We have been exploring the idea of the Branding Guild in Marketing Club for a while. Last week our Branding Guild Group discussed and exchanged ideas on various aspects of Branding such as:
- What are the KPI’s of Branding/ What’s Branding?
- What is a Minimum Viable Brand
- Ingredients of Branding
- Brand Strategy and the Confusion
- Opinion Piece by Jason Chan
We aim to delineate and demystify Branding to have transparency, standardization, and an informed decision-making process. We believe that more clarity in Branding will result in more collaboration between the brand strategist and the brand. This situation also leads to positive inputs and better comprehension by the clients, novices, and practitioners. Branding becomes more approachable and scientific, allowing more room for art and creativity.
Last week our Moderators were Rob Bertholf, Renee Bigelow, Jason Chan, Firuze Gokce, and Priya Badola.
Here you’ll find major takeaways from our conversation:
What are the KPI’s of Branding?/What is Branding?
Branding is an ongoing process from day one till the end. If you can create a great brand, your reputation will pass from generation to generation. However, creating a long-lasting brand entails successfully implementing intelligent business, Branding, and marketing strategies. It also requires taking care of your customers as well as your employees. If any need arises, a brand also pivots and adapts itself to the underlying circumstances.
Branding is also a process that needs to be done from the inside out. When a company creates a culture where its employees and executives are thriving and feeling upbeat, excited, creative, and vital, this will resonate positively in their products or services. Ultimately this will lead to happy and satisfied customers.
Branding also has an evolution in a way that:
1) It starts with creating a solution to a problem, and this stage is called “Functional State for the Customer.”
2) When the Customer utilizes that solution, it creates a positive state in the Customer’s mind. This stage is called Emotional.
3) Then happy Customers will elevate the brand because they believe that their values are aligned with the brand’s values. As a result, the Customer reaches an
“Aspirational State,” which incorporates loyalty, advocacy, social responsibility, and extended customer lifetime value (CVL).
Another Approach for Branding
Answering the following questions is the essence of Branding:
- What is your brand known about?
- How does your Branding explain the “Why” question?
- What is your brand’s solution?
- What is your brand’s culture?
- How do your employees feel about your brand?
Culture brings people closer with a common goal for building something that they want to be a part of. It’s like finding their tribe both emotionally and functionally. Your Branding becomes inclusive, supportive, and speaking the same language with your customers. As a result, your Branding shows that it’s is caring, which leads to the alignment of your customers with your brand
What is a Minimum Viable Brand (MVB)?
According to Ariele Becker from Uxdesign.cc
“A minimum viable brand (MVB) is the most pared-down version of a brand that can still be released. An MVB has three key characteristics:
- It has enough value that people are willing to use it.
- It demonstrates enough future benefit to retain early adopters.
- It provides a feedback loop to guide future development.”
Some of the elements that contributed to Minimum Viable Brand are:
- Target Customers
- Brand Vision/Mission/Purpose
- Value Proposition
- Positioning
- Brand Personality
- Brand Voice
- Customer Insight
- Advocacy by the brand’s customers
- Advocacy coming out employees of the company
- Verbal Communication KPIs
- Written Communication KPIs
- Product Efficacy
So, what are the internal ingredients of Branding?
First, to establish a solid foundation for Branding, you need to answer the “Why,” “How,” and “What “questions: (internal ingredients)
Let’s start with the “Why” question:
1) Describe your “Core Values” and how your company’s (brand’s) core values resonated inside (employees and internal stakeholders) and outside (customers).
2) Having your Mission and Vision statements and then aligning your goals and values with how you solve your customers’ problems. Envisioning a future where your company and your company’s customers act in tandem.
3) Identifying how you diverge with your offering and how people remember your organization as an entity.
4) Setting up your Brand Promise so that your brand keeps its consistency in delivering the solutions for your customers.
Then answer the “How” question. This is a strategizing portion that enables you to connect with your audience emotionally. It is a sturdy way to align with your internal and external stakeholders.
1) Traits: Human characteristics associated with a brand
2) Voice: Memorable and distinctive tone of voice which relates to core values of the brand.
3) Backstory: Compelling story of the brand which explains where the brand is originated.
