Submitted by Debbie Estwick
For the Association of Female Executives of Trinidad and Tobago's (AFETT) Take Note
Debbie Estwick is a member of AFETT’s Research & Public Advocacy Committee
It can be hard to get noticed and attract the right people. A pretty dress helps but it doesn’t always do the trick to keep them coming back. This can be true for both dating and business. A nice logo and attractive colours help but those alone don’t always work to compete with the marketing noise and endless options that consumers are faced with everyday. Standing out in the crowd, attracting consumers and keeping their business when they have other options takes much more than a logo on a couple advertisements. To exist and advertise occasionally is no longer enough to stay relevant, compete and attract Trinidad and Tobago’s globally connected consumer. In addition, advertising is expensive and the many options for marketing can be over-whelming for female entrepreneurs who need to balance their core business activities, administrative duties, personal commitments and more.
There is hope, though. Being strategic about building your brand can improve not only your visibility and recognition, it can also help you cost effectively attract and keep your most valuable customers while growing your profitability. What do Apple, Google and Coca-cola have in common? They are strategic about branding and have been consecutively ranked as the worlds most valuable brands. They are also highly profitable companies that have stayed relevant over time.
Here are 10 strategic brand-building tips to help the Caribbean female entrepreneur build a strong and valuable brand without breaking the bank.
Debbie’s 10 Tips for Brand Building
1. Be Strategic & Intentional
A brand is not your logo. It’s not your product either. Walter Landor, a global leader in brand consulting and design once said, “Products are created in the factory. Brands are created in the mind.” Being strategic about branding gives you the opportunity to continuously influence how your business is perceived by intentionally and effectively managing what your business projects about itself in every opportunity it has to interact with consumers, employees, partners/affiliates and other stakeholders.
2. Be Self-aware & Authentic
No one likes a fake. Authenticity helps build trust. While, as a business, you may be growing into what you want to be, it’s best not to entirely pretend to be something that you’re not. Be honest and make the effort to change and then tell others when you have improved. Your company’s brand is not just what you say about yourself; it’s also what others say about you.
3. Dress the Part
We live in a visual world and good design is critical to effective brand building. Your logo, iconography, typography and brand elements work to differentiate you and to visually communicate your brand positioning and identity. This is a strategic matter informed by your business vision, not by style fads or personal colour preferences. It’s important to invest in working with an experienced designer or agency to help you develop your brand identity as this will be the visual representation of your business for a very long time.
One of the common mistakes small businesses make is to try to skimp on brand identity costs. A poorly designed brand identity won’t scale as you grow, may be difficult to use across multiple iterations, may not effectively communicate your brand positioning, may even offend and could cost you significantly if you try to rebrand later in an attempt to address visual or technical challenges and issues. If you can’t afford to invest in brand identity development, consider choosing a simple typeface and working with that alone as your logo as you focus on building your business until you can afford the investment.
4. Speak the Language
While a picture may speak a thousand words, tone communicates much more than words alone when speaking or writing. Brand personality can be built by establishing a written tone of voice for your business. An empathetic, gentle, feminine and inspirational person will speak very differently from a trendy, loud, colourful and daring person. The same is true for brands. Both can be very good but they are also very different. While people may be complex and can be many things at once, brands need to be simplified in order to be easily understood and relatable in the minds of consumers.
5. Act the Part
Every interaction the consumer has with your business is an opportunity to influence their brand perception. What are your brand pillars (these are core tenets to your brand) and how are they expressed in your service experience, online experience and every other platform or method for interaction? Identifying your business’s brand pillars and building them into the service experience helps you consistently build an easily recognisable, consistent and reliable brand.
6. Embed
A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. While you may have a clear understanding of your brand, your visuals and tone may be spot on as you’re making an effort to be strategic and authentic, your efforts can be undermined through ignorance, habitual/cultural operational processes and actions that are contrary to your brand message and positioning. You can embed your brand internally through brand sensitisation training for new and existing employees; documented policies and departmental/process manuals (especially for departments/employees that engage clients or the public); documented and internally visible brand pillars that guide strategic and tactical plans to ensure focused, brand-led activities; and brand guidelines addressing tone of voice, visual style and identity use for Marketing, Communications and PR managers. Embedding your brand can go a long way in ensuring focused activities and creating a consistent experience that keeps clients/customers coming back.
