In this highly competitive online world, with so much choice, how to make your brand stand out above the crowd is a challenge.
If you sell widgets, and your competitors sell exactly the same widgets, from the same manufacturer, then what makes customers pick you above them. When all things are equal, they are likely to go by price.
But effective selling and good business is rarely all about price, or the race to the bottom. Yes, you may be a champion discounter and stacking them high and selling them low is your USP. In which case, great.
However, in the main, there are so many more factors at play than just how much your products cost. Customers need to emotionally buy into your product, so that when they are choosing between widget A and widget B, they might go for the more expensive, simply because they know, like and trust your brand.
How to make your brand stand out online and to get that emotional buy-in is a challenge, but it can be done.
Here’s how to make your brand stand out
It’s what you do differently that will make customers gravitate towards you. You need to rise above the herd. Don’t be vanilla, because who wants to buy vanilla? (except when you actually need vanilla for baking… but we digress).
So try to get the following right for you and your brand
1. Tone of voice.
Are you a “Yo, man!” type of business or a “Good afternoon, sir/madam”? There’s no right or wrong answer, but how you look, speak, write and present your brand has to be true to your voice.
It would, suffice it to say, be unusual to look at a law firm’s website and find a “Watcha, how you’all doin’” message, but that said there is no need to be prim and stuffy. Be friendly, approachable and make your copy and content talk to the audience. Don’t talk about yourself in the third person. Remember “we/us” not “they/them”.
2. Colours
This requires really careful thought and consideration and your branding expert will help you work through this (chat to us a Danny&co. for some help and advice).
Different colours mean different things, and must reflect your brand, and who you are seeking to do business with.
Think of black and white, and you think of the Nike swoosh. Red may make you think of Coke (or Santa?). eBay brilliantly uses a different colour for each letter – perfectly summing up its brand. If we say “purple” Cadbury’s will probably spring to mind. Orange? Easyjet maybe?…..
It is amazing how just saying a colour can spark a brand association. How great to be able to do this for your brand too.
3. Typography
This calls for a definition – because we like definitions at Danny&co. So, if you aren’t aware, font and typeface are different beings. Typeface refers to the collective family of fonts. For example, good old Times Roman is the typeface and within that are different Times Roman fonts – light, bold, italic, and so on. So now you know!
With that in mind, what typeface would suit your business? Can you imagine Nike using Times Roman? Or eBay written in Franklin Gothic?
The typeface you use – and the fonts within – speak volumes about your brand, so select one that reflects you and the audience you are trying to win over.
4. PR and marketing
How you present your brand in the public arena, through paid campaigns, or social media, or PR initiatives, all reflect your brand.
The marketing arena is also very, very busy. We are constantly being bombarded by messages, so trying to stand out is difficult.
This means your message must be targeted and engaging. A couple that always stick out for us are:
- Marmite: ‘you either love it or hate it’. Think how clever this is. The brand is acknowledging that not everybody likes the product, but those who do are somehow ‘in the club’. It’s been fantastically successful and calling something ‘Marmite’ now is shorthand that has slipped into our everyday vocabulary.
- Ronseal: ‘does exactly what is says on the tin’. Similarly brilliant, and a phrase that has been coined over and over. Simple, clever, effective.
5. Images
Here’s our top tip for imagery: use a professional photographer and avoid using stock images. Amateur photography speaks volumes about your brand, and not in a good way. And while stock images are high quality, they are just that – stock images and probably a bit vanilla. Don’t shy away from using real photos of real people, and real products, and real services. After all, people buy from people – not from airbrushed, photoshopped models.
6. Content
We’ve talked before about content, in our blog on brand authority. Content is king, and continually adding quality content to your website, and sending out content to your audience – be that through social media, direct marketing, or advertising – you will help make your brand stand out, and pitch yourselves as an authority in your field.
And use a variety of content – copy, video, animation – so you are appealing across the board.
7. Quality
Even with a really comprehensive plan in place to make your brand stand out, much of this is in the hands of your customers and – it is important to remember – your team. If you provide a really great service or product, that they love and want to talk about then they will become your brand ambassadors.
If you look after your team, engage with them, and ensure they feel valued and part of your story, they will become your biggest advocates.
So quality of product, service, customer experience and employee experience is essential, or your efforts to create a buzz around your brand will be wasted. Worse, they could actually backfire!
8. Know your customer
You know your product and you know what it does – but do you really know your customer? Have you got into their mindset and gained a real understanding of what makes them tick?
We know that the buying experience is an emotional journey. As consumers, we have brand loyalty to products we love and this has been engendered by careful marketing and the building up of brand authority by the brands themselves.
Just to mention Marmite again, the producers here really know their audience and their product. The launch of the ‘you either love it or hate it’ campaign, wasn’t based on a hunch but on insight.
And when you know your customer, you can talk about how to solve their problems.
If you’re a plumber, you don’t mend leaks – you stop the dripping tap that’s driving the customer mad at night!
9. How much do you charge
Difficult one this, but never be tempted to keep cutting your prices to boost sales. Many brands thrive on pitching themselves as premium, luxury products, yet under the bonnet they may not be so different from a cheaper competitor. Their customers are buying their name and the kudos attached. Car manufacturers do this brilliantly. BMW, Jag and Ferrari drivers are buying the marque as much as they are buying the vehicle.
So knowing your customer, and what their expectations are, will help inform your price point.
10. Find a niche
How many times is “everyone” given as the answer to the question “who is your target market”. OK, so we all need certain things: washing powder, cereal, underwear. But not everyone will want to buy your washing powder or underwear will they? It will only appeal to a certain audience.
So a step on from understanding your audience, is to consider niching. It makes targeting your brand easier, because you only want to sell to a certain type of person. And niching doesn’t mean you’ll have only a few people to market to; this is a big world, a niche can be huge.
For example, we know social media experts who only work with clients in the health and wellbeing sector. That’s still pretty broad, but the advantage when seeking clients is the prospects will instantly be reassured that their sector is understood.
Don’t be a jack of all trades … be a master of one.
There is so much more we could have written about in this blog, but we hope our ten ways to make your brand stand out online is a starting point. We love branding and we love helping our clients to create, establish and grow their brands. If you’d like to talk to the Danny&co. team about branding, then please do get in touch for a chat.
