Let’s find out if your brand story matters.
Your brand pillars tell the public who you are and how you connect with your clients on a human level. Marketing has shifted over the last years and left behind the ads in newspapers and billboards for embracing digital tools. Therefore, the ideal medium for spreading your brand’s message these days is through branding and digital marketing.
Giving your business a personality is a paramount goal nowadays. Please have a look out there; all famous brands have a spark of personality in them. Think of Starbucks, the American multinational chain of coffeehouses with a disruptive online persona in the sector that makes it stand out. Starbucks is a pro at telling its brand story. How does it do it? It stays true to its pillars: great coffee, food, footprint, and people.
If you want to create an authentic relationship with your target public through your brand pillars, here is what you need to know.
What are brand pillars?
Brand pillars are the key principles on which your brand is built, and they include things like personality, positioning, and purpose. Brand pillars are the characteristics and values that define your brand and help you define the fundamental points that enable you to stand out from the crowd. Marketing experts also call them brand messaging pillars or messaging pillars as they comprise the essence of what your business stands for, what makes it unique in the industry, and how it communicates its values to the world.
Who are you as a business? Why do you exist? What drives you to do business daily? It would help if you answered these questions to identify your key brand pillars.
Customers pick brands they relate to. They want to know that the providers they purchase from share their ideologies and values and meet their challenges and needs. Your brand pillars ensure your business resonates with your public and reaches them properly.
The most important brand pillars
Here are essential pillars to create your brand in 2022 to help your audience remember it. If you find it challenging to identify the pillars that could build a strong brand for your business, a digital marketing agency like DPDK could assist you.
Purpose ? your brand’s purpose is why it exists beyond making a profit. It’s the reason why you started the business and get up daily eager to work and grow it. To identify your purpose, ask why your company exists, and the answer should tell you what goal you try to achieve. Before establishing this pillar, you should think thoroughly as it connects your business to your personal goals. It needs to resonate with your values to enable the business to flow better. Your purpose is the core of your company, and it must connect to your vision for your company.
When you try to articulate it, ask yourself these questions:
– What drives your business?
– What problems do your services/products solve?
– How does your brand impact your public?
– What inspires you?
– What do you want to be your company’s legacy?
– What are you most proud of as an organisation?
Positioning ? your brand’s positioning is where it stands in your sector and how it differentiates itself from the competition. One of your aims is to stand out from the other companies that offer similar services. It would help if you found the proper way to describe your unique value proposition to encourage the public to choose you and stay loyal. Your company already resides in a special place in your customers’ minds, so you need to ensure that this image matches your values. Brand positioning is the process of defining how your business should be perceived on the market: sustainable, luxurious, reliable, friendly.
In order to properly identify your brand positioning, answer the following questions:
– What are your long-term goals?
– Who is your ideal customer?
– What is your public looking for in your niche?
– Does your current positioning resonate with your customers?
Personality ? your brand’s personality is defined by its unique voice, tone, and connection with the audience. Your brand’s personality must be memorable to the point your customers can identify your brand’s colour, style of voice, and elements that differentiate it from your competitors. The personality should enable the public to recognise your brand before seeing the name. It describes the human characteristics, features, emotions, and behaviours that describe your business.
To craft your brand personality, you need to answer these questions:
– Is your brand’s personality authentic to its values?
– What are your competitor’s personalities?
– If your brand would be an individual, what words would you choose to describe it?
– How would you define your company culture?
Perception ? your brand’s personality and positioning impact the perception pillar. Your audience and customers own your brand perception, as it’s the way they interpret your actions. However, it doesn’t mean that you cannot change the perception; all the above pillars allow you to shape it. You can use several tools (client recommendations, social media, ads, website, content) to influence perception. However, the key to influencing perception is to understand it.
Questions to ask to grasp your brand perception better:
– How does your public perceive your brand?
– Is this how you want your clients to see it?
– What triggers misconceptions?
– What issues does your brand have to solve?
Promotion ? how you promote your services and product impact your customer experience. Two different types of promotion influence customer experience: brand promotion and sales promotion. Brand promotion involves the methods used to introduce, engage, entice, and motivate your clients to pick your brand and services.
If you’re working on brand promotion, these questions may help you figure out the right direction:
– Do you work with brand ambassadors?
– When do your clients need you?
– Where does your audience find you?
– How do you promote your business?
– What communication channels do you use?
Your public is looking for a brand that stands for something they relate to and has a unique personality. The above pillars are crucial in building a brand personality that attracts and retains loyal customers.
