A strong company image is often a key component in its long-term success. How important? If your company has a strong brand, it’s often listed on your balance sheet as an intangible asset with financial value.
Where there can be a separation between company image and brand image, they often function as one and the same thing for a business. So, how do you maintain strong branding that supports your business in the long term?
If that’s a question you’ve been asking yourself, keep reading for five guidelines and branding tips that will help support your company image.
1. Understand Your Brand Image
Many business owners and companies learn the hard way that their idea of what their brand stands for is sometimes quite different from what customers think it stands for. Your brand image is what customers think your brand means. For all practical purposes, that becomes your company image.
If that customer perception and your intentions line up, great! If not, you have some real hard work ahead of you to modify that customer perception to something closer to what you want.
2. Know Your Values
What are your brand values? Ideally, you can name two or maybe three key values that your brand stands for. If you don’t know, you must figure it out.
Without clear guidance from the top, the rest of the company can’t embody those values.
3. Institute Guidelines
A lot of different voices will represent your company to the public. Your employees, your marketing and ad materials, and even your press releases all speak to the public.
You must set out clear guidelines about how employees, marketers, and advertisers talk about the company. Those guidelines should reinforce your brand values.
4. Target Your Customers
A good business strategy and effective branding aim at a specific target customer segment. You cannot and will not ever appeal to everyone. Determine your ideal customers, choose communication channels they frequent, and deliver your branding and company image messages there.
5. Visual Consistency
Visual consistency often acts as a strong identifier for customers when dealing with a brand. They expect that your company will use the same colors, the same logo, and even the same typeface across your website, social media channels, and even on physical packaging.
Do you have your colors and visual schemes established, but still lack a logo? You can always leverage digital tools like a logo maker to help out.
Keeping Your Company Image Strong
Keeping your company image strong requires a few key elements. You must know what your company is all about. What are your values?
Once you know those values, you can drive the message home with existing and potential customers in your ideal target market segment. That said, you need guidelines in place so that employees, marketers, and advertising companies all talk about you in the same way. Don’t forget about visual consistency in terms of colors, typography, and logos.
Looking for more branding and company image insights? Check out the posts in our Business Development section.
