Nicole Poggi

3 reasons you should be investing in your brand, and its strategy

Why the keystone of your business is to design and develop a distinctive brand for its targets and markets, both physical and digital.

Tempo di lettura: 6 min
Tags: #brand management#brand strategy#branding#business strategy

A new year, one of faith in the future and in our own personal potential.
The goal? To succeed in creating a custom-designed growth strategy and an integrated development plan.

That’s why the keystone of your business, what “holds everything up,” is developing a distinctive, stand-out brand that will be powerful because of the targets you identify and valuable in customer awareness and in profit margin.

Many of you ask us where to start, what to work on and why, and if creating a brand strategy means working on your marketing; others ask us about selling; still others about how to involve themselves or partners or external customers.

So, in light of all this, we decided to share some clarity by considering in order the three main reasons to do branding, or planning a pathway to growth for your brand in the marketplace and addressing your targets both physical and digital.

The three reasons for doing branding, and therefore for developing a distinguishable brand that your target will find irresistible and priceless, both in terms of awareness and profit margin, constitute the cornerstone of your business.

1 – Process and approach > Your brand map and make the process easy

Why are you doing what you do? Why does your brand exist? Why should they select you?
The answer is not spontaneous, and it’s not at all banal, nor is it the usual response: because our products are high-quality, because our history goes back so many years, or because I have good prices.

Defining your brand purpose and fashioning your positioning are the sum of actions, solutions, perspectives, and visions that you introduce into our business.

That’s the reason that in every new project or in the Brand Map – the format that guides you through defining your identity and creating your Road Map – we always start by exploring your personality, looking for elements that set you apart, and analysing your target—everything that serves to determine what to do, why, and how.

That’s always the starting-place, the brand.
Working on your brand is a constant effort, and it requires a good amount of willingness to adapt oneself to changes, precisely because your approach to managing your business, to interfacing with your customers, and to creating new products will evolve in coherence with each other and with the new guidelines you establish, and for this reason it is not an action that takes place “once for all,” but is, rather, a continuous process.
Because, when all is said and done, the true measure of your success in “doing branding’ is to have gained the trust of your customers, who will thus become your brand ambassadors.

2 – Customer and market > Speak, select, act, and create as if you were your customer

Here at Route ‘n Roots we know very well and we believe even more strongly that in talking about branding one must work at, read, and understand what the market really is all about. Live it, sell, offer, negotiate. Create a position.
For us, the slogan is “brand to market”; that is, from identity to market

A strong brand anticipates clients and adapts itself to novel dynamic forces in the market.

For example, each relative target—importer, sales rep, seller, buyer—will require uniquely different sales tools that will serve whoever is using to facilitate sales and will induce those who see them to select, in the shortest possible time, that particular brand.

A brochure with educational information about your product, an accurate but sterile account of your history, sales materials touting awards—not only do these not serve to arouse interest, but they become banal and boring.
Make them fall in love with your “Why,” with your reason for being! Amaze them with how you tell your story and with how you sell.

‘Brand is what people say when you’re not in the room’, is a famous quote of Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon. If it is a true brand, and therefore recognised, celebrated, and powerful, that will be the response of your customers, too, when you’re not in the room with them.

3 – Experience and value > Involve your target

We are selling a product or a service only if we know how to create a mechanism uniquely ours and totally coherent with the identity of our brand that will unfailingly generate participation. 
Those who purchase a brand understand its value, and that product takes on meaning only if that customer succeeds in interacting with that product.

Convey who you are, and why, create opportunities for stimulating dialogue with your customers, since only in this way will you be able to truly know them and win their loyalty.

In considering working on direct sales, the possibility, that is, of creating a personal experience for the customer, it is of crucial importance to pay close attention to how we present ourselves, to the range and kind of activities we make available, and to the tools we utilise in the field.

Nothing should be left to chance! And that means what the person sees when s/he enters my business, what I say, how I interact, what I say about my products, what symbols or logos I use to make an impression, what prices I set, what my portfolio is, how I take care of my business spaces…. Oh, I forgot: is the restroom accessible, clean, impressive?
By the same token, if I’m online, and I want my website to really make an impact and gain positioning, what am I offering and generating for my users? How do I make them do what I’d like them to do?
Finally, just before launching physically into the market, how do I simplify the purchasing experience for buyers, importers, their customers?
Do I enable them to generate interest, amazement, surprise, beauty, desire—or am I simply working “on automatic pilot”?

 

Tell who you are, why you’re doing what you’re doing, create opportunities for dialogue with your clients; that is the only way you can get to know them, to win their loyalty.
Create a brand that will stand out for its distinctiveness and will act as a magnet for those who select it: if you do that, you will have optimised your time and money, maximised your opportunities, and created added value, now and into the future.

GET THE GROOVE

If, like us, you have a firm belief in “brand power,” stay at the front of the pack with our profiles and information clips.
Choose brand, strategy, value, professionalism, experience, performance, sharing!
It’s all just a click away.