When you are first starting a business, branding is likely the last thing on your mind. After all, it’s pretty hard to sit down and flip through fonts and colour palettes when you’re still trying to figure out who your customers are (and also where to find them).
Plus, even if you made creating a brand identity a priority right at the beginning, a change in business plans might have made your initial branding strategy obsolete.
Or perhaps you are doing many things right, but certain missteps may result in your customers becoming disinterested, distanced or neglected.
Here, we take a look at 10 things your company may be doing things wrong, or have fallen behind – effectively boring your customers – and what you can do to remedy the situation.
- Boring businesses sell products
Boring companies focus on the product’s features instead of how the product fits into the customers’ lifestyles. On the contrary, interesting companies sell experiences. They sell lifestyles.
So, design an experience around your product. Market it as a part of a lifestyle, making it a choice for your consumers to pick it up, or better, be on their must-have list. This goes beyond just packaging and simple marketing, but if done well, paves the way for your entire brand.
Remember, material possessions bring little joy. Experiential purchases leave a more lasting impression.
- Boring brands talk at their customers
Boring companies broadcast their messages in a single direction. Interesting businesses engage in an open exchange with their customers. They listen, keep their customers engaged, and adapt to customer feedback. They realise a brand isn’t just what the company says it is, it’s also what the customers believe it is.
It is important to know your customers, and even more so to know how to talk with your customers, especially in the digital marketing sphere. Different media platforms target different groups of audiences, so smart digital copywriting is key when conveying messages. Also, don’t treat remarks, compliments and complaints the same. Boast the positive reactions, and respectfully engage with the negative ones. These will go a long way.
- Boring brands aren’t relevant
Boring brands know less about their customers than they think they do. They lack relevance because they don’t know what’s meaningful to their customers.
Interesting businesses understand the wants, needs, tensions, and aspirations in their customers’ lives. They discover these human motivations by taking a genuine interest in them.
Think beyond what your brand offers, but instead understand what your brand can offer to your customers. If necessary, consider a rebranding campaign, to get your brand closer to the clients. A refreshing look and feel may jolt your customers’ senses, and make them desire your brand and its offerings.
- Boring companies have a boring corporate culture
Your corporate branding is ever more important in today’s society, because consumers buy into the whole corporate packaging. Know of a brand that respects its staff, provides cool games room, flexible working arrangements, and a whole trove of benefits? Well, quite a number of businesses do that today, and if they do it well, the public buys into this positive perception.
Boring companies are just as boring to their employees as they are to their customers. And, if people aren’t passionate about their work, it’s impossible for them to be passionate about serving their customers.
Interesting companies take time to create a distinct culture and hire employees that are passionate about the company’s purpose. They craft and sell their core values, making it not just a corporate exercise, but a connected system of internal and external relations.
When the customers see it, connect with it and experience it, they will buy into it.
- Boring companies don’t have fun
Before you utter ‘duh’, think again. Boring companies are monotonous. They focus on doing the same thing every day, maintaining the status quo, and keeping up a “professional”, if not simply mundane, appearance.
On the contrary, interesting companies inject fun by encouraging experimentation and creativity. They treat the status quo and the “same old routine” as the enemy.
Avoid saying “no” to things you haven’t tried. And if an advertorial or social media experiment fails, at least you have tried, and perhaps it may have helped get your brand some eyeballs.
Being a “fun” brand does not simply mean doing things that are radical or against the mainstream. Instead, it can be attempting a bold new direction for your brand identity, in terms of the language used in your communication through digital copywriting, or some fancier website design. All these can still be in tune with your brand guidelines, just pushing the boundaries a little, livening it up that bit more.
- Boring brands follow their competitors’ footsteps
Boring companies constantly focus on how they can outperform their competitors. They try to beat the competition by emulating what the rest are doing, and end up copying the majority, deviating in just some parts, thinking that makes them ‘unique’.
Interesting companies are bold and courageous. Instead of trying to beat the competition at their game, they step aside and create their own game, focused on being the best in their own unique way.
Don’t just differentiate your brand from your competitors. Wholly seek out your unique selling points, brand your business with refreshing new identities and carve out a new direction. Try digital marketing to reach new customers. Research on what is lacking in your area of business, and then set out to do good.
Create and Define Your Unique Brand That Excites
Leave the boring behind and move towards an exciting new branding for your business. Help your business grow right.
Looking to start a new brand or revamping your business’ branding? Seeking guidance on defining the brand character and other branding elements for your business? You can surely tap on the help of a good branding agency Singapore.
I Concept Singapore is a creative design agency specialising in brand consultancy. We help businesses carve out a niche of their own, picking and placing the brand elements together to form an exciting whole. We specialise in assisting businesses to refresh their branding, lending helping hands in the remaking and revamping process.
Contact us now, and wave goodbye to the dull and sullen old, as you venture towards an interesting new branding.
