Improving brand discovery and brand recognition

A strong brand is built on the soil of strong information. If your business is aware of its surrounding, it can position itself ideally. A great way of building a good brand can go through brand discovery. Not only the discovery of the brand requires a strong name, but brand recognition also does the most to make consumers aware of your business. Improving brand discovery and brand recognition is not that difficult at all. Find out more…

Brand discovery on the one hand…

Brand discovery is used to find the best fitting brand strategy for businesses. Market research plays a big role in this method. Understanding the surrounding of the business and having as much insight as possible will help to position your brand. Understanding and seeing what competitors are doing and leading the industry will give a visual identity your business can have. To have a strong brand it is important to gather a lot of information about the market and competitor situation so the foundation of the business is strong beforehand.

To improve the brand discovery several questions should be asked such as: 

• Who are we really?
• Who do we want to be?
• What do people say about us?
• Who is our ideal customer?
• Who are our main competitors?
• What promises do we make our customers?
• How will our industry change over the next ten years?

All these questions need research to be answered properly. You need to understand your ideal customer fully to be able to target them properly. If you are trying to target everyone you will end up reaching no one. You need to build a buyer persona to see what kind of people would buy your product.

Demographic information can be very helpful. What is your customer like? How old is he or she? Which gender and income group are we targeting? That might sound like basic information but it can be a turning point in your discovery journey.

Another point is the behaviour of the customer. On which channels can he/she be reached? What does your consumer like to read? What are the hobbies?

Transactional Information tells you what your customer is buying.

Last but not least psychographic information. At this point, you are moving on from the demographics. Values and goals play a big role in this. You are leaving the surface and diving in deeper.

The same thing goes for your competitors. Understand your rivals before taking action. Find out about their weakness and strength, how do they position themselves in the market. Do a benchmarking analysis and find out about their products and services.

To improve your brand discovery you need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your business. Consumers need to be able to differentiate you from your competitors through a clear Unique Selling Point/Proposition (USP). Hiring branding/marketing agencies are the best way to discover your brand.

Brand recognition on the other hand…

While Brand discovery is more of an internal process of a business, brand recognition is more externally driven. This step is all about brand awareness.

Brand recognition consists of 5 steps: 

1. Brand Rejection. If someone is associating something negative with your brand they will avoid it. This can be overcome by showing off the benefits of your product/service. It can be a logo, slogan or a claim which should be used consistently on every marketing action.
2. Brand Non-Recognition. The consumer simply does not know about your brand at all or does not recognise it. In this case, it is important to keep promoting your product through marketing.
3. Brand Recognition. In this state, it is important to be differentiated from your competitors through a strong USP
4. Brand Preference. It is important to offer value-added products/services so the consumer keeps on choosing you.
5. Brand loyalty. This is the final stage your brand can achieve. The consumer is bound to your brand and is loyal to choose it every time. However, you need to be consistent and add value to your product/service so the consumer does not switch to any other brand.

Marketing actions

To improve brand recognition you can follow some marketing actions as mentioned above. Of course, you could go big with a huge billboard, double-decker bus ad, and so on but most businesses keep their marketing budget low. So let’s have a look at strategies that do not cost the world.

1. If you have not already you can start a blog or write articles for blogs of other people
2. Start a podcast
3. Do giveaways. Everyone loves freebies. It is in human nature. Therefore, free products or trials really can help your business to be recognised.
4. The power of word-of-mouth. Do you know when Pinterest first started it was an invite-only website? You could not use it if you were not invited by a friend or colleague. The platform built its whole business model on word-of-mouth marketing. And with success! In addition, the feeling of being a VIP dragged a lot of people to use Pinterest back in the days. A similar thing goes with Dropbox with a little twist. Dropbox has the strategy to give extra space for customers who invite friends. The company gives 500 MB of extra storage space for every friend they refer to and that up to 16 GB. This saved Dropbox a lot of advertising dollars when they first started.
5. Social Media Content. Probably one of the cheapest ways to gain attention. Infographics, insights into your business, behind the scenes and many other content ideas can catch the eye of people. B2B companies usually use Twitter or LinkedIn, B2C mainly Instagram or TikTok. You need to know where your consumers are hanging out and you are good to go.

SEO

SEO, SEO, SEO! If you wonder why we have listed this one separately, it is because SEO is very important. If you do not know what SEO is, it stands for Search Engine Optimisation. Let me give you an example. Let us suppose you are a bakery in London and sell Macarons. When a potential customer googles “Macarons in London” you of course want to show up at the top of the search results. If we are being honest, little to no people bother to check the second page of Google. Everyone stops at the first one. So to show up at the top you need to optimise your website. You need content that can be done through blogs. You need the keywords which could possibly be searched by potential Macaron lovers on your website to show up. There are many other possibilities to optimise your search engine.

In a nutshell

To improve brand discovery and brand recognition it is important to understand consumers but also your wishes and goals internally. Clarity within the business is needed to understand where it is heading to. Brand recognition is initially about creating awareness for your brand. This can include a number of marketing actions, however, consistency is the key. Be innovative. There are many other ways how you can stand out in the crowd. A little creativity is all you need.

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If you would like to receive a complimentary brand assessment call with the 3 Colours Rule agency

Would you like to find out what is preventing your brand from achieving your business goals? What if during a 30min call with us we could identify the areas of your brand that need improvement so that you can attract the right clients? We will use our D.A.C. (Distinguish, Attract & Convert) growth system to swiftly evaluate your brand strengths and weaknesses. We will provide you with directives and your brand score so you can measure your progression. 3 Colours Rule will help you find your USP that resonates with your audience.

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