Building a Strong Brand
Introduction
Brands that successfully align with their customers’ needs and wants have a well-defined audience and focus almost exclusively on forging meaningful connections with them. They may attract some tangential and aspirational customers as well, but it’s difficult to achieve a strong, authentic customer connection if a brand attempts to appeal to everyone equally.
Brands with a tightly-formed and authentic identity can better align with their customers own needs and motivations, and earn more loyalty from their audience while also helping their customers solve their most pressing needs. This is the ultimate win/win situation for brands and customers.
The strongest brands are highly authentic, helpful, knowledgeable, and values-driven, and can even serve as a reflection of their users. If you wear Converse Chuck Taylors as opposed to Vans, or drive an all-electric Tesla automobile versus a large, gasoline-fueled SUV, you are s=both solving for a need (protecting your feet, getting from point A to point B) as well as saying something about your values, your beliefs, and your lifestyle. As such, strong brands are more than simply colors and logos. Some characteristics of a strong brand include:
- A strong brand drives value, for the company, shareholders and customers;
- A strong brand is a fully integrated part of the entire organization aligned around multiple touchpoints;
- Customers are willing to pay a substantial and consistent premium for the brand versus a competing product and service positioned as a commodity;
- Customers associate themselves strongly with the brand, its attributes, values, and personality, and they fully buy into the concept which is often characterized by a very emotional and intangible relationship (this results in higher customer loyalty);
- Customers are loyal to the brand and would actively seek it and buy it, despite several often cheaper options available (this results in a higher customer retention rate).
A strong brand can also help reduce perceived risks (performance, financial, opportunity/time, safety, social, and psychological) by authenticating the source of the product or service, and fulfilling the promise of the perceived value of the items being sold or used. Best of all, a strong brand can grow and evolve with its customers—without losing identity or values—because its ultimate goal is to help improve or simplify some aspect of their lives.