4) Theme: Choosing the correct graphical and typographical elements that relate to the brand.
5) Archetype: Selecting an archetype that represents the brand best in appealing to your target audience, such as:
- Liberation > THE OUTLAW
- Power > THE MAGICIAN
- Mastery > THE HERO
- Intimacy > THE LOVER
- Enjoyment > THE JESTER
- Belonging> THE EVERYMAN
- Service > THE CAREGIVER
- Control > THE RULER
- Innovation > THE CREATOR
- Safety > THE INNOCENT
- Understanding > THE SAGE
- Freedom > THE EXPLORER
6) Metaphor: A metaphor can create a mental picture in your audience, which helps them better internalize your messaging, offerings, and brand. Metaphors are robust communication tools for having an influence on your audience at a deeper level.
With the “What” question, we’ll define the aspects of a tangible representation of the brand. It includes:
o Naming
o Logo
o Mascot/Avatar
o Messaging
o Imagery
o Iconography
At his point, we need to understand that all these internal components have resulted in their external expressions. This approach enables us to understand how we are serving our customers and how the customers will perceive our products or services:
1) The Why question externally results in
- Value Proposition
- Positioning Statement
- Tagline/Slogan
2) The How question externally results in
- Colours
- Typography
- Style
3) The What question externally results in
- Website
- Asset Buildout
- Collateral/Swag
Here is an aggregated list of Key Performance Metrics:
The metrics vary from customer-oriented metrics like “Net Promoter Score” (NPS) to employee-oriented metrics like Employee Turnover. On the other, you’ll also see a broad range of metrics from business-related to marketing-oriented.
NPS (Net Promoter Score) – Customer Survey
Net Promoter Score is a reply ranging from 0 to 10 score and when a respondent is asked to rate to what extent they would recommend a specific company, product, or service to their friends and family.
The score between 0-6: Detractors
Score 7 or 8: Passives
Score 9 or 10: Promoters
Net promoter score is calculated by the number of promoters subtracted from the number of Detractors.
Employee Related
- Employee Satisfaction (NPS) / Happiness
- Employee Turnover/Retention
- New Hire Failure Rate
- Absenteeism/Vacation Days Used
- Employee Referrals
- Productivity/Profitability
- Employee Health Index
- Employee Happiness
- com Rating
- Diversity & Inclusion
Business Metrics
- Internal/External Customer Advocacy and Product Efficacy
- Cost of Customer Acquisition
- Qualified leads per month
- Sales Revenue
- Lead-to-Client Conversion Rate
- Met and Overdue Milestones
- Cost per sale
Communication
- Written, Spoken, Visual/Design Metrics
Marketing Metrics:
- Reach and Engagement Levels
- Conversion rate by Channel (different social media platforms)
- Conversion Optimization
- Visual Media Metrics (Youtube, ING Reels, Snap, Tiktok)
- Return on investment
- SEO metrics
- PPC metrics
- Organic and Paid Social Media Metrics
- Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL)
- Sales Qualified Leads (SQL)
- Funnel Conversion Rates.
- Brand awareness.
- Marketing spends per Customer.
- Return on marketing investment.
- The lifetime value of a customer (LTV)
- Mobile Platform Metrics
Content Marketing Metrics
- Traffic
- Social Shares
- Customer Retention
- CTR (Click-Through-Rate)
- Post Engagement (Comments)
- Backlinks
- Time on Page
- Bounce Rate
- Email Opt-In Rates
Corporate Social Responsibility Metrics
- Environmental Responsibility
- Ethical Responsibility
- Philanthropic Responsibility
- Economic Responsibility
- Revenue – Strategic Alignment
- Reputation – External Awareness
- Recruitment – Talent Acquisition
- Retention – Internal Engagement
- Relationships – Partner Collaboration
Email Marketing Metrics
- Clickthrough Rate
- Conversion Rate
- Bounce Rate
- List Growth Rate
- Email Sharing/Forwarding Rate
- Overall ROI
- Open Rate
- Unsubscribe Rate
Offline Marketing Metrics
- Print media subscription lists
- Radio broadcast zip code areas
- T.V. box top data and smart T.V. data
We can say that Branding is not a discipline isolated by only brand-specific metrics; instead, it covers a whole range of business and marketing-oriented metrics, too. Every industry or vertical have varying levels of impact coming from all of these metrics. For example, Startups, local businesses, eCommerce companies, and SaAS companies monitor different metrics as core metrics while watching the others as secondary sources.
