Sear Your Business Message Into Your Customers’ Brains Using These Key Tactics
If you’re looking to fortify your brand online, get fast traction using some very basic tactics.
Brand, Brand Everywhere
What comes to mind when I say: “We branded our herd of cattle today”? It’s likely you immediately saw and heard the visuals and images associated with a hot iron “brand” burning into the hide of a bull or cow. That “brand” would be a sign of the owner or the ranch that owns the cattle.
Let’s carry that image further: When you brand your business you essentially do the same thing. You emblazon it with a sign of ownership for all to see. Unfortunately where a lot of business owners trip up is by half-heartedly committing to that sign, or their brand. It’s like getting a tattoo that you keep hidden all the time. No one will know it’s there if you don’t show it off.
- Put your brand on business cards
- Put your brand in the header of your website
- Put your brand on your blog
- Build a logo for your brand and use it everywhere
- Include your brand in your domain name (BrandXYZ.com)
- Add your brand to your email signature
- Put your brand on any articles, white papers, reports, and ebooks your business publishes
Make Your Brand “Sticky”
When something is “sticky,” it’s something not easily forgotten. How powerful would it be if you could make your business’s brand stick like glue in your customers’ brains? What kind of stimuli could work to instantly create mental associations between your brand, your business, and ultimately your uniqueness?
Make your business brand super sticky by creating a pithy unique slogan or tagline that customers can’t possibly forget. For example, consider the impact of these famous brand taglines/slogans:
- Nike: “Just Do It.”
- The Yellow Pages: “Let Your Fingers Do the Walking.”
- Morton Salt: “When it rains, it pours.”
- M&M’s Candies: “Melts in your mouth, not in your hand.”
Create your own pithy and sticky slogan or tagline as a companion to your brand. As you can see some of the most compelling slogans are clever wordplay at the same time they clearly define the brand’s uniqueness (also the unique selling proposition).
Tips for slogan-slinging:
- List the unique features and benefits of your business.
- Make another list of short pithy ideas you associate with your business and brand (tip: try borrowing testimonials or great comments you’ve gotten from customers)
- How about a list of words that rhyme with your brand?
- From your lists try putting into one or two sentences what is most unique about your brand or business.
- Try using rhymes, alliteration (words that start with the same letter), or onomatopoeia (words for sounds, like “snap, crackle, pop”)
- If you have employees, get them involved; even family members or find a clever way to involve customers.
The more versions of slogans you create the more options you have. Dan Kennedy, one of the most famous sales copywriters, created a hundred or more headlines before finding the right one for many of his sales letters.
Once you’ve discovered your golden slogan, use it everywhere you put your brand insignia. These two should be inseparable and used with the intention of searing them into your customers’ psyches.
