So you’ve started a business and you’ve done pretty well to get things off the ground and have a budget for a fresh rebrand. Chances are when you created your business, it didn’t have the best branding and it may not have had the attention that it needed at the start to resonate with your customers. Making the decision to rebrand is not easy, but now you have entered the growth stage, this is where your branding becomes crucial for your business to redefine your brand.
For many, this can be a huge task in itself with countless obstacles that can result in your business hindering progress, costing more time and money. Fortunately, these mistakes can be avoided pretty easily if you follow these tips. In this article, we will go through some of the biggest branding mistakes to avoid in 2022.
Not Differentiating From Your Competitors
There’s nothing wrong with looking at what your competitors are doing for inspiration, but take everything with a pinch of salt. If you look too similar, customers may get confused about the brand they prefer causing a lack of trust. Failing to differentiate your brand will result in potential customers simply going to the cheapest business.
To differentiate yourself from your competitors, it is essential to understand your audience and what is important to them. Find out what their biggest challenges, problems and frustrations are so that you can discover whether your competitors are fulfilling these needs. If not, to differentiate, you can solve these issues which will in turn help users choose your business over your competitors.
Not Defining Your Brand Properly
When people start a business, they often think in terms of stats and figures. This is fine, but it is not defining a brand properly. In fact, this doesn’t define a brand at all. Logos and websites are all essential, and yes, they do convey an image of your brand, but it is necessary to look into the bigger picture and the finer details such as strategy. Strategy creates a brand, but if they’re done wrong, it can diminish a brand just as quickly.
These factors include, what makes you unique. Why should your audience, care about you, where are you positioned, what are your values, how do you solve your customer’s problems and how do you want them to feel? All of these are relevant factors you need to answer before creating a solid brand strategy.
Over-Promising, Under-Delivering
It is important to live up to the hype you’re creating around your brand. If there is one thing you don’t want to be doing, it is under-delivering and over-promising your service or product. At the end of the day, your customers are your lifeline, so if you underdeliver, they won’t use you again, which can result in some customers feeling deceived and losing trust in a brand. Customer loyalty is what is going to grow your business, so ensuring repeat custom is a priority by providing exactly what you said you were going to with your service or product.
Focusing On Features Over Benefits
Having benefits to using your brand is always great, but this isn’t what is going to draw your customers in. One method that is going to encourage customers to come to you is by meeting the needs of your customers and solving some of their nuisances across various pain points. Rather than speaking in speeds, features or facts, you should be playing with people’s emotional triggers, by showing benefits. Show that you are committed to the cause by showing passion for the values you are bringing to your customers. There will of course be a shift in your values and benefits, but they should always align with how you want your customers to feel.
Failing To Tell A Compelling Story
There is a growing trend for most content to be written by AI, this is great news if you are lazy and have no passion for your business. If you are trying to create a compelling story, the first thing you need to understand is that people will not resonate with a computer, so no AI. Instead, put some effort in and create a story that you want to tell. Life isn’t always sunshine and rainbows, but hard graft, dedication and passion are all that are going to help people resonate with your brand story. Your customers will be drawn in with engaging video content, a compelling brand story ad something that is different and solves their issues.
Failing To Research
Not all research needs to be in the library, and it doesn’t all have to be academic, instead do your research on your customers and your potential customers. When it comes to improving your business and restructuring your brand, the most important thing is your customer’s voice. Your customer’s voice will help you to understand what they want and need whilst also telling you what they think of your brand. If you use personas for audiences, remember they continually change, so it is essential to keep up to date. By understanding your customer’s pain points, you can find ways to solve them which will, in turn, bring more qualified customers to you.
Holding On To The Past
The brand that you have created probably has a lot of blood, sweat and tears behind it and it probably feels like your baby. You have founded the business, created the logo and believe in the mission with aligned values, but do your employees, customers or investors feel the same? If you are precious about your brand, stop. You need to let your brand grow and evolve with change s this is what is going to help your brand become successful, by following and evolving as your customers do.
Not Listening To Your Customers
Customers are your lifeline, so it pays to listen to them. Their feedback can give you a lot of information about your business, and what you are and not doing well. This is great when you are providing a service or product as people can give their honest opinion. There is a hindrance to this though as you may find that you take everything to heart and follow their instructions without actually looking at the data.
Your customers may need some persuading to give you a review, but it is important to understand that everything should be taken with a pinch of salt as they tend to over-generalise or over-exaggerate. So when asking for a review, ask them about previous experiences with your brand.
Not Having A Crisis Plan
Every business will make mistakes, but the worst thing you can do is to not create a backup plan for these occasions. Every successful company around will have plans and strategies in place for when something goes wrong. Creating a risk management plan could seriously help you determine what could go wrong with your business and will help you to deal with these issues by creating plans.
When you own a small business, when someone talks about risk, it can seem irrelevant until it happens. Whilst it is impossible to plan for all circumstances, it is a good idea to create a process template that can be for most circumstances.
There are many branding mistakes out there that can hinder the progress of your business, but follow these tips and you won’t have a problem with expanding your business and meeting the needs of your customers. If you are struggling to gain the traction you need from your brand, speaking to a branding agency Manchester based will ensure you have some of the best talents in the UK.