What You Have To

Know About

Brand Building

Brand building should begin

not with a flashy billboard ad

or a multi-million dollar

television campaign,

but at the grassroots.

Like anything else, brand building needs a solid

foundation to develop from. Fail to provide this, and your

carefully curated brand is essentially hollow.

Give a customer a positive experience, they tell a friend, and your brand becomes that little bit stronger. Studies show that 88% of consumers find online reviews just as trustworthy as personal recommendations, giving companies even more scope for brand building reach.

To analyse how to do this, we need to look at the whole

buyer’s journey, broken down here into three stages:

awareness, consideration and decision.

AWARENESS STAGE

For a potential customer, The Awareness Stage is similar to coming down with a strange and unprecedented illness.

They don’t completely understand what’s happening and they’re unsure about how to fix it.

For marketers, this stage is often the first point of contact with a prospect and so it’s critical in laying the groundwork for a great experience and a strong brand by educating the potential customer about the problem they are facing.

The solution to this stage is to provide content that addresses the customer's immediate concern. Present helpful and actionable steps to steer them them towards the right product or service, and then guide them into the consideration stage.

Remember that the prospect is well aware of the symptoms they are experiencing, but haven't quite given a name to the problem they are facing.

Hard-selling towards a particular product or solution does not work in this instance. Instead, a demonstration of knowledge and understanding is required, followed by an objective description of the available options and how they can assist in solving their problem.

Getting this first part right, time and time again, is the crucial step toward building a robust brand, converting leads and sales.

CONSIDERATION STAGE

The customer is now in the second stage of their journey towards conversion; The Consideration Stage. This occurs when the prospect has a solid level of information regarding what is wrong but they have not yet

decided on the best solution to that problem.

The solution at this stage is to narrow down the array of solutions offered to the prospect, eventually to one product or service. The focus here is still on providing helpful content to the prospect but in a way that educates them about the particular service or product without mentioning your brand.

DECISION STAGE

The third and final stage of the prospect’s journey is The Decision Stage. With a wealth of information now delivered to them through highly relative content the potential customer utilises this information to make a decision on "who" they are going to buy their solution from.

At this stage of transaction, the customer now knows and understands what is going on and simply needs to decide which industry expert to purchase from. Now that the potential customer has been completely educated, the marketer needs to turn their attention to

promoting their company.

Focusing on the quality of aftercare and post-sale service offered. This could come either in the form of an extended warranty or closely administered technical support.

This model of the buyer’s journey enables marketers to integrate the entire process into one, smooth set of steps, developing an incredible customer experience in the process. This is the approach that builds loyalty, creates a positive buzz, and builds a strong brand.

Want to learn more and to give your brand a tune-up in the new year?Download our eBook, "Building Brand Awareness: The

Ultimate Guide for 2017"