Gotta Keep it 100! 6 Most Important Ways to Establish & Reinforce Your Brand...

Your brand is more than just your name, colors and logo. Although your logo and signage are an important step, your brand is how your customers perceive your business and products; what comes to their mind when they see the name of your business? Amazon = easy, fast, everything. Apple = innovation, style, high-tech. Consciously or otherwise, your customers expect consistency across all platforms and interactions with you; statistically that consistency contributes to a 23% average increase in revenue!

Regardless of your product or industry, here are a few important ways to establish and reinforce your brand to tap into that growth potential:

1. Signage: Your logo signage on the outside of your building, behind your reception desk, in your meeting rooms, at your trade show exhibits and anywhere else are often times the first and most prominent interaction your customers have with your business name. Are your signs accurately representing the attributes, perceptions, and traits you want associated with your company?
   
   
2. Website: Your website should be easily navigable, with a design, layout and imagery that accurately represents the key elements and emotions of your brand. If you want your brand to be clean, modern and minimalist, then your website should be designed in that manner. If your brand is bold, loud, and in-your-face, your website should be as well.  
   
   
3. Social Media: Your social media presence is rapidly becoming just as important as your website, or even more important in many cases. This is where you want to connect on a more personal level with your customers, giving them a glimpse of the personality of your business and personnel, showing them what goes into your product/service and what it looks like behind the scenes. One thing you will notice about the best social media channels is consistency: Instagram accounts with photos that have similar lighting, angles, clothing styles, and backgrounds. Facebook accounts that have regular posts with similar themes and writing styles. 
   
   
4. Product or Service: Your actual product or service is oftentimes the first physical, tangible interaction your customers have with your company. If the branding you want to convey is quality, durability and longevity, but your product is made from relatively cheap, flimsy materials, then you are sending conflicting signals and your brand will quickly become known for the qualities of the product rather than the qualities you had hoped to represent. Likewise if you promote your company as having top-notch service and committed to customer satisfaction, but your phone reps are disinterested, rude, or unavailable and keeping them on hold, then once again that is what will determine your brand. 
   
   
5. Packaging/Presentation: Even before the consumer interacts with your product, they first encounter the packaging and presentation. Ask any food critic how important the presentation of a meal is, even before the first bite. Likewise with online purchases, you can create a memorable experience (that the recipient will want to share!) by using a strong box, clean/easy packaging, simple assembly, and unexpected accessories (like spare parts, extra screws, mini helpful tools, hanging hardware, or even just a fun little bonus like a bookmark or Cracker Jack type toy!)
   
   
6. Customer Experience: Whether it be through a phone call, using a mobile app, watching a tutorial, meeting with a sales rep, opening their home to an installer, being greeted by a receptionist, in a chat window with a support rep, ordering from a waiter, or anything in between, that experience at that moment with that representative of your business must be consistent with the values of your brand. If you want your brand to suggest diversity and progress but your staff is all the same gender and ethnic background, you may not be effectively portraying that value. 

I'm sure you've noticed a common theme here: it isn't your logo or your website that creates your true brand, it is the interactions with your customers. "A brand exists in the minds of your customers!" That means you and everyone working for or representing your business have got to be fully-invested in living your brand, and putting in the work to earn the perception that you want consumers to have of you.