How Corporate Branding Creates Emotional Longevity With Customers
How do you build a relationship with your customers?
If you want to build a strong, lasting relationship with your customers, you need a strong corporate brand. I remember some years ago when I was with a company that was acquired by a company out of San Diego.
After the acquisition I had the chance to sit down with the head of marketing for the company that had been around for several years and he said, “we’re just getting to the point where we’re ready to actually start doing corporate branding.” I was shocked by this response and thought that this probably wasn’t the best place for me to stay.
Corporate branding is something that should be done from the very moment you start your organization. Why? Well, think of it as writing a book. You’re building out the intro and then you’re adding chapters. If you wait to start writing the intro of the book after it is published, your audience will be confused.
If you’re fully into your organization’s history, then you have missed the opportunity to build that brand from the get-go. People often ask, “why would we build a corporate brand first and not put all our focus on our product and product launch?” You must think about the future. If you love your product and you want to promote it, that’s great but what about the second, third, or tenth product?
If you do corporate branding, every time you launch a new product, people will be able to anticipate what the next product is that you are bringing to the market. It creates consistency, predictability and builds much more longevity in your organization.
Looking at the products above, you don’t have to think twice about which company carries those products. Why? They have built a strong corporate brand. Apple started with computers and now they have launched a category of iPads and phones.
We’re always anticipating whatever they might launch next because we’re bought into the corporate brand. Think about the power of a corporate brand in context of big companies – Apple, Amazon, Johnson, and Johnson.
On the opposite side of the coin, look at the photo above.
You might know several of these product brands but had no idea they were under Procter and Gamble. Procter & Gamble doesn’t necessarily have a powerful corporate brand, but they focus entirely on their products, and they spend a lot more money to promote each of those products. If you’re a small business and looking to extend your marketing dollars, building a corporate brand along the way is a better solution.
Corporate branding is about understanding who your target customer is, how do you want to reflect your organization, how do you want to communicate the company to others, what is your value proposition, and how you will build upon that identity with the products that you launch.
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