Why Brand Image & brand Consistency is Important

What is Brand Image and Why Does it Matter?

Brand image can be defined as the overall perception that the general public has of your company (or brand). Good branding can increase customer loyalty and advocacy, help with word-of-mouth marketing, and have a dramatic effect on sales.

The public’s perception of your brand can have a big impact on the longevity of your company. However; a positive brand image can be hard to build, and easy to lose.

One way that a brand's image can be ruined is by inconsistent branding - but more on this later, first let's look at how a brand image can be developed.

How do you Develop a Brand Image?

Developing a brand has been likened to raising a child - It takes time, effort, and almost constant careful monitoring.

Why are we trying to be?

One of the first things that’s needed, is to decide where you want your brand to sit in the marketplace. Do you want to be known as cheap & cheerful, or would you rather your brand be seen as a high-end luxury, perhaps exclusive brand? Neither is right or wrong, it's all down to how you want your brand to be thought of by the public.

Decide what you want the core message of your brand to be, and from this build a mission statement.

Who is Our Target Market?

Once you have decided where you want your brand to be, there are a few options for the next stage. However now that we know how we want our brand to be seen, it would be good to know WHO we want to target. When we decided what our brand image should be like, who did we envisage as our customers? Who do we want to portray this image across to?

Once you start to develop persona cards, include details about where the target personas spend their time, both at work, and in their leisure time.

By developing several person-cards, we can ensure that we are targeting all advertorial and marketing copy to the right demographic.

How do Our Target Market See us at Present?

Now that we know how we want to be seen, it's time for some hard-truth's... How do our chosen demographic personas see us at present? This can be a tough one to find out, however techniques like consumer surveys, email-outs to existing newsletter subscribers with a link to an online survey, that has questions about how the public see your brand, and city-centre field marketing surveys can all help discover how the chosen demographic sector of the general public see's your brand at the moment.

Care must be taken to ensure that you are surveying the right demographic, of course. Good targeting of where/how the surveying takes place can help with this, and there are several specialist marketing research companies that can plan such campaigns. Depending on the size of your brand however, this doesn't have to be expensive, and a 'DIY' approach can be considered, as long as there is careful planning.

Measure the Disparity between Desired Brand Image & Current Public Perception?

Depending on the questions asked, it should be relatively easy to measure the disparity between your desired brand image and that of the existing public one.

One way to do this is to ensure the questions have a 'score choice', like:

• Out of 0 to 10, how cheap do you feel [brand name] products are?
• Out of 0 to 10, how much of a special treat do you consider [brand name] products to be?

If you know what you would like the ideal answer to be (out of 0 to 10), then you can enter the ideal data, along with the survey data, on a spreadsheet, and draw up a 'pearson's correlation' to measure the difference. - This isn't as complicated as it sounds, as Microsoft Excel has the function built in.

This is of course just one example of how a disparity in desired and actual brand image can be measured. There are likely lots more than professional agencies use.

Now we have the current brand image benchmarked, we can start promoting our brand image in order to shift the public's perception, and measure our success against the initial benchmark.

How to Promote Your Brand

Based on your desired brand image, and keeping the mission statement in mind, brainstorm how you can shift the public’s perception of your brand.

• For example, if you wish to be seen as a luxury brand, but the public currently see's you as a low-end product supplier, check how your product is currently marketed.

• Is the product packaging design in-line with your desired brand and product image?

• Are you advertising via the right channels? No matter whether print or web based, it's vital to ensure your brand and products are seen in the right places. Now that you have your target persona's and details about where else they spend their time, ensure that you are reaching this audience (DO consider the product design first though, otherwise advertising efforts may be wasted).

• Could you sponsor any events that would be attended by your target audience? Event sponsorship can be a great way to raise your brands profile, and help to associate it with the right demographic.

• Field Marketing campaigns are another great way to help reach the right audience. A highly trained, well briefed field sales agent can make great in-roads towards shifting the public’s perception of your brand and products. Of course the effects do vary depending on how well trained the field sales staff is. There are several field marketing recruitment agencies that can help find the right staff for large brands.

• Another great way to shift the way that the public see your brand is through an experiential marketing campaign. Experiential agencies can help you to develop high impact PR stunts that can have a dramatic impact on how the public see your brand, and can generate a buzz that, with the right planning, can go viral.

• Develop your website - Is your brand's web presence a good match for your desired brand image? If you are hoping to position yourself as a luxury brand, but have a website that is either out of date, ugly, slow or difficult to use, then this should be changed - ideally BEFORE efforts to shift brand perception - the last thing you want to do is spend resources on altering the public’s perception of your brand, only to have that ruined when they visit your website.

• How do you perform on social media? These days it is almost expected that a brand will have a social media presence. In fact, a lack of social media branding can say a lot to internet users, and give off messages that your brand isn't interested in what people are saying about it - Not a great way to encourage brand advocacy.

The points above are just a few examples of how you can grow your brand image, and shift the public’s perception of your brand.

Most of these points work best as part of a carefully planned and well executed branding campaign, the effects of which can be measured by repeating the surveys carried out earlier, being careful to perform the surveys in a very similar way to how they were carried out previously.

It is important to remember however that results are rarely instant, and that more than one branding campaign may be needed - The general public don't always shift this perception of a brand as easily as some would like!

Why is Brand Consistency important?

As you can see from the above, shifting the public’s perception of your brand, and building a brand image takes a lot of time, effort and careful planning.

If the brand gives out an inconsistent message however, all of the effort taken can be undone in a fraction of the time it took to develop the brand image.

Every part of the business needs to be aligned to the brand image; otherwise things can go wrong very quickly:

• For a brand selling based on quality products, sales agents can push price discounts as a sales tactic, rather than explaining the quality of the brands products, which done wrong, could distract from the brand image.

• For companies trying to give across an image of a brand that cares, customer service and complaints departments can respond in ways that hurt the brand massively

• For a brand that tries to put across an image of a fun, dynamic agency, employees can complain on social media about "another boring day at the office... yawn!"

• These are just a few examples of how, in a matter of hours or days, a lack of consistency in how the brand 'puts itself across' can undo months of work, hundreds of thousands (or in some cases millions) of pounds worth of brand image development.

How to Remain Consistent

One of the first things to do is to develop an internal brand book. This should include everything from the image the brand is trying to get across, rules of external communication, social media policy, and clear instructions on how to raise issues with their managers should they be unsure about anything at all.

It's very important for staff members to feel 'safe' about coming to their manager(s) with brand related questions, as this ensures that any potential issues are raised as soon as possible, and 'nipped in the bud'.

This can also help staff feel 'closer' to the brand, more of a part of the company, and encourage them to act as brand ambassadors.

Summary

Although a lot of effort, identifying how you want your brand to come across, who your ideal demographic personas are, checking how they see your brand at present, and working at bridging the gap between how you would like customers to see your brand and how they actually do feel about your company can have a huge impact on the growth of your brand.