Our world is dominated by brands – you can’t walk down the main street of any town or city without being assaulted by advertisements, signs, and shop-fronts, each toting a different color scheme, name, or font. They all want the public’s interest, so how can your brand ever hope to stand out and gain a loyal customer-base?
In many ways, this will be unique to each brand, but there are several guidelines that you can follow to get started on your path to an outstanding business.
Guidelines for improving Brand’s Recognition and Loyalty
Access Social Media
Whether it’s Instagram or Facebook, your brand needs to migrate online. In this digital age, everyone is online, and so are most other brands. Your online presence will be seen by millions, if not billions, of people, possibly everyday. When they search for answers to questions relating to your brand, they’ll see what you’ve posted online to represent your brand, by visiting your website or social media profiles.
However, to make your brand truly memorable, you need to make your customers’ experience with you while online outstanding. Professional social media profiles with beautiful photographs – of your products, services, employees or even satisfied customers – and inspiring captions, or even just reliable news updates on what your brand is focusing on, are certainly a step in the right direction, and will make sure that customers viewing your online presence are impressed enough to remember your brand.
Find Online Influencers
But your brand can only do so much on its own in the wide world of the internet. There are many people, most noticeably on Instagram and Snapchat, who have made careers out of social media, with massive audiences who not only trust them, but also often regularly purchase their merchandise. These loyal fanbases can easily be transferred into your customer-base, with just a little communication between your brand and the influencers.
Creating a deal with them, you could ask them to feature your products in their online posts – for example, they could release an Instagram post wearing your brand’s clothing, with a link to your brand’s Instagram profile, or even your brand’s website or online store. These connections with influencers can often be very cost- effective, since providing them with free products or services will often make up most of your end of the contract, and they are generally very willing to work with brands.
Create And Share Online Videos
However, the true way to increase your brand’s loyalty is by making the people working for your brand seem human, and not just like robots behind computers, repeating the same technical jargon and corporate-spiel day after day. An easy way to achieve this is to release videos, usually featuring your brand’s employees, which come across as friendly or amusing, and also informational and promotional for your brand.
Your loyal customers will then be inclined to share these videos on their social media a prolific example for video-sharing is market-leader Facebook – which means that this method will not only boost your customers’ loyalty to your brand, but also the amount of exposure that your brand gets. The more exposure you get, the more people will recognise your brand, so this is a tactic which will increase both aspects of your brand – loyalty and recognition – so it can only benefit your brand to try it out.
Pay Attention To Search Engines
Is your brand’s website the first result to pop up on Google when a customer searches your brand’s name? What about related keywords? Do they see related influencer endorsements, or do they see a similar competitor’s products? You should take all of this into account when creating websites or social media profiles associated with your brand. On social media, hashtags can be very useful, but only when you use relevant wording which links to your brand’s purpose, or what your brand offers. ‘#fashion’ wouldn’t be very useful if your brand sells high-end sports cars!
Many website builders will have SEO settings within them, allowing you to tweak which keywords Google or similar search engines will associate with your website, meaning that, when customers search for these specific words, they will find your brand’s website or social media profiles near-instantly. As many customers won’t even go past the first page of web results, this is a crucial step to make sure that you aren’t dissuading possible loyal customers, just because they can find another brand more quickly online.
Branded Packaging
Have you ever received a plain parcel, perhaps a cardboard box with a label roughly plastered on? Of course you have – we all have. But now, think about an iPhone: the packaging is a sleek, modern box, with Apple’s branding all over it. It is Apple within a box; the perfect personification of the brand. If your brand sends out products, you need to make sure that the packaging is instantly recognisable. Does your brand have a distinct colour scheme? Great – implement that into the colour of the box or even envelope which you send to customers. Have you got an amazing logo? Even better – you can print it onto the packaging, and build up a professional, instantly recognisable aspect of your brand.
For just a little expense, you can improve your customers’ views of your brand, and set your brand apart from the rest of the deliveries they received every week. Your plain white envelope could be a bill or a personalised message from your brand, and they won’t know the difference up until the moment they open the envelope. Similarly, until they rip through the packaging of your boring brown parcel, they don’t know if this is your product or any other delivery which could be scheduled to arrive. Separating yourself from every other brand is crucial, even in this small way.
Google Adsense Advertisements
Google is a technology giant for a reason: their ideas are usually effective and brilliant, and Google Adsense is no exception. If you pay for advertisements with this service, it will narrow down who should be exposed to your advertisements, and loyal customers will be able to see your brand everywhere, time and time again, securing their knowledge that you are a trustworthy brand. New customers can be won over by convincing, professional advertisements, and using your brand’s logo and colour scheme within the advertisement can build up recognition as well.
Featured image source: Freepik
