Cass Whitaker, Content Manager & straight-talking business woman, knows all about building a brand. Through her vast experience working with businesses across Australia, she's picked up on the stuff that matters. Here, she's sharing her insights and actionable advice with the DOT.DOC gang.

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As a content manager for a digital marketing agency, one thing I’ve noticed is when I ask a new client whether they have any brand guidelines, they reply “Sure! I’ll send them to you” – and what I receive is actually their logo specifications.

Yeah, not what I was asking for. Sorry.

Don’t get me wrong, a logo is an important aspect of your brand. It should be clear and identifiable, so your customers instantly recognise your store, email, billboard or digital advertisement. Definitely.

But you know what’s more important than that? Their perception of who you are. What feelings does that logo invoke in your customers?

This isn’t simply about having good customer service. It’s about understanding what your company stands for. What it says and doesn’t say. What it cares about. The founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, describes it perfectly, “Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.” 

I’ve worked on a lot of businesses that have had absolutely no brand guidelines or identity. There’s no consistency to their messaging. Sure, they still make sales. But how much better would it be if the brand recall was higher or simply more positive? Maybe that CPA would go down. Maybe their CLV would increase. Isn’t it worth finding out?

What’s the difference between brand marketing and product marketing?

There are a few things to understand when it comes to branding. First off, it should permeate everything you do. After all, it’s your brand’s identity, right? So those Google Shopping ads you’re running should speak in the same tone of voice as your website, as your emails, as your TV commercials, etc.

But brand marketing is more than making sure you speak in the same tone of voice. To clear things up, product marketing typically focuses on a direct response. You’re looking for a specific result, i.e. a sale or an enquiry. Brand marketing, on the other hand, has more in common with a brand awareness campaign you run on social media. It’s designed to mould the consumer’s perception. While you might use advertising tactics related to this new perception down the line, the primary goal is to develop the reputation you want for your business. 

It’s the reason Australian telco provider Telstra went through a significant rebranding process when David Thodey took over as CEO back in the day. Yes, smartypants, they did change their logo. But they also changed how they spoke to their customers, with the aim to change everyone’s perception of who they were and what they stood for. They wanted to be known as the “premium” service provider. People have pretty strong feelings about Telstra, so I’ll let you make your own mind up about whether they succeeded or not.

Branding isn’t just for big businesses though. It’s just as important for SMBs and start-ups. Having a strong brand with significant cut-through could be the difference between rapid growth or stagnation.

Strategies to build your brand

So, how do you do it? Well, let me tell you the most important thing: IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT MARKETING FUNNELS. All I hear about these days from marketers is funnels, and I can assure you they’re valuable – but they’re not a strategy, they’re a tactic. To really build your brand, you need to think more holistically.

Step 1: Get back to basics

When was the last time you looked at your original business plan? Did you even make one? Either way, it’s probably time to start thinking about those key fundamentals once more. 

Questions you should ask yourself include:

• What does success look like?
• What are you willing to forego in pursuit of success? (e.g. are you happy to drop prices, or would you rather have exceptional service and maintain higher prices?)
• Are you looking to expand into new markets?
• Are you offering something new?
• Is there a competitor that is stealing market share?

Once you start answering these questions, you’ll know what’s important to your business...and therefore, some of the fundamentals of your brand.

Step 2: Know your audience

Some people have an idea of what their brand is and then run wild. While it’s great they’ve envisioned such a strong identity for their business, what do their customers think? 

Yeah, don’t assume you know the answer to that instinctively. You need to do some research. Some of the questions you need to ask include:

• Who is buying your product?
• Why are they purchasing it?
• What influences their decision to buy?
• What’s their perception of your brand?
• What about their perception of your nearest competitors?

For big businesses, it’s pretty easy to access a variety of tools that’ll provide hard data on this information. For smaller businesses, it may be more difficult. Feel free to come up with some hypotheses, but I also recommend doing what you can to survey your current and prospective customers to get a more concrete picture.

Step 3: Know your competition

Sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how often it’s left out. Sure, you can identify who your main competitors are, but what are they doing differently? Are you really better than them like you think are you? Let’s find out.

Analysis you should definitely do include:

• SWOT analysis
• Product gap analysis
• Feature and benefits audit
• Messaging audit

Also, remember – not everyone is a competitor. Let’s talk about Telstra again for a second. I used to work for a small telecommunications company that literally had three employees. The owner thought Telstra was one of their direct competitors. They weren’t. If you’ve already followed step two and know your audience inside and out, you’ll know whether another business really is in the same market as you.

Step 4: Develop your messaging

Once you’ve completed the above three steps, you should know what you stand for, who you’re talking to, and who you’re competing against. Great! Now it’s time to start developing messaging that fits within these parameters.

Pete Herrnreiter, Vice President of Strategy and Planning at The Motion Agency, Chicago’s largest independent marketing agency, advises that “a good way to start is to complete this sentence: I make/sell ____ for/to ___ who want/need ___ and believe ____.”

For example, I sell content marketing to businesses who want to make sales and believe that branding is important.

Once you’ve identified these elements, you’ll be able to expand out and develop messaging for all the various channels you utilise for marketing and advertising. This includes:

• Your website
• Blogs
• EDMs and marketing automation
• Ad placements
• Social media content
• Flyers and other offline material
• Literally anything that has your logo on it
  

How do you measure your brand’s success?

In product marketing, most marketers review a myriad of stats to measure success, the primary ones being number of sales, conversion rate, CPA and ROAS. But how do you measure the success of a brand building campaign?

Well, it really comes down to perception that we were talking about earlier. Ideally, you want to see a shift in that perception and sentiment as a result of your efforts. This means, prior to launching any campaigns you need to measure your brand’s current perception to establish a benchmark. Once your campaigns have taken effect, measure again after some time has elapsed to see how things have changed.

For smaller businesses, it might be that you’re simply looking to see a growth in awareness and brand recall, rather than perception and sentiment shift. That’s fine, but it’s definitely recommended you set a benchmark first too.

What role does copywriting play in building your brand?

Call me biased, but copywriting is one of the most important aspects of building a brand. Yes, the logo is important. It needs to be recognisable and match the brand you’re creating. But at the end of the day, how you speak to your customers is what’s going to influence their perception. They might not remember the exact words they read, but they’ll certainly remember how they made them feel. And that’s the most important part.

That’s why it pays to hire a professional. Someone who knows the right words to use. Who knows how to spin every aspect of your brand in a positive light. I've lost count of how many times I’ve been told by business owners, “We’re cheap but we don’t like saying we’re cheap.” No worries mate, I got you.

Give the team at DOT.DOC a shout to talk more about making an impression with copy.