to one media outlet: BuzzFeed Books. After the press release was picked up and trending on the main BuzzFeed website, we started attracting more interest for interviews and features.
To make it easy for others to discuss the launch of our company online (on their websites, blogs, and social media accounts), I posted our press release and media kit on our website in a section titled About Us. This material included the basic info, logos, and high-resolution photos needed to produce articles and other content about the Color Me Book brand quickly and easily.
I also included an email address dedicated to press inquiries that journalists and bloggers could use to contact us for interviews. As soon as news of his product hit the press, it went viral, and orders started pouring in.
Creating an emotional connection
In many ways, building a strong brand is about building strong relationships. People form relationships with one another based not so much on what they think about each other but on how they feel toward one another. The same is true of relationships that people create with their favorite brands. It’s not so much what they know about your brand but how they feel about it that keeps them coming back and endorsing it.
One of your top branding goals should be to create an emotional connection with existing and prospective customers and clients. Stop thinking so much about what your brand is and what it offers, and start thinking more about how prospective customers and clients feel about it. How does your brand affect their lives? Get personal. Taking a more personalized approach enables you to nurture an emotional connection between your customers and your brand.
Here are a few suggestions for getting your customers, clients, and prospects connected more emotionally to your brand:
Get connected to the people in your market. When you’re connected to others, you’re in tune with their needs and desires, what they like and dislike, and who they are. You “get” them, and when you do, you intuitively know what to do and say to get them to love your brand. Maybe they appreciate a good laugh. Maybe they’re afraid of what’s going on in the world. Maybe they have a common cause.When you know what makes your customers tick, you can market more effectively to them. If you’re serving a community that’s committed to environmental issues, you could post blog entries about environmental issues and perhaps offer products made from recycled materials.
Share real stories. People like to see brands in a real-life context, so look for opportunities to tell customer stories. Better yet, encourage customers to share their experiences with your brand. You can take advantage of this type of user-generated content (see Chapter 13) in your social media, website, and newsletter.
Add a personal touch. Nothing makes a person feel more emotionally connected to a brand than being acknowledged and appreciated personally. Adding a personal touch can be as simple as addressing customers by name, calling them on the phone when they have a complaint, or liking and sharing their social media posts about your brand. Strive to personalize your brand’s voice, as explained in Chapter 8, especially when you’re scaling up and having to delegate or outsource some or all of your marketing. Creating a brand style guide, as explained in Chapter 6, can help ensure consistency in your brand’s voice when you’re having to distribute your workload.
Differentiating your business, product, service, or self
Brand differentiation involves setting your brand apart from the competition, and it’s one of the most important branding goals. You want to plant the perception in the minds and hearts of existing and prospective customers and clients that your brand is different from and better than the alternatives. Otherwise, people have no reason to do business with you instead of one of your competitors.
To differentiate your brand, find or create a unique selling proposition and a value proposition. A unique selling proposition (USP) is a statement about what makes your brand different from and better than competing brands. A value proposition is a clear statement of the tangible benefits of your products and services.
Here are a few ways to differentiate your brand with USPs and added value:
Narrow your target demographic. New brands may not be able to win a war against bigger, well-entrenched brands, but they can win some battles to gain a foothold and start building momentum. Narrowing your target demographic enables you to differentiate your brand in a smaller market.
Create a different price point for a popular product. Notice that I said different, not lower. Your price may be lower to appeal to the budget-conscious or higher to appeal to the quality-conscious. Don’t start a price war with well-established brands. Why not? Well, for one thing, you’ll lose, and in the process, everyone in your industry will lose because you’re all trying to undercut one another.
Focus on customer service. Promising and delivering superior customer service is a great way to differentiate your brand when your brand is nearly identical to competing brands.
Differentiation is all about creating a market niche, as explained in Chapter 2.
Building credibility and trust
People buy only the brands they believe and trust, so one of your branding goals should be to build credibility and trust and not do anything that undermines these attributes. Here are a few ways you can build credibility and trust in your brand:
Demonstrate your knowledge and expertise. Use content marketing (valuable, relevant content that doesn’t explicitly promote your brand) to show that you know your stuff. You can distribute content in the form of web pages, blog posts, email messages, newsletters, press releases, podcasts, videos, and more.
Keep your promises. Salespeople have a motto: “Underpromise and overdeliver.” Don’t make your customers expect more than you can reasonably deliver. Do what you say you’re going to do. If you launch a preorder, be sure that the date you promise to ship the product is realistic; then meet or beat that date. If an unforeseen delay arises, keep your preorder customers informed so that they know what to expect.
Use customer and client testimonials. Include testimonials and positive quotations about your brand on your website or blog and in your marketing materials. Testimonials are especially effective for business-to-business brands because they show that you have a track record of delivering quality products or services.Business-to-consumer businesses can also benefit from testimonials. After launching our brand Color Me Book, we reached out to satisfied customers to request testimonials, which we then posted on our site.
Embrace transparency. Be open and honest. If you say or do something wrong, own up to it, apologize, and try to undo any damage. Denial and shifting the blame may work in politics, but they’ll destroy a business.
Driving sales
Often, the goal of branding activities is to drive sales. Some activities drive sales directly, and others do so indirectly. Here are a few direct approaches for motivating customers and clients to buy what you’re selling:
Advertise
