Developing Business Branding Goals That Deliver

The purpose of business branding is to create a true identity for your product or service, which enables your team to align every aspect of your marketing and operations. To deliver the same compelling information to everyone who encounters your brand, it’s important that your branding strategy is built on comprehensive business goals.

Here’s how to build a brand through developing appropriate goals on which to base your activities.

What are Branding Goals?

Branding goals are different from general business goals. These are the objectives you want to achieve specifically to improve awareness and strength of your brand in your target market. As with general business goals, however, they need to be as SMART as possible (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-based) to provide you with a sound blueprint for your marketing activities.

Common business branding goals are:

#1: Establish Identity and Image

Your brand identity is what you want to be in the minds of your customers. Identity depends on the image you create using visual symbols such as your logo and slogan, the ideas and emotions you represent, and the qualities and experiences your company offers. Having a clear, visible brand identity enables your products and services to stand out in the crowd.

#2: Develop Brand Positioning

Your brand position is the job you do in the mind of your ideal customer and the degree to which they view you as good, bad or indifferent. According to HubSpot, positioning begins with:

• Determining where you stand currently, identifying your competitors,
• Figuring out what makes your product or service unique from others,
• Knowing who your ideal audience is, and the core message you want them to receive,
• Creating a statement that encapsulates the benefit your product offers to that audience.

Here’s an example of positioning that works: Delta and JetBlue are competitor airlines who both offer a similar product. When Delta stopped serving peanuts and reduced legroom for passengers, JetBlue changed its positioning by talking about its gourmet snacks and expansive legroom. This helped the airline find success by focusing on comfort and service, instead of the lowest cost.

#3: Build Brand Awareness

Creating a well-known, recognized brand is an important aspect of how to build a brand. If people don’t know about or trust your brand, it will be impossible for you to increase sales and revenue. Brand awareness only happens, however, when you identify specific goals and ways to reach them. Bold branding is key for getting noticed in today’s markets.

Some methods of achieving brand awareness are:

• Optimizing your website for searchability, so users find it when they are looking.
• Using content marketing and social media to reach people who might not be looking for your products yet, but who have an interest in the type of industry you’re in.
• Developing branded signage and packaging for products, so anyone using you is helping to create visibility.

Paid traditional advertising and PR are also good ways to control the level of awareness you want to achieve, but you need a reasonable marketing budget to implement these methods. A brand marketing agency can help you make the most of the budget you have available.

#4: Attract Engagement

Every business wants to attract engagement from its clients, but you need to formulate specific goals to make this happen. This begins with asking questions such as:

• Who do you want to engage with?
• What is the best channel to reach them through?
• Which type of content is most likely to get their attention?
• What kind of motivation do they need to encourage them to respond to you?

Clients engage via social media, blog comments, event marketing, retargeting, and multiple other channels, provided you give them enough incentive to do so in the form of thought-provoking content, contests, time-sensitive offers and socially responsible activities.

#5: Encourage Brand Loyalty

We’ve all heard how it costs more to attract new clients than to retain old ones, but that’s not the only reason to encourage brand loyalty. Make it a business branding goal to build customer loyalty through excellent service, resolution of complaints, and regular communications. This will help you not only retain clients but turn them into brand ambassadors, who will support you unequivocally as long as you deliver on your brand promise.

#6: Increase Market Share

The primary purpose of developing business branding goals is to grow your business and improve your revenue, and the way to do that is to increase your share of the market in which you operate. When you’re setting these goals, it’s important to understand the size of your potential market, and the role you could fill in it. This also depends on your ability to scale, because there’s no value in having customers whom you can’t satisfy.

A Powerful Presence

The development of solid business branding goals is important for any company wanting to develop a powerful, recognized presence in its marketplace.

For more information on how you can make this difference in your company, schedule a consultation with The Marketing Machine, an experience branding & marketing agency Raleigh, NC.