Common mistakes made during the branding process
Branding process
Branding is not a one-off undertaking. It is a process that goes on for as long as your business lasts. It involves various complex processes. It is imperative to understand the common branding mistakes and how to avoid them so that your branding process will be consistent and successful.
Lots of business owners do not understand the intricacies of branding. To some, it is not worth their time, others do it haphazardly. However, some businesses spend a lot of energy and resources on branding and still end up not getting the full benefits of branding. The three categories are all going about branding the wrong way.
Hence, they make the same branding mistakes over and over while expecting things to work differently. Branding cannot be successful unless it is dynamically sustained and enhanced over time. Rather than waste your resources on an unstructured branding campaign without achieving much, hire experts like BDYD to handle every aspect of branding for you.
To get the best out of the brand building, you need to know the common branding mistakes. You must recognize what works and what doesn’t work. You cannot afford to relax because you have put every branding element in place.
Any simple mistake intended or otherwise can ruin all your branding efforts. Let us look at some of the common start-up branding mistakes to avoid. Knowing them will help you stay on your guard and catch yourself if you notice any slip.
Misunderstanding branding
A lot of businesses make the branding mistake of misunderstanding branding as only the brand’s visuals. And because of this error, they focus their branding campaign on colors, fonts, logos and neglect brand vision, value, voice, customer care, content, and other aspects.
Branding involves all the actions you take to show your audience how to perceive your brand. Failure to understand this concept will spell doom for your branding process.
Inconsistency
The corporate identity of your brand needs to remain as consistent as possible throughout your brand’s lifetime. Stick with the same color palette, logo, tagline, company name, and so forth.
You don’t want to confuse people by changing your brand identity now and then. If the need arises for you to make a change, notify the public. But try as much as possible to avoid such changes.
Inconsistency can also cost your brand its credibility and loyal customers.
Your brand consistency also includes marketing your brand consistently on various media.
Lack of proper knowledge of your target audience.
If you put in all the necessary work and resources into your branding campaign but target the wrong audience, your branding is a big flop. Imagine a lingerie company targeting teenage boys. The company may attract a handful of these boys or their sisters, but it will be losing out on the huge market of young ladies.
Define your audience right from the onset of your branding process. Who is your audience? Where can you find them? Discover their pain points, likes, and dislikes, but don’t forget their demographics and psychographics. Knowledge of these factors will help you craft your message and send it via the most relevant platforms. It will also make the branding process a piece of cake.
Trying to be everybody’s brand
Yea, you want to reach as many people as possible, have a wide audience base. But the truth is that you cannot be everybody’s brand, so don’t even try, else, you would spread yourself too thin. The ‘know your audience’ factor comes into play here.
Your product or service cannot be for everybody. Therefore, trying too hard to be the apple of everybody’s eyes will backfire on you. First, you will no longer be able to target the right audience whose pain point you can solve. This means you will lose your target audience.
Secondly, because you are targeting no one in particular by targeting everybody, you prevent both new and existing customers from patronizing you. Because you will be trying to enhance certain areas to please certain segments or water down some sections to please a handful of people. You end up alienating a lot of people rather than building a larger audience.
Be the brand that the right audience will fall over themselves to have you.
Risk of passing over professional help
No man knows it all, do not fall into the common branding mistake of thinking that you do. You may be good at graphics design and content creation. But what about other areas like web design/development, digital marketing, or knowledge of psychology? A lot of factors come into play in branding, unless you want to focus just on the graphics aspect.
You need professional help from a strategic consultancy like BDYD and Co or freelancers. You will part with some cash, but the gain will be worth double whatever you put in. Remember that branding is an ongoing process so you need to give it your best shot.
Overlooking rebranding
Like I mentioned previously, branding is a continuous process. Don’t make the branding mistake of thinking you can do it once and forget about it. No way, that will not just cut it.
If your branding process is already in motion, every practice, action, and content of your brand should always follow the branding goals.
Moreover, you will have to look at the branding campaign in use at least once or twice a year and see what is working and what is not. That way, you can determine whether to rebrand or just make a few adjustments.
Missing employee branding
I can’t overemphasize the point that every aspect of your business is part of the branding process. You should train your employees to be the image of your company. From the way, they answer calls and respond to social media messages to broadcasting about your business to anyone who cares to listen.
Without proper training, some of them will not be able to help your branding campaign. It is therefore important that you train and reward them accordingly.
Not tracking your branding process
Often, business owners get caught up in the branding process and forget to track the process. This is one huge branding mistake to avoid.
There are various tools and methods you can use to track your branding efforts. For instance, how do you discover how your telephone callers came to know about your brand? The employee operating the telephone should cheerfully ask the caller how he/she got to know about your brand (assuming the person is a new client). Keep track of these responses because they will tell you a lot about your branding campaign.
Getting boring
In as much as we advocate for consistency, you also need to infuse diversity and personality into your branding process. You do not want to bore your audience with the same marketing pattern for years on end or tell the same story over and over again.
Humour is excellent if you are a professional, likewise storytelling. You need to be able to retain the attention of your audience for as long as possible. Your type of business will determine the kind of variety that your audience will appreciate.
Following the bandwagon
The internet has exposed us to a lot of trends. Trending styles, trending stories, trending news and events are always cropping up. If you are not careful, you will jump the bandwagon and lose your brand’s personality.
Be cautious of the type of trends and issues you associate your brand with. Joining the wrong bandwagon can cost you more customers than you will gain from it. Do not attach your name to something just because others are doing it.
BDYD and Co can efficiently help your brand avoid these common mistakes made during the branding process.
As a strategic brand consultancy service provider, we will establish a strong relationship with your company and its audience. This way, we will have a better grasp of your business landscape and know how to forestall any impending mistake.
The best part is that BDYD and Co stick with each of our clients until we reach the finish line successfully.
Our expertise covers global brand development, digital platform, optimization process, sales and, marketing. Whichever way you want to pursue your branding and business growth, BDYD and Co have got what it takes.
In order to save your brand the risk of falling into these age-long mistakes, hire us today.
