3 Ways to Elevate Your Brand Perception

Our guest blogger today is Faith James. She’s the founder of The Personal Branding Consultancy. Faith has over 25+ years of experience in the advertising and marketing industry. She is the recipient of several awards for creating branding and communications campaigns for Fortune 500 companies like IBM and Microsoft.

Your company’s brand is arguably its most important asset. However, branding is often neglected by business owners. Having a recognizable and trustworthy brand can boost your marketing efforts and increase your sales. Here is what you need to know about branding and how to elevate your brand perception. 

What is Branding?

HubSpot puts it beautifully: “Branding gives your business an identity.”

However, if you want a more detailed definition, HubSpot says, “Branding is the process of creating the brand identity of a company. This process also delivers materials that support the brand, like a logo, tagline, visual design, or tone of voice.” 

Therefore, your website, social media platforms, landing pages, emails, blog posts, and anything you publish should reflect your brand. 

In addition to focusing on branding on your platforms and website, you can utilize other people’s platforms to increase your brand awareness. 

Branding is deeper than just picking a color and a logo. You have to create a brand strategy.

As Adobe puts it, your brand strategy has to include your company’s:

• Purpose
• Brand Values
• Voice
• Tone
• Design and visual identity 
• Brand story 

Once you’ve figured out your branding, it’s time to elevate your brand perception. 

Here’s how. 

How to Elevate Your Brand Perception 

Elevating your brand perception is crucial for attracting and retaining customers while maintaining a positive reputation. 

Here are three practical ways to do so: 

Consistent Branding

Ensure that your brand maintains a consistent identity across all touch-points. 

This includes your logo, color schemes, fonts, messaging, and visual and verbal communication.

Consistency creates a sense of reliability and professionalism, helping customers easily recognize and trust your brand. 

When your branding is consistent, it reinforces your brand’s image and values, leading to a stronger and more positive perception. This communicates that you are a professional and committed to the details. 

Exceptional Customer Experience

Delivering outstanding customer experiences can significantly impact how customers perceive your brand. Consider the entire customer journey, from the first point of contact to post-purchase support. 

Provide top-notch customer service, personalized interactions, and quick problem resolution. Make it easy for customers to engage with your brand and listen to their feedback to improve continuously. 

Happy and satisfied customers are more likely to view your brand positively and become advocates. 

Strive to surprise and delight your customers. This is crucial to ensuring they stay loyal to you and your business. 

Figure Out and Communicate Your Purpose and Values

Today’s consumers are increasingly drawn to brands with a clear purpose and strong values. 

What do you care about?

Express your brand’s mission, vision, and values transparently, and align your actions with them.

Creating your vision statement is the most important thing you can do.

It starts this way: “My vision for the world is a world where….. “

Get introspective and clear on what you want to see happen in the world. 

Then, once you have that statement, you will use that as a filter for everything you do with your business.  

Conclusion

Incorporating these strategies into your brand’s identity and operations can help you elevate your brand perception, leading to increased customer loyalty, higher brand trust, and improved competitiveness in the market. Remember that building a positive brand perception takes time and ongoing effort, so it’s essential to be consistent and committed to these strategies. 

Faith’s Story

Fear of failure is a major obstacle in the entrepreneur’s journey. There are universal fears for so many people. We think it’s a fear of the unknown, but many times it’s the fear of the known. If you’ve historically not been a risk taker, you’re going to naturally gravitate toward safety. You need to affirm yourself and start that affirmation now.

What works for me is that I anchor myself in who I am and whose I am: I am a child of God. I am his masterpiece. I choose to anchor into that truth. It’s all about choice: you have to make a decision and take action. I’ve decided that all things are going to work out for me, this is my north star. Something better is going to come.

For example, when I first started my business, I did a Branding Over Brunch event at a country club. I put on the entire event myself. I had 40 to 50 people in the room, a really nice number — but only one person bought a package for $297 after I had spent a great deal of time and money putting the event together. Most people would [look] at this as a negative, but I saw it differently. What I saw was the glass half full. I chose to see a cornel of goodness and decided to build upon that.

Perseverance

I did the event the following year, I changed the program to a group coaching format, boosted the price of my packages to $2500, and had more purchases. I’ve continued to do this event and now my packages are at $50,000.

As Oprah says, “You don’t get what you wish for, you get what you believe”. It’s an inside job first and foremost: get anchored into the truth of who you are. Believe there is something greater for you and anchor to that. This is where I suggest everyone starts.

I want to inspire all entrepreneurs to be vigilant about keeping the fire in their bellies and hearts, lit. Many things will come against you, but as long as you are determined and committed to succeed, nothing will permanently stop you.  As the saying goes, “Nothing can stop a woman who is unwilling to quit.“