Build A Strong Brand

Sharing the story of who you are and why you’re in business attracts people to your company or organization and makes them want you to succeed. A strong brand is clear, consistent, and compelling for the people you most want to reach. It helps you differentiate your business or nonprofit and build customer loyalty.

Think about Starbucks versus Dunkin’ Donuts, or Coke versus Pepsi. Their products are similar, but their brands are quite distinct. Each attracts a separate group of loyal customers.

Good Egg Marketing helps you answer questions, such as:

  • What is branding?
  • I work for a nonprofit. Isn’t branding for sneakers?
  • How can I control what people think about my brand?
  • How can I rebrand our organization or product?
  • Can I build a strong brand on a small budget?
  • How can I develop a good name for my product or business?

DEFINING YOUR BRAND

Your brand is a reflection of both who you actually are and how you’re perceived. Whether you like it or not, everything—and everyone—has a brand. While you can never completely control how people think or feel about your brand, you can shape their perceptions by clearly, consistently, and compellingly presenting the same brand in everything you say or do. Many businesses and organizations—especially larger ones—involve some or all of their employees, board, and other stakeholders in the process of defining their brand. This is especially important for nonprofits and mission-driven businesses that promote their values as part of their brand.

Good Egg Marketing works with businesses and organizations to help you articulate how you want people to think and feel about your brand. We use a variety of tools–including workshops, creative exercises, surveys, and one-on-one interviews–to help people define their brand.

TESTING HOW YOUR BRAND IS CURRENTLY PERCEIVED

If you’re an existing business or organization, or have had a product or service on the market for a while, it’s important for you to understand how your brand is currently perceived. If you like the way people already think and talk about your brand, you can keep reinforcing those views; if their perceptions are inaccurate or harmful, you can work to change them. Good Egg Marketing can help you determine how your brand is currently perceived, both externally and internally, through communications audits, workshops, focus groups, surveys, interviews, and creative exercises. We can help you identify if there’s a gap between how you’d like your brand to be seen and how it’s perceived now. If there IS a gap, we can develop a strategy or creative campaign to help you close it.

DEVELOPING A “BRAND BLUEPRINT”

A “brand blueprint” is a document that articulates the key elements of your brand, such as your brand essence, personality, and positioning statement. Once you’ve defined these elements, you can create a logo, descriptor and/or tagline, and your brand story. Your completed brand blueprint will serve as the basis for developing the messages, text, and images that you’ll use on your website, sales pitches, social media, and marketing collateral. Good Egg Marketing can help you use your brand definition to create the key building blocks for your brand. We’ll help you choose the right words and images to make your brand clear, consistent, and compelling for your target market. In addition, we can develop your new logo, website, or other marketing materials.

BRAND ROLLOUT

A “brand blueprint” is just a piece of paper. You can’t build a strong brand unless you and your employees integrate your brand into everything you say, show, or do. You can’t just talk about your brand—you have to embody, or “live” it. After you develop your brand, you need a rollout strategy for how you’ll create or update all of your marketing materials. You must also train people how to express your brand values. Employees, board members, volunteers, or anyone who represents your brand should have tools and talking points to help them live your brand.

Good Egg Marketing can help you translate the marketing jargon in your brand blueprint into simple branding and communications guidelines. We can also create “brand books” or videos that make it easy for your employees to “get” what you want them to convey. In addition, we can run a branding workshop to train your key people how to express the brand.

BUILDING A STRONG BRAND

Once you’ve developed all the brand elements, created a logo and descriptor or tagline, and trained your staff, you can start building a strong brand. While you may not have the big budgets that multinational corporations have to spend on branding, you have something that they usually don’t: a compelling brand story. Your brand story—who you are, what you do, where and how you do it, and why—is one of your most important assets. Small businesses and non-profits can leverage the passion and values of their founders and employees to inspire people in their target market to become loyal customers.

Good Egg Marketing can help you develop a strategy to increase brand visibility and loyalty through search engine optimization, social media, loyalty programs, stunts, events, and other tactics.