Branding? back to basics!
Back to Basics
Here’s one of the most important precepts recited as a daily mantra by our LINK marketing gurus: Branding has little to do with the attempt to convince consumers to choose your company or the products or services you offer and not to buy those of your competitors.
The aim of branding is to make your target market or niche acknowledge your company as the preferred choice, even as the only one which can provide the answer to their problems
The aim of any professional brand should be
- To deliver crystal clear messages
- To create visions which motivate your potential and existing clients
- To constantly increase and cement customer loyalty
- To find ways to interact with your potential customers emotionally
- To work towards creating and increasing credibility
There has been written a great deal about branding, and what makes branding successful and what to avoid on the long road to building a successful brand. The core ingredient, quite often not taken seriously enough is our complete and total understanding what our existing and potential clients, customers or consumers not only want but need.
Branding is not an activity it’s an all embracing concept and a holistic one at that. Branding is an ongoing perpetual process achieved and implemented by integrating your specific and unique strategies through your company and its activities at every single point of contact with the general public including your existing customers.
A brand is not a tangible product. Your customers can’t touch it nor can they see it. Customers “feel and see” your brand through their emotions and their minds, but only if you have been able to create a bond and synergy between your customers, current or future, and the brand.
How your clients perceive you, is the result of their personal opinions and feelings based on the many different “feelings” and experiences with your brand. We cannot change or influence all of your target markets perceptions and feelings, but some we can.
A brand is not a stand alone approach nor can it be a solitary solution in search of commercial success. Furthermore, brand building has most certainly nothing to do with marketing. Creating a recognizable brand within your market or niche is of paramount importance. The competition does not sleep, and it is getting harder and harder every day to win the hearts and minds of customers in your quest to guide them towards your brand.
Marketing without the backbone of a strong brand will not be effective. Selling products or services without authentic, meaningful connectivity to a brand proves less and less successful.
At LINK, we firmly believe that that your brand is seen by your customers as a promise on which you must then strive to deliver at any cost and just how you deliver on that promise and what experiences your clients will take away will be largely responsible for your brands success.
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