Is your brand right?
Your brand is how your company looks, visually. OK, it goes much deeper than that. But one of the first things that people do when they start a company is create a logo, get some business cards printed and then go out and sell to their customers. This is often the wrong way round. If you don’t yet know who you are selling to and what your core marketing messages are going to be, how can you create a brand that conveys all that to your customers? If you don’t yet fully understand the people you are selling to then how can you create a brand that will connect with them? You may already have your brand in place and be happy with it. If you worked with a designer or brand consultant they might have spent time mapping out your core message and helping you to find your brand voice before they ever picked up a pen or mouse to design your logo – but are your customers happy with it? Have you ever asked them? Or was it designed for you and you alone?
A lot of what you learned in the first section of this course about the market and the customer you identified might make you reflect on your current brand and ask if it’s right. And that’s a good thing to do. Many companies start out with one brand but evolve it as they find their voice and learn about who they are selling to. It’s better to go through the short term discomfort in making a change to your brand early so that you can continue with something that is right from this point on, rather than continuing with something that is wrong indefinitely. For example, you might have discovered in your customer research that the people you are selling to are more ethically-driven than you initially realised, and you now need to re-think your branding to match that. Or it might be the complete opposite, where you set out to sell to vegans just like yourself and it turns out that your customers are something completely different – so you need to dial back on the green plant leaves and present something that’s going to connect with them better.
