All successful companies (in part) thrive because of their corporate identity.  Here are 5 tips for building a powerful brand and using it to drive business choices, increase sales, and manage a corporate image in the eye of the public.

What is a “Brand”?

A brand or corporate identity is simply how others view a company from the outside.  The term can be somewhat diluted by the way it is used in every day conversation (“What brand of ketchup did you get?”), but at its core it is much more powerful.  A brand should be memorable, targeted, and consistent in order to be effective.

Is Your Branding Memorable?

One key to branding success is creating a corporate image that people will remember. There are logos in the business world that are timeless and can be recognized from a mile away.

A brand should have impact on its viewer and should be something that when it comes time to buy they can’t help but think about your logo, your products, and the way they will feel once they own your goods.

Does Your Brand Effectively Address Your Target Customer?

Think about the brands in front of your eyes every day. Does their logo, printed material, website, and product cater to the audience to which they are marketing? Are they either telling you that you are their customer OR making you wish you were? If so, this is the sign of great brand development. Here are a couple examples of companies that perfectly hit their target market:

• Mercedes-Benz – What do you think of when you picture a Mercedes-Benz? You probably think of wealth, upper class, celebrity…to name a few.  This is a corporate identity built right.  To build this image, Mercedes creates high-quality vehicles and markets to high net worth customers.  You won’t see a TV ad spot of a Mercedes car salesman yelling out about record low prices.  Rather, their ads show cars racing around curves or the vehicle parked in front of the driver’s 4,000 sq ft vacation home.  This campaign conveys a sense of wealth and therefore establishes their brand in that same way.
• Apple Computers – Steve Jobs is a branding genius.  Period.  Everything about Apple is consistent with their desired image.  MacBooks are for artists, creatives, designers…or so Apple wants you to believe.  Is it really true that you can’t edit a video on a PC?  Hardly the truth.  Through numerous branded ad campaigns, Apple uses music, stunning aesthetic, and product differentiation (Windows vs. Mac) to portray their hip, designer-friendly identity.  Check out the Windows vs. Mac video below if you haven’t seen it on TV.
• Gatorade – Much like the brands above, Gatorade does a great job at setting their branding for their target market.   Gatorade is for the true athlete!  They convey this image to their customers with ad campaigns that show our favorite celebrity athletes chugging a Gatorade after a big game or having them sweat it from their pours like Gatorade and their success go hand-in-hand.  Clearly, the key to success as an athlete is practice and natural skill, but Gatorade has us thinking they are the critical third part of the formula to success.  This is great brand development.

Do Your Products/Services Match The Identity You’ve Created?

A company can spend years building the perfect identity, but if the product or service behind the brand doesn’t match it will be all for nothing.  Would you expect to see Taco Bell marketing itself as an authentic Mexican restaurant? How about the corner liquor store building a brand around rare fine wines when their best bottle is a “Two Buck Chuck“? If the product doesn’t match the brand your customers will figure it out quickly.  It’s OK to build a brand around being cheap (look at the Dollar Tree), but everything has to be consistent with the image you set.   That leads to our next point on consistency…

Is Your Branding Consistent?

Not only does the product need to fit into the brand, the brand needs to be consistent throughout.  For this reason, companies that are serious about their identity create style guides to ensure that consistency is always a priority.  Everything from business cards and flyers to the website and email campaigns are all held to the same design style guide.  By following the guide, the company becomes the brand rather than it just being something that the company does.  Straying away from the brand can potentially mean losing control of how your company is viewed by the public.

Are You Committed To Building Your Brand?

Building a successful brand isn’t easy.  It will take time and dedication to “massage” your company’s identity into what you want it to ultimately become.  By following the few tips above and being diligent about the design of marketing materials, the message you convey, and the products or services you offer, you will come out the other end with a quality brand that is sure to earn respect and boost sales from your target market.

What other strategies have you used to build your desired corporate identity?

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There are a couple solid strategies to consider while choosing an effective domain name for a new website.  Many times the choice will depend on the company, the target market, and the ultimate goal for the site.  Here are some key factors to consider while making the choice.

Pick a domain name that contains your company name.

This is what the majority of corporate domain buyers will do because it builds up their company name and is easy to associate with the actual physical company.  Although most common, this is not always the best idea.  Here are a couple reasons why it is not:

1. The company name by itself doesn’t always adequately describe the business. For example, Jim starts a car washing company in San Francisco, CA named Jim’s Washers.  He buys the domain name jimswashers.com.  Unless he has very strong content through search engine optimization, he will likely lose search traffic to his competitor who has registered sanfrancisco-carwash.com.  His competitor has a domain name that is localized and descriptive of the service offered.  What are Jim’s Washers washing?
2. The company name isn’t unique enough from other competition. Many companies share the same or similar names across the US.  If a family opens a diner named Mom & Pop’s Diner, they aren’t going to have great results with the domain momandpopsdiner.com.  It doesn’t set them apart from others by the same name.

Pick a domain name that uses keywords about your business.

We discussed this above with Jim’s Washers.  Using locational and specific words that describe or define a business can be very powerful with search engines.  The one downfall can be the difficulty in building a brand on a set of keywords.  For example, Jessica starts a high-end Italian food restaurant in Pleasanton, CA.  By simply using pleasanton-italian-food.com, she will be entirely missing out on setting herself apart from fast food Italian as well as building her corporate brand name on the web.  What will happen when Jessica expands her business outside of Pleasanton?

Pick a domain name that is entirely unique.

This option is not always feasible for everyone because it relates to the actual naming of the company.  One great way to stand apart is to create a word as a company name.  Companies like Google, Facebook, and EBay have all created words that before their existence really didn’t mean much of anything.  By creating these words, the search engine competition on that term (or phrase) is close to zero making it easy to dominate.

When it comes down to registering a domain name, spend the extra time and effort on brainstorming.  An effectively constructed domain name could mean the difference in thousands of free referrals from search engines and a huge impact on sales.