Brand Identity: Foundation for Conversion by https://www.zintro.com/profile/t-buckman,-mba
Identity + Reach ^ Traction ^ Conversion
Effective positioning, tools, systems, and processes, sets a solid foundation for growth. Many budding and young ventures benefit from a deeper understanding of how and why an effective Brand design and message positioning package marks your territory. Doing so requires far more than just selecting a logo and name that resonates with targets.
Due to a high churn rate (9 out of 10 businesses fail: 5 Reasons for STRATEGY in Business Growth) among the 540,000 businesses that begin monthly in the US alone, we can see the benefit in making a business memorable and instantly relevant to prospects. Planners win.
A well-crafted Brand Identity is essential to this winning strategy. Wise business owners make sure their Brand is in place, and working effectively, by the time they open their doors or launch online.
Confusion about the need for - and process behind - full development of a solid Brand Identity keeps many emerging ventures in the dark about what actually drives conversion. Online propaganda, advertising, and blog posts about SEO can lead less experienced business owners and executives to believe that Search Engine Optimization and analytics (tactics) are the primary road to snagging and holding visitor attention. Even worse, the pervasive belief seems to be: with enough traffic, sales will automatically follow.
This flawed logic skips past the essentials. Persuasive message positioning, visual and verbal agreement through talking points and images, consistent integration across all points of presence, clarity, and calls to action must be prominently implemented as a strategic core. Without a clear, clean, credible expression of Brand Identity – on a website, and throughout every other promotional channel – nothing exists to compel a prospective customer to recognize differentiators: reasons to purchase from you (now) instead of the competition.
Yet the myth prevails: “if you build it [and invest hundreds or thousands monthly in SEO], they will come.” You may eventually get traffic. Of course, even with good content-based SEO, that takes time. So then, where is the formula for converting any new visitor traffic you may receive, regardless of its source?
Here, Brand message serves its purpose. This core foundation mainly shows (+ briefly tells) targets what you offer that other businesses cannot.
When new visitors are given no reason to stick and stay, they are lost forever. Bounce new visitors, and sacrifice their entire potential spend: revenue and profit for the complete lifetime of the customer.
Huge risk. Enormous loss.
Attention spans are short. People have no interest in wading through paragraphs and pages of text to find a solution for their problem once they want to buy. They must instantly see and realize why they should do business with you…instead of the competition.
A visitor arriving on a website with an explicit need, ready to make a purchase, needs to recognize the rationale: why should they choose YOUR solution? What’s your value proposition? If not evident - amidst a text laden or disorganized format, focused on features rather than benefits - that visitor will be instantly headed to the next site.
Implementation of an effective, enticing Brand Identity prior to launch enables a business to capitalize on every visitor interaction. Grab attention and engage interest. Develop interest and increase traction.
Reinforce traction by converting the visitor into a customer. Then, provide each with an incentive to tell their friends about the business too: securing quick-converting referrals.
Brand Identity development requires thinking strategically about how you want the business to be seen, experienced, and remembered. After all, emotion drives purchasing motivation. What will ignite interest, triggering immediate action?
What speaks to the target’s needs? What value and benefit will resonate in your offering? What do you want them to instantly associate with, and understand from, your message when they see your logo…land on your site?
In the same way that we select a specific suit, phone, computer, briefcase, haircut, set of mannerisms, and posture to convey our personal image…this is the way we must consider expressing our venture’s best assets: through a cogent Brand Identity. Eventually, this establishes and reinforces Brand Recognition as well for further traction. A name, logo, domain, image series, and combination of talking points that requires decoding and lengthy explanations is not going to serve this crucial, longstanding purpose.
Be clear.
After all, Nike, Google, Apple, Adidas, Amazon and the other big brands have spent billions in outbound marketing campaigns over decades of time to become etched in the public's memory and psyche. Unless you have the budget for that (even if you did, you still want to address your targets’ explicit needs with memorable clarity), craft a Brand ID that shows, rather than having to tell.
Another way to think of this is spotlighting the experience of your company and its products/services. With luxury cars as your product, you may be inclined to discuss horsepower, maneuverability, performance, and other features of the vehicle. Yet, what makes an impression – and sells cars – is a driver behind the wheel who can feel the difference: experience the benefits.
Brand Identity is far more than a logo, slogan, and color scheme. Companies that recognize this fact, and its importance, are those gaining effective traction. They endure.
They find connection: success, market share, and revenues at every stage of growth. After all, they planned for it…they designed it that way.
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T Buckman, MBA commented
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