Every new year brings with it the promise of new success, and for businesses big and small, success comes in many forms. Perhaps one situation where you can really say that you are succeeding is if you can get people to recognize your business name, logo, and everything else associated with your trade, because then you are assured that you have customers who enjoy your products and services. Branding, or rebranding as it may be, is a must for businesses that want to be in it for the long term, and in 2013 it will be yet again a mad scramble to build and maintain identities that people can remember and relate with. Here are a few tips to make your 2013 branding a smashing success.
Go back to the basics.
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Do you still understand the fundamental concepts when it comes to building your brand? Or perhaps you are one of those people who have started relying on just logos and color schemes in the hopes of being memorable? If you’ve answered yes to the latter, then it is time to once again ask yourself a few questions. The main goal here is to make sure that your identity as a brand and a business is still intact and you have not lost sight of what your goals and principles are. Entrepreneur.com shares a few examples of questions to answer.
- What is your company's mission?
- What are the benefits and features of your products or services?
- What do your customers and prospects already think of your company?
- What qualities do you want them to associate with your company?
Tell a compelling story.
With each year that you are in business, you continuously add to the long chronicle from the very first day that you planned to open the business until the present time. Solidifying your brand in the minds of customers may very well rely on simply being able to tell an exciting story which would appeal to the sympathies of the audience and make them feel that they could relate with your “success story”. By all means order posters and business cards from commercial printers like PrintPlace.com or get active in different social media sites, but make sure that you tell the story of your business as a human brand and not simply as a profit-greedy entity. That extra reach that you get by talking to people instead of purely selling to them is worth it in the long run.
Let’s move on to what business owners have been itching to find out, and that is the different branding trends for the new year 2013. To give a taste, Forbes,com shared a few of its predictions and projections for this year, when it comes to where the focus will lie in building a successful brand. Here are some of them.
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• Packaging. Watch out for new developments in the packaging wars especially now that the experts are predicting some interesting shifts in the trends. One example of this is the focus on “sensory packaging”, which basically means targeting more than just one or two senses with a product’s packaging. The visual aspect is always there, but what about the smell, the taste, the feel, and the sound?
• Passion. The goal for your brand in this year should be to be compelling and relatable, enough so that people can really get down and be passionate about it. Passion is what fuels brands, and without it there wouldn’t even be such a concept. This year is about huddling close with your customers and stoking the flames of their interest, and when it all boils down to it, that basically means keeping it simple but effective.
The new year is a time for new opportunities and second chances for different brands. What are you going to do about your branding for 2013?
