Legendary brands aren’t built overnight. It takes time and an awesome branding strategist by your side to give you the run down or game plan of what you need. Branding is so much more than just a good logo and a great website. It’s everything from ideation to execution of who you are.
From the business card to the customer experience you need to nail down everything your customer thinks about you. So, I went ahead and interviewed a master branding strategist Brandon Peterson who’s worked with some of the world’s leading experts on what it takes to craft a legendary brand. Let’s dive in to see what Brandon said about building a personal brand.
How To Build a Legendary Brand
Make Yourself Memorable
When it comes to making yourself memorable, the most common mistake Brandon sees in startup brands is simply: playing it safe. Too many entrepreneurs want their brand to look 'industry-standard' or 'similar-to-competitors.' These types of entrepreneurs are determined to take their business to the next level, but they have a hard time thinking outside the box. They create cookie-cutter brands, nearly identical to their competitors. How can you be remembered if you are camouflaged with the competition? There's nothing wrong with getting ideas and inspiration from competitors, but when a brand tries to copy and paste success, 3 things begin to happen:
- They become camouflaged. Less noticeable.
- They look like copycats and their perceived value drops.
- Their overall brand image starts losing shape in customers minds.
Don't let your brand blend in. Always focus on delivering a unique, lasting impression. A memorable exposure that is easily remembered down the road leads to additional subscribers, sales, and word of mouth without spending any extra adverting dollars.
Get More Exposure
The name of the game is in getting your brand in front of your target audience over and over again. Create a sound marketing strategy. You can have killer branding but if you have no one to witness it – then the branding goes unnoticed and it’s wasted time and money spent. Make sure your brand message is congruent through all marketing mediums. This is extremely important.
If you have different messages on different mediums you can expect to have people’s perception of you be different. And an inconsistent brand is a bad brand. This means have it be consistent on social media, radio, tv, billboards, influencers and display ads.
I did want to note something that Brandon said. He said people recall things they see often. So, it’s better to retarget 1 million people 10 different times than to target 10 million people once.
Link Your Brand to Triggers
Just like mentioned in the past section – people recall things they relate to at that moment. Triggers can be any person, place or object that sparks a sequence of thoughts. For example, let's say you start stubbing your toe on the stairs a lot. After the 10th stubbed toe, those stairs will start speaking to you. You're going to think to yourself "Boy, I better not run up these stairs so quickly. I'll walk instead."
The stairs are a trigger. The choice to walk up the stairs slowly is a result of that trigger. With this in mind you can create a much stronger piece of marketing content for your brand. Let's say you have a brand that sells slippers with toe protectors. It may do well to create a marketing campaign that shows people stubbing their toes all around the house.
After somebody sees your ads, they might laugh a little bit, and put not serious thought into buying your slippers. But when they stub their toe... they might just remember your ad. And if they stub their toe again, this time resulting in a broken nail. This time, something needs to be done. First thing that comes to mind? Your slippers.