On September 18th our managing director, Richard, presented at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Taiwan on the topic of branding and how to get your company and your brand to succeed.
He started off the evening with a few examples of why branding is so crucial for a company's success.
Using the examples of vitamins, he pointed out how a brand can be instrumental in signaling a product's safety. In other cases, a strong brand can carry an aspirational value to it, such as with luxury goods. Finally, a brand can often become a short-cut for people who cannot or will not want to make an in-depth decision every time they go to the supermarket.
Richard then got into what a brand is and what it's not.
As he mentioned, a brand is not only a logo, the CIS (corporate identity system), VI (visual identity) or packaging, although it includes all these things. Rather it is more.
A brand is all the interactions that the customer has had with the products, with the company, with its people. A great b2c brand has a strong emotional connection with the customer.
A strong b2b brand may not have quite the same emotional connection but it will usually have a strong sense of professionalism as shown through its image and the interactions customers have with its people.
Next in the talk Richard went through some of the ways that Geber works with companies to determine their brand core and brand positioning in the market.
He used several examples of companies that have done it the right way and some that have done it the wrong way. A strong positioning can help a company stand out from its competitors. A weak one will mean that consumers have no reason to pick them rather than others.
After establishing the right brand core and positioning, the next thing that Richard spoke about was creating the right marketing funnel to create the awareness, engagement, discovery and purchase stages so that your target audience will become your customer and drive sales.
He went through many of the common platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter as well as some lesser used ones such as LinkedIn and Pinterest. Also covered was the use of mailing lists, blogs and several other ways that are effective in getting your message out, depending on your target and industry.
Finally, Richard emphasized that when you are building out these marketing channels you should have an over-arching strategy.
According to him, you need to be wary of "building your house on borrowed land."
For most businesses he recommends a strategy of using these other platforms to drive traffic to something you own, usually your website. That way if algorithms or policies change on Facebook for example, you still have other platforms and you still have your "base of operation," which is your website.
The talk ended with a question and answer period followed by beers and great conversation!
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