Branding
A brand is defined by its community, not its owner. We want to uncover what unites your customers – the events they value, the stories they share – to build a brand they will embrace as their own. By aligning your messaging with your community’s identity, you forge lasting loyalty and connection.
Therefore, we approach branding from a community perspective. We at DMC believe a community refers to a group of people gathered together, either online or offline, with a common interest or goal. It provides a sense of belonging and connection. Points of connection are shared experiences, interests or attributes that help to bond people in a community and make them feel understood. They could be where people grew up, life events they went through, sports teams they support, etc. These connections help to build understanding and trust within the community.
Why is this important? Because today your branding needs to build a strong community. To do this you will first need to identify an event or experience that would resonate with your target market and bring them together. The psychographics, referring to the attitudes, values and lifestyles, are more important than demographics alone. So what event would cause all of your target market to want to attend?
The story for your business is an expansion of the connecting points you have with your customers. It’s taking those shared experiences and beliefs and sharing them with your customers. You want to look for the broadest connecting points possible for the largest market opportunity.
Then you have branding activities aimed at building goodwill and loyalty, without an expectation of a sale. Not to be confused with promotion on the other hand that refers to sponsoring an event with the clear goal of driving a specific outcome, e.g. sales, leads, etc.
Once you understand what story you want to tell and the event that would bring everyone together, now you should know what type of imagery: images, fonts, logo, slogan, business name, and voice or tone in communications, and activities that you want for your business. The rest of branding is a continual expansion of this. The key thing to remember is that branding is everything that your business does, not just signs, ads, building interiors and promotional materials.
Josh’s Pro tip: Once you understand the event, the connecting points, and the story, then you can use the chat bot to help with the rest. If you are unsure of images or colors, you can let it know the feeling that you want to create, and it can give you colors, font styles, and imagery suggestions to use.
The key take away is that to cultivate a strong community, one needs to identify the deeper points of connection based on psychographics. A compelling story and consistent imagery that help to engage and bond the community over the long run through branding that builds its own community just like sports teams have done for decades.