Think of one of your favorite name brands – whether they are professional security vendors you chose to partner with in business or favorite products for your personal use, chances are you chose them because of your comfort level with them. You have a mental image of those products and the companies behind them. That is what brand identity is all about.
A brand is more than a logo on a business card or the sign in front of a store – it is the promise that a business makes to its prospects and customers. It identifies the ways in which its products and services differentiate it from its competitors. Simply put, a brand is the image that a business projects in the hope of developing customer loyalty.
Major companies go to great lengths to build and protect a unique brand image, because they know the marketing power of a positive brand identity, especially in a difficult economy. However, building a brand identity is not just for the biggest players – even small security businesses can enjoy the extraordinary marketing power of a strong business image.
Your brand can be a powerful marketing tool, or it can be a drag on your sales and profits – or anything in-between. That’s why you must take control of your brand identity. When you develop a strong and positive brand image, your prospects and customers will develop an emotional attachment to your security business, and thus, become loyal customers.
7 Tips to Creating a Brand Identity
Luckily, it is not necessary to create a brand image that will be recognized the world over – you only need to focus on dominating your little piece of the marketing world. Here are seven ways to do it:
1. Separate yourself from your competitors. One of the most important steps in creating a strong brand identity is determining what makes your business unique. Begin by analyzing your major competitors – look for their strong selling points and ways that you can differentiate your business from the others.
The next step is evaluating your own strengths and combining them to form a unique identity – a marketable image for you and your business. Perhaps you have been in business longer than your competitors have, or maybe your long experience has enabled you to feature unique or more reassuring forms of security service than your competition. Perhaps you have a knowledgeable sales team that takes pride in their ability to help customers find the service plan best suited for them. Perhaps your technicians project a warm and professional demeanor.
Whatever those marketable strengths, write them down, study them and determine how to combine them to separate yourself from competitors. Once you have sold yourself and your employees on why you are the best choice for customers the focus turns to ways to promote this image to customers and prospects.
2. Commit to customer satisfaction. Security service is a people business – you sell your services to people, not to objects. All of the Harvard Business School expertise in the world is no substitute for an understanding of that basic business principle. The most effective – and least expensive – branding technique for any business is an uncompromising commitment to customer satisfaction. Making certain that every one of your customers has positive feelings about you and the effectiveness of your service will turn those customers into walking advertisements.
3. Employ strong visual elements. A major part of brand image is visual recognition. Science long ago recognized that we humans remember what we see far longer than what we read or hear. A basic visual image for your business calls for an aesthetically pleasing logo. The logo in itself is not your brand, but it serves as the anchor for that all-important visceral image that is part of every successful brand identity. To embed your brand identity in your market area, you must use it consistently in every image you project to your market. Make sure that all of your visual elements are unique to your business and that they will not be confused with those of a competitor.
4. Harness emotion. Successful brand images have a significant emotional content. It is critically important to make solid use of the purely emotional in developing reasons why prospects should look to your company when they need security services; however, it is also essential to remember the power of the heart and mind in shopping decisions – especially for customers shopping for safety and reassurance of the safety of their families or businesses. Scientists say emotion is more powerful in the brain than the rational; thus, it is important to influence as many positive emotions as possible at every step.
5. Use the power of repetition. Marketing experts say it takes six or more “impressions” for potential customers to remember and connect with a business – which is why annoying TV ads are repeated ad infinitum. Consistent and repetitive use of your visual materials will help to build an enduring and powerful brand. Simple efforts, such as passing out business cards or brochures at every possible opportunity, will help to harness the power of repetition.
6. Travel branding roadways. Once you have created a brand image, you must make sure it reaches prospects and customers. The available branding roadways are almost unlimited, but for a small security business, it is often important to fully utilize the least expensive. Advertisements in local media are fine for those who can afford them, but for businesses on a limited budget, there are many effective alternatives – including regular e-mails to people who have logged on to your web site, occasional postal card mailings, a presence on social media such as Facebook, and asking satisfied customers to spread the word.
7. Live up to your new image. Once you create and support your brand identity, it will help develop new customers 24/7 – but only if you live up to the promise you have created. The time and effort invested in branding a business will be for naught unless management and employees remember that branding is about meeting expectations, not just creating them. If you fail to meet the expectations created by a brand identity, your customers will not be coming back or offering referrals.
William J. Lynott is a veteran freelance writer who specializes in business management as well as personal and business finance. For more information, visit www.blynott.com.
