Emily Heyward: A branding expert’s top 10 tips to Persistently Standing Out in the Market | Lady Drinks

Effective branding is one of the ways to ensure your business remains competitive. But you’ll require persistence to keep promoting your brand to achieve success in business.

PR Strategist Emily Heyward engaged us in a conversation on branding. Here are ten valuable tips to persistent leadership that she provided.

2. Be clear about your brand from the beginning.

Even before you launch your business, have clarity on your brand. This will guide you on how to express your story, as well as choose your aesthetics like logo and colors.

Consumers can feel your brand, so you need to know what emotion you want to elicit. Focus on the ‘why’ of your business so that you can tap into your consumers’ journey.

2. Make your business story personally applicable.

Some businesses are motivated by the achievement of mission goals. For example, as part of South Asian women’s leadership you might want to empower immigrant women. However, if you communicate your branding message this way, you may lock out a large potential market.

Instead, have a values statement that appeals to a larger target audience. Tap into a human need like the desire for equality and belonging so that more people can buy into your brand.

3. Connect your product’s functionality to an emotional feeling.

Many brands focus on the technical aspect of their products and services forgetting that other products perform the same function. You need to tap into an emotional feeling to differentiate you from your competitors.

For example, Airbnb have capitalized on people feeling they belong to a certain place once they book accommodation through the platform. People don’t like feeling like outsiders even when they travel.

Connecting the accommodation functionality to this emotional need has led to the success of the brand.

4. Incorporate an element of surprise in your branding

Generally, there’s a certain branding expectation in each industry. For instance, when Tesla decided to venture into electric cars as a solution to pollution, you’d have expected a nerdy brand. However, they have incorporated fun as part of the brand.

5. In a crowded market identify your unique value.

Get an extra trait that’s typically not associated with the industry to create freshness around your brand.

In an industry with so many competitors, you can get lost in creating lists of tasks you can do. Remember that people generally recall how you made them feel.

Focus on a unique thing you can offer a client and use it as your selling point.

6. Identify a narrative line that interweaves many aspects of your brand.

People can wear different hats. For instance, you could be a media personality, a mom, and wellness enthusiast. You could be struggling with how to incorporate all these aspects of you without trying to sound like an expert in all.

Choose a common element in all aspects and then create a narrative. This way you can use all as different channels but under one brand roof.

7. Focus on your core market and grow from there.

A core audience is important for every business. You want to have a group of people who are obsessed with your product first. You can then expand your reach but with the guarantee that you have loyal customers.

Many businesses make the mistake of changing branding and products to reach newer target markets at the expense of losing their core market.

8. Find the right language to reach a wider market.

Inspirations to businesses stem from many personal inspirations that people are passionate about. An example would be art curated from a spiritual perspective. It can be difficult to market this kind of product because people may be caught up in the word spiritual.

Figure out how to broaden the meaning of the word spiritual in this case to accommodate a wider reach. Sometimes people don’t even know that they like a certain aspect or product until they are triggered by correct wording.

9. As a brand, your actions should be louder than your words.

In a world where consumers are taking stands on various issues such as racial injustice, it’s important to take a stand as a business. Right now, silence also indicates a stand so you can’t play it safe by remaining silent on issues.

It’s not enough to say you condemn something, your actions in hiring, advertising and all aspects of business should communicate your stand.

Walk the talk!

10. Build a community around your brand.

Subaru is a good example of a company that has done this well. The automobile brand has managed to create a community of drivers who share love for the brand. Even without personally knowing other Subaru drivers, the drivers feel as though they belong to a certain community.

Use your communication platforms such as Instagram and Facebook to build a community around your brand.

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Originally published at https://ladydrinks.com on July 21, 2020.