Brands are made up of multiple components – your product or service; your logos, advertising campaigns, public relations and sponsorships; the behaviors of your employees and your customers’ interactions with them; the personalities of the top executives and/or owners, etc. As we’ve said many times before, it’s ultimately the market that truly defines your brand, and they do so by absorbing all of the elements we just mentioned into an overall image in their mind of who your company is and what it stands for.
Brands can be considered the “personality” of your organization, products or services. And, just as with an individual’s personality, brands matter. They impact how others feel about you and, consequently, impact how others interact with you (or choose not to).
As Esther Choy writes in her Entrepreneur article, “So What’s Your Story? 3 Ways Storytelling Can Help Boost Your Business,” people want to know who you are as a company. “People don’t just want to buy a product or engage a service,” she writes. “They want to know what the people leading the business are like.” If you can tell a compelling story, you can go a long way in taking more control of your brand – in weaving together the different pieces of your brand – logo, advertising, etc. – into one coherent story that is consistent across the minds of the market. If you can’t do this, you can be sure consumers will come up with their own story for your business.
There are a number of benefits to having a compelling story behind your brand. A good story helps consumers put more trust into your company. The organization seems more “human.” Also, if you make a claim about a product or service, it’s going to sound more credible if it fits with an accepted brand story than if it seems like a one-off claim. More generally, brands provide context for your marketing efforts. If someone tells you that Captain Ahab just saw a white whale, the impact of that statement is much greater if you understand his backstory than if it’s made out of the blue. To some extent, the same is true of marketing efforts. If they can be related to your brand’s overall images, strategy, and story, they’re likely to have greater impact.
Branding is tricky business. We can put all the pieces out there, but unless we have a compelling and convincing story, consumers may very well develop their own independent image of who we are as a company.
The ability to craft a good story helps you take greater control over your brand. That is, of course, if your brand reflects consumer reality. Does it?
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About Us
Strategic Communications, LLC, works with B2B clients to help them achieve their goals through effective content marketing and management with both internal and external audiences. We are adept at evaluating and analyzing communication efforts and working with clients to plan, create and publish high-quality, unique content, through both on- and offline media to achieve desired results. Our background in business journalism, marketing, PR/media relations and online communications makes us well-positioned to serve the needs of 21st-century marketers.
We serve clients who are looking for help creating content for a wide array of channels—from social media posts to full-length manuscripts, and everything in between. We focus primarily on service-related B2B topics and work with a number of independent consultants interested in building their thought leadership through online channels. For ongoing content management, our first step is to fully understand your goals, objectives and competitive landscape.
Then we’ll conduct a thorough analysis and assessment of your digital presence, compared to competitors, and recommend a communication strategy to achieve your goals. But, we also regularly take on individual projects – white papers, blog posts, contributed articles, etc. If you’re interested in learning more, let us know!
(Strategic Communications is certified as a Woman-Owned Business Enterprise through the Wisconsin Department of Administration.)
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Tags: aligning your brand, brand, brand audit, Brand Management, branding