What is your USP? What Do You Want To Be Known For??
What is your USP? What Do You Want To Be Known For??It isn’t just about your USP but creating your Brand and building on it.
How do you want to be found and how do you want to be remembered?
Developing a logo and branding is the first step in developing a good ‘Brand’. It is the ‘Hub’ of your branding and all your promotional material.
Deciding what you want to be known for and how your customers will interpret your image is a good place to start. This is your USP or “Unique Selling Point” or “Unique Selling Proposition”
Branding is not just about the symbols you use but how you develop your image out on the street.
Marks and Spencer’s were a solid old fashioned store selling underwear in the 60’s but now they are one of the most popular stores. Not only clothing but quality food with a great customer service reputation and staff benefits. John Lewis is another store with a fantastic trusted reputation. Never knowingly undersold and quality products to rely on. Another with renowned customer care.
It’s not just about what you sell or what you look like. It is all about how you treat people both clients and staff that boosts your reputation and cements the brand recognition.
Has your business been branded by influences you couldn’t control? If so how do you turn it around if its not a positive development?
‘The only way is Essex’, a supposedly ‘reality’ TV series, has changed the way outsiders view the county of Essex. Essex girls have been always been stereotyped as overly promiscuous and stupid. Known for tottering around on white stilettos, even before the screening of this programme. But now the inhabitants of the county are branded as fake tanned, mini skirted bimbos in 7 inch high heels. That includes the guys too!
To change those preconceptions now would need a few dozen Einsteins, Newtons, a Hawking or two and of course a PR Genius!
GAP became known for the acronym “Gay and Proud”. Many kids didn’t want to be seen in GAP branded clothes. It became an urban legend that this was the real meaning for GAP. According to GAP it doesn’t stand for anything, other than being a new store for a younger fashion conscious generation.
Did it do GAP any harm or was the publicity as good as anything else?
The customers they lost from one target group were surely replaced with the other….?
Don’t let your brand get mistaken for another? (unless its on purpose!)
Compare-the-Market.com’s had an inspired campaign in 2009. The advert achieved amazing results when the Russian Meerkat, Aleksandr Orlov, character complained that if you wanted a competitive insurance quote, not to use the meerkat site by mistake! Compare-the-Market.com became the third largest price comparison web site in the UK. ‘Compare The Meerkat’ website was created for the campaign and is still very popular and thriving with current news about the meerkat family! It does have a link to the Compare-the-Market.com.
Clever and deliberate, but if you are losing customers to a competitors site because of a similar name or search result it needs to be quickly rectified via your branding and your image.
Always check out similar names and urls in existence, it may save you a lot of trouble later down the line.
Branding is all about how the business’s reputation appears to the outside world.
A courier company that can’t deliver on time or a flash solicitors who overcharge without results will never last long.
Build the reputation, add a good, effective and memorable logo with a consistent brand image. Your business will be remembered for the right reasons and the brand will develop organically and succeed.
Written by Angie Phillips, Design Consultant - Helping you create business by creating IMPACT! Fabulous effective design that makes you say WOW! Using my expertise to promote yours. Fiercely committed to my clients and getting my hands on your assets! Always happy to offer help and advice. Promoting and helping you to grow through networking & introductions even after our work is done. #CreatingBusinessByDesign #CreatingIMPACT #LOVEwhatIdoMore from CREATIVE DESIGN MATTERS! with useful information here