7. Extend
Someone once said “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” Cobranding and collaborations allow opportunities for extending your brand’s reach without changing your business’s administrative structure. Whether we prefer it or not, we live, compete and do business in a connected world where many successful brands have survived, grown significantly and even managed to innovate through co-branding and collaborations.
For example, consider Puffs Plus Vicks, a co-branding initiative that resulted in a tissue that’s especially comforting for stuffy and runny noses. Consider social media stars and music-industry brands: so many of them have grown their fan-base, visibility and awareness through strategic collaborations on videos, online posts, songs and new products.
8. Engage
Kalpana Rajesh is a mother, former engineer and entrepreneur in India who founded Pelli Poola Jada, a company that designs and makes intricate, floral headdresses for brides (poolajadalu). Rajesh credits her engagement on Facebook as a significant factor in her success. Today, Pelli Poola Jada operates a franchise model with 45 branches in many different countries and 250 employees, all of whom are women.
There are many different online platforms that you can use to engage consumers. Facebook is not the only one and may not be ideal for some businesses. Consider the kind of brand you are building, what your offerings are, who your clientele is, where they may want to engage with you and what their engagement needs/wants are as you consider platforms and methods for engaging online. Remember, engaging interactions are not just self-promotion ads. They are opportunities to provide value to followers/viewers/readers/listeners, entertain and build/maintain relationships.
9. Be Confident
Criticism will come but it doesn’t have to destroy. If you’ve been strategic about building your brand, stay confident about your strategic focus as you listen to, investigate and address criticism. First, consider if the criticism is objective or subjective. If it is objective, acknowledge and respond as quickly as possible with solutions and facts, staying confident in your brand. Ignoring criticism for too long can result in a brand-damaging nightmare. If criticism is subjective or trivial, consider how you can remain strategic while addressing wants and preferences. Well-meaning suggestions/opinions are not always in keeping with your business or brand strategy but as far as possible, in keeping with your strategic positioning, introduce solutions and initiatives that can please and delight consumers. Your strategic focus can guide what you do to provide positive, on brand and business-led experiences for customers. If you have to stand your ground on a matter, be sure to respond kindly but firmly as you clarify/explain why you maintain your position. If you can, use every criticism or mistake as an opportunity to build your brand as Google did when it accidentally allowed it’s domain to become available for sale. The domain was bought for one minute before Google bought it back. In keeping with its quirky, tech-smart and creative brand identity, Google paid $6,006.13, which is “Google” spelled out numerically. Rather than being just an embarrassing tech gaffe, the incident became an opportunity for entertaining PR fodder and brand promotion for Google.
10. Be Consistent
Consistency is often misunderstood in branding. Some may think building a consistent brand means painting every thing, whether virtual or physical, with no consideration to context, in a single, flat colour. Consistency does not mean boring, rigid or overly repetitive. Rather, consistency requires creativity. Consistency in colours, typography, style and tone of voice are critical along with creativity, understanding of context and a clear understanding of brand pillars. Rather than limiting options, as a rigid or elementary understanding of brand development may do, consistency and creativity can maintain visual appeal, improve visibility and breathe new life into brands for years to come!
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Debbie Estwick is a Caribbean-based, Design and Brand Strategist, educator and presenter. Her senior level branding agency experience and senior level in-house experience facilitates a rare duality and understanding that allows her to be comfortably embedded in client organisations. She uses her experience, knowledge and skills to help businesses understand and reap the benefits of design and branding in a globally connected and technology-driven world. Debbie has worked with businesses and projects in Trinidad, Barbados, Antigua, Guyana, St. Lucia, the wider Caribbean region, the USA, Canada, France and the United Kingdom. She is qualified with a BFA (first class honours) in Graphic Design and an MA (with distinction) in Design & Branding Strategy.