumer buy your product over another
Written on July 19, 2007
What is it that all successful companies have conquered? What is it about Coca-Cola, Amazon, Microsoft and Starbucks? What makes a consumer buy one product over another? The answer is marketing, but more specifically it is the power of branding.
But what does it mean? Branding can be described as many things, but its best defined as a promise… a promise of the value of the product or service, a promise that the offering is better than all the competing offers. A promise that must be delivered to be successful.
Branding is the combination of tangible and intangible characteristics that make a brand unique. Branding is developing an image, with results to match.
So what are the main elements of a brand?
• Brand personality – clarify what is the companies reputation, attitude and behaviour
• Relationship of the brand with the audience – building a relationship with your audience based on your agreed personality. There are no short-cuts for this, it has to be done over time, and across all communications consistently.
• Visual icons or other representations such as colour palette, logo or character – you need to reinforce the relationship and ensure recognition with a consistent visual approach. Whether its your colour palette, a logo or a character.
So in essence it’s all about consistency of everything you say and do. Making sure you communicate a unified message about your products and services and integrating it into sales, advertising, PR, web, email, events, telephone holding, pretty much everything you do and every interaction point with your organisation.
In this Internet age where companies can very quickly build a presence, the same old principles of building the brand are essential and should not be overlooked in a rush to gain initial impact.
Your brand needs to be built up over a period of time and ‘Consistency is king’, whether it’s visual style, tone of voice or key values, you need to ensure that it is always clear and concisely communicated.
In building your brand you need to remember that people like to deal with people or businesses they trust and like and have confidence in. For an online business, sometimes this can be even harder; there are no premises, no sales people on the road, and sometimes no big budgets to launch a national campaign. So how do you create and nurture an online brand?
Written by Neil Hancock [Internet Marketing Consultant] Prodo Ltd