Another factor that gets into the picture is condition-specific, such as:
- Some businesses know what they want to achieve and have enough resources to make it happen
- Some companies understand where they want to go but have no resources
- Some companies have an idea, but they don’t know how to go there.
Therefore, a brand strategist needs to understand the big picture and specific needs that each brand entails. Only then designing a brand strategy and executing will have a significant impact.
Here you’ll find how our moderator Jason Chan is explaining Brand Strategy and the confusion around the brand strategy.
What are we really talking about when we talk about Branding (opinion piece)
Unfortunately, it pains me to describe the field of brand and brand strategist as “wee wee woo woo” and filled with fluff at every turn. Just ask anybody trying to learn about “brand,” and before you know it, they’ll be buried under words like:
- Storytelling
- Your Why
- Brand DNA
- Brand Essence
- bla bla bla…
There is a lot to what we talk about in branding and brand strategy. Of course, there is a place for Storytelling, Brand Purpose, Brand Essence, & other brand terms. However, looking at Branding from a beginner’s point of view, these words only confuse the already confusing field of marketing.
Let’s start with the idea of a brand… What is a brand? A brand cannot be touched or pointed. It is not a logo nor a symbol. It is not your company culture or what you say it is. You don’t create brands; brands are discovered, reinforced, reinvigorated. A brand is simply the association people build with your company/person/organization/etc.
One of the biggest confusions that people seem to make is this idea that you can delay “Branding” and push it to a later day. They do not realize that every touchpoint a customer experiences from your business is the act of Branding. It starts from the first moment someone interacts (intentionally/unintentionally) with your business. You are building an association with your target audience on what you do, what you stand for, who you are for, etc…
Your brand, in Marty Neumeier’s words ” “It’s not what you say it is, it’s what they (your customers) say it is.” You do not have complete control over your brand, but you can curate an experience that enables your customers to come to the perception you wish to create.
But the question comes up, how might we do this? At the core of Branding, it is simply, Doing what you say and saying what you will do. Does this sound overly simplified? Well, it’s more complicated than it sounds. Branding in the business world to me is simply the merging of Business and Marketing. Business outlines the operations, the finances, the supply chain, simply put everything you do, and marketing is tied to every form of communication you create and simply put everything you say. Creating a successful brand requires that everything you say needs to align with everything you do. If you proudly exclaim to the world, we are for {insert whatever purpose you align with} then everything about your brand needs to represent that.
An easy example is if your brand stands for sustainability, what this means for your company is that you should source all your products from sustainable sources, you use sustainable suppliers, promote to the best of your abilities a sustainable supply chain, your messaging highlights this practice, your company culture actively promotes employees to embrace the idea and find innovative ways to bring this idea to life.
If you’re a snacks brand that embraces the idea of “fun” (however generic this may seem), we can ask questions such as what fun means to us and how this comes to life in our product? Is it that there’s a chance to win a prize? Is it that every packaging comes with jokes? Could we partner up with a local organization? Maybe we use the packaging to highlight a local childhood game/dream and encourage our customers to relive their youth? What does “fun” mean to us? How do we develop a culture that embraces this playful nature to encourage more innovative solutions?
So, what are we talking about when we talk about Branding? Well, you say what you do, and you do what you say. Gone are the days where you just go to a creative agency and say you want a campaign done, and that’s the end of it. If you’re going to build a brand, start inside out. Before you say anything to your customers and ask them to believe your words, ask yourself, “How do we live with our brand?” Think of building your company as an assembly line; Branding is a foundational piece. If you don’t consciously establish it, someone else will, and before you know it, everything falls apart.
Next week we are going to talk about Pricing for Marketing. Join us for this colourful conversation!
We are looking forward to seeing you!
Cheers
PS: If you want to get more information I’m offering a 30-minute Free Consultation. Just click the link below
