10 Branding Pitfalls to Avoid | MP 89

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On this marketing podcast, Samantha Carvalho talks about 10 branding pitfalls to avoid

What happens when your brand does not fulfill its promise to clients? Are you ignoring the aging signs of your branding? When should you consider a rebrand of your business?

In this podcast episode, Sam Carvalho speaks about ten branding pitfalls to avoid.

Podcast Sponsor: Heard

An image of the Practice of the Practice podcast sponsor, Heard, is captured. Heard offers affordable bookkeeping services, personalized financial reporting, and tax assistance.

Tax season got you feeling anxious? You’re not alone. That’s why therapists turn to Heard.

Built and designed specifically for clinicians in private practice, Heard offers affordable bookkeeping services, personalized financial reporting, and tax assistance to ensure you’re making the most of your business and your time.
Heard saves therapists an average of 5,397 dollars on bookkeeping and taxes each year.

When you join Heard, you’ll work directly with financial specialists to track your income and expenses, file taxes online, and grow your practice.

You can say goodbye to guessing your tax deductions and stressing out over quarterly tax payments. Focus on your clients, while Heard takes care of the rest.

Plans begin at $149 per month and can easily be tailored to fit your business’ financial needs.

Sign up now at www.joinheard.com.

In This Podcast

  • Not defining your brand strategy
  • Starting with a cheap brand identity
  • Failing to differentiate your brand
  • Not connecting with the right audience
  • Stretching your brand too far
  • Not providing a great brand experience
  • Failing to protect and defend
  • Applying the work inconsistently
  • Ignoring the brand aging signs
  • Not living up to your brand promise

Not defining your brand strategy

You need to go deeper into the category that you are in to understand the landscape — including the competition and their strategic positions, then define your brand, and who your clients are. (Sam Carvalho)

Develop a brand strategy, understand your business objectives, and shift focus to that objective instead of designing a beautiful logo that does not work.

When you work directly with the objectives and the strategy of your brand, you will see that it is less about the typeface or color that you like and that it is more about what is persuasive to your target audience.

The best brand strategy is developed as a creative partnership between the client, the strategist, and the designer … together, you need to determine the business and marketing objectives that should guide the way forward. (Sam Carvalho)

Starting with a cheap brand identity

It makes sense to be concerned about the budget, but we all know that top-quality costs money.

For a logo and brand style guide, you can pay a range of different prices. But you get what you pay for, especially when it comes to service.

You can get a logo for cheap, but it will hurt your business.

Failing to differentiate your brand

Good design makes you stand out, not just fit in. You must be unique so that people can remember you. If you look like all the other companies in your space, then your client will most likely shop around and opt for the cheapest option. (Sam Carvalho)

Your clients need to see the difference in the quality you provide so that they will choose you.

Research your competitors to look for points of differentiation, and then define who you are, who your customers are, and find the ways that you can connect with them.

Once you have a clear mission and vision in place, then you can create visual and verbal messages that will help you stand out and communicate your value.

Not connecting with the right audience

When you start the branding process, you must know your target audience:

  • Where they are
  • What they do
  • How old they are
  • What their income is
  • What their needs are

If you do not connect with your customers in a personal way, you will fall behind the competitors that do.

Personalization is more important now than ever before.

Stretching your brand too far

Over the last decade, brand extension has become one of the hottest subjects in brand management. However, many reputable companies have learned that stretched brand extensions can easily go wrong. (Sam Carvalho)

An example is Virgin’s brand architecture: Virgin Records, Virgin Radio, Virgin Media, Virgin Holidays, Virgin Games, Virgin Comics, Virgin Experience, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Active, Virgin Money, and the list goes on!

Brand extension leads into new and often unknown territory that may be dominated by other big competitors.

Not providing a great brand experience

According to recent research, consumers stop using certain brands when they:

  • Have bad experiences with staff
  • Do not have their needs understood or met
  • Are not helped by staff when necessary
  • Do not have products or services delivered on time or when expected

Companies underestimate the consequences to their brand from bad brand-to-customer experiences.

Your brand experience is about:

  • Your staff
  • The website experience
  • Client-brand touchpoints

Failing to protect and defend

You must protect your brand if you want to build a real business, so consider a trademark.

Make sure that your business name and visuals can be protected. Obtain a clearance search to make sure your new brand is available and does not infringe on other brands’ prior rights.

Spending the time and money upfront to determine whether a brand is available will help avoid the very high costs of a dispute or litigation.

Applying the work inconsistently

Maintain consistency because consistency builds trust between your brand and the client.

The best way to stay consistent with your brand is to create a brand style guide that includes:

  • Different logo mockups and configurations
  • Primary and secondary palettes
  • Primary and secondary typefaces
  • Styles for images, icons, illustrations, etc.

Ignoring the brand aging signs

Consider a rebranding process when the work begins to look dated, if your competitors have left you behind, your offerings have changed, or your brand is not aligned with what you aspire to be.

Some brands just look visually dated and need an update. With few exceptions, failing to convey a progressive message can be detrimental to your branding.

Not living up to your brand promise

If you break the brand promise, you hurt the trust your client has placed in you which can lead to feelings of deception.

Clients research big brands before they work with them and they seek companies that are authentic, honest, and do what they say they will do.

When a brand follows through with its promises, a loyal and proud client base will rise up, tell friend after friend, and carry that brand to the promised land.

Useful links mentioned in this episode:

Check out these additional resources:

Meet Sam Carvalho

A photo of Samantha Carvalho is captured. She is the Chief Marketing Officer and Designer at Practice of the Practice. She is the host of the Marketing A Practice Podcast and helps therapists successfully market and brand their private practices.Sam Carvalho is a graphic designer living in Cape Town, South Africa, with over five years of experience in both design and marketing, with a special interest and experience in the start-up environment.

She has been working with Practice of the Practice since 2016 and has helped over 70 therapist entrepreneurs take their practices to the next level by enhancing their visual branding. She loves working with a variety of clients on design-intensive tasks and is always up for a challenge!

Follow Sam on Instagram to see some of her work. To work with Sam, head on over to www.practiceofthepractice.com/branding.

Thanks For Listening!

Feel free to leave a comment below or share this podcast on social media by clicking on one of the social media links below! Alternatively, leave a review on iTunes and subscribe!

Podcast Transcription

[SAM CARVALHO]
Welcome