Tag: branding agency london

Did you know that it is ten times faster to build a software company today than it was in the past? With the increasing number of deployable infrastructures such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and readymade website developers, everyone can easily start a business within a day or even less. Find out why branding your SaaS company is important.

If you do not believe us here are some numbers. Priceintelligently surveyed SaaS founders and found out that companies that started in 2011 faced an average of 2.6 competitors in their first year of business. This number increased to 4.8 in 2013. 3 years later a business in its first year had 9.7 competitors.

The increasing level of competition leads to higher expectations of customers. The quality of products and features hereby are the main players.

SaaS is birthing more SaaS. This is caused by people starting their own SaaS products. Many engineers quit their job at startups and start their own companies. This is not an uncommon event.

There is a lot of information about SaaS businesses online. A lot of people who founded, funded, work or worked at a SaaS company like to share their experience and tell people how to start their own software company, run and grow it. This is usually done through blogs.

You should always keep in mind: increasing competition affects each and every area of your business.

So let us speak about the importance of branding in a highly competitive market.

You may wonder how can even branding help my company to succeed? Building a strong brand alone for your Software as a Service helps you to set your business apart from competitors.  It may seem too difficult to measure the effectiveness of a solid branding related marketing strategy, it is worth it. Keeping your brand at the top of the mind of current or potential customers always has its benefits. Your brand name becoming recognised in your niche will help you to be known as a dominant player in your market.

Branding may sound easy but it definitely is not. Especially when you are better at leading your SaaS company. Many businesses in that market hire branding and marketing agencies such as 3 Colours Rule to create an iconic brand.

When your Software as a Service is branded correctly, customers will know the importance of it. Clients want and demand a practical and remarkable experience from software. By branding it, you will show how valuable your service actually is.

Putting the focus on the value you are delivering to customers is the key.

How will your SaaS make their life easier? The remarkable experience you will give your customers should be the frontrunner. Focussing on new tactics and marketing channels for SaaS have their place as well to achieve success. However, branding is the one that will help you stand out and get noticed on different social media channels, blogs and websites

By giving customers a good experience they will help your company to gain credibility, trust and you will become familiar with many more people. Giving your customers this great user experience will also boost loyalty and they will keep returning back to you. However, if this experience is not good, you will lose the great results you could have achieved. Branding is important. “You miss 100% of shots you don’t take”. And branding is one you definitely should take and need to take for your business to be successful.

Of course, marketing and branding are about building a connection with your target audience on a personal level. Once you have achieved that, you will resonate with them on a much better level and they will become more willing to find out about your products or services. A lot of businesses actually struggle with this brand recognition but once they get it, they are much more successful. Reaching out to people on a mass number is not a problem for them anymore. Once you get this recognition, the focus on interruption marketing can be eased as people will seek you out. They will keep your brand in mind and search for you on Google or even type in your website link to find out more about your offerings.

The biggest advantage of brand recognition is the trust that is followed by it. Customers will view your company as a trusted source for high-quality products and services and will, as mentioned above, be emotionally connected to your brand. Most of the time, word-of-mouth follows. Customers will tell their friends, family, colleagues and many more people about your brand. This level of recognition is the goal of every business.

Once you establish your brand, consistency is very important.

Promises that are made have to be kept. If you do not keep them, you will lose the trust of your customers or potential ones. Getting that trust back a second time is nearly impossible.

It is easy to get caught up with the excitement of running a business and not realise how much it takes to get things up and running well. Most entrepreneurs find it more difficult to attract customers than they anticipated. Here is the easy three-step process that you can use to get more customers, scale up your business, make more money, and attract your dream customers.

Phase 1: Distinguish

Every company needs to articulate their uniqueness, to distinguish themselves from the competition, and to attract and convert more prospects into clients.

Phase 2: Attract

People love to buy brands, when we are faced with too many options we go for what we know.  A great brand can signify quality and inspire confidence.

Phase 3: Convert 

People don’t know what they want until you show it to them. When you listen to their problems your prospects will listen, and when you talk about the solutions your prospects will buy. When you get this, it will change your life forever.

Our agency provides success-proven solutions for every stage of your customer relationship building following our successful brand growth methodology. Contact us today!

Liked this article? Why not read “Why brands fail”

If you would like to receive a complimentary brand assessment 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) (explained in our YouTube video) 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.

Contact our Branding Agency today!

As a branding and marketing agency for technology companies, we have seen how most businesses failed. Here are the reasons why brands fail.

7 in 10 businesses fail within 5 years. The reason: Branding.

So simple yet so difficult for most businesses. Why do brands fail is the question the top management of organisations ask themselves. Most businesses realise their company has failed after they give up the firm. During the process, no one really notices that the brand is not doing well. Let’s have a look at the history of branding provided by Marketing91:

In the past, the market was product and manufacture driven. With the increasing industrialisation businesses that had good salespeople were the market leaders. The more the market moved the more the importance of marketing and branding was clear.

Businesses started to point out their uniqueness with their marketing strategies and with that their brand value increased. With the growing value, consumers had more expectations. Whenever a business did not have the right move, it failed.

The main purpose of a brand was to differentiate organisations from other businesses. A tech company, Intel, was the first one to brand its microprocessors and had huge benefits from it. Microsoft beat IBM due to its marketing potentials, Apple beat Microsoft’s brand image by bringing new products and marketing itself as “Innovative”. Products themselves took the backseat and brands sold the products. The right branding allows you to sell an average product. The success of a business heavily depends on branding. However, when a product does not meet the expectations, then people are quick to blame the branding department.

Tata Nano is a good example of this. The car was disliked by many people as for them a car is a luxury and Nano’s looks and performance were not as good as it was branded to be. So when the car failed to be a hit, Tata blamed themselves and said the marketing of the car was not done in the right manner.

A couple of reasons why brands fail: 

• The poor product that does not meet the expectations of the audience
• Brand recall value drops: Customers slowly move to another brand because they cannot recall a business’ brand
• Too much expansion with fewer resources: Example Samsung – the company does fairly well and leads in the market however the demand for their cameras and air conditioners has failed
• False marketing: A brand is a promise and if that promise breaks, you don’t have a brand
• Over marketing makes your brand come across as too common
• Your brand might seem irrelevant and one aspect is technology. Having a look at Nokia you can tell it became irrelevant because it did not want to offer the newest technology to its consumers. Android was ahead of the game at that time.
• Increase in competition
• If your service and post-sales customer experience is not good it will affect your brand and might cause it to fail

Another major reason is digital transformation. Many customers gather information online from social media, blogs and so on. B2B businesses have a hard time thriving with their social media presence.

Mistakes B2B businesses make:

#1 Not having a clear strategy

Most B2B businesses use social media because their competition does. They do not have a clear strategy and just try to be active because someone else is doing it too. This approach may seem good in the short term, but in the long run, it never works out. If you post only to be active on socials, how are you able to find out if it is benefitting your business? The way to find out how social media is meeting your business goals is to have a proper strategy.

Your strategy should include:

• Goals you want to achieve
• How to achieve those goals
• Track your performance with KPI’s (Key Performance Indicator)
• How will the goals impact your overall business goals
• Identify resources and tools that will help to achieve your goals

#2 Authenticity and transparency

Being able to offer connections between brands and customers is what makes social media powerful. In the B2B market, consumers always expect the truth. In a world with a lot of fake news and privacy issues, customers turn their back to brands if they fail to be authentic and transparent. According to Sprout Social’s Social media and the evolution of transparency report, 86% of people are likely to take the competitors product if the transparency of a business is lacking on social media. 81% of the customers think it is the responsibility of the business to be transparent.

#3 Targeting the same audience on every social media channel

Posting the same content on different channels is a common mistake business make. Every social media channel has different demographics such as age.

• LinkedIn: 36% are ages 18-29, 34% are 30-49, 28% are 50-64
• Twitter: 36% are ages 18-29, 23% are 30-49, 21% are 50-64
• Facebook: 88% are ages 18-29, 84% are 30-49, 72% are 50-64
• Instagram: 59% are ages 18-29, 33% are 30-49, 13% are 50-64
• Pinterest: 36% are ages 18-29, 34% are 30-49, 28% are 50-64

#4 Talking about yourself only

Social media is about being social. You are supposed to build a relationship with your audience. If you fail to focus on your customer and focus on yourself only your social media strategy will fail. Obviously, pushing your content is marketing, however, this might backfire on your social channels. Customers expect more value than just hearing about your achievements.

#5 Not understanding the ROI of social media

In fact, this is what experts struggle at too. Social Media does not directly relate to sales. It is similar to online shopping. People check products on the websites but not necessarily purchase them. It is also important to note that you need quality content. This could be videos, animations and pictures. Understanding the ROI of social media will surely put you on the right track.

#6 Failing to invest time and effort

Social Media strategies take time to work. If you have someone working 25 hours a week to post on your social media channels and expect him/her/them to make you go viral you are wrong. It is a long-term strategy that takes time to unfold its true potential.

#7 Not evolving

Businesses tend to be slow with catching up on trends. Social media is very quick to change the topics people talk about. The flexibility of a brand is important to be up-to-date with topics relevant to the business.

Last but not least, pointing out the difference between marketing and branding can be helpful for some businesses. These two get confused most of the time. They are the same but different. Both go hand in hand, however, they follow different goals.

We build strategies for technology companies and help them become the leader in their market. We hate seeing brands fail due to simple reasons!

Liked this article? Why not read “Importance of diversity”

If you would like to receive a complimentary brand assessment 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) (explained in our YouTube video) 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.

Contact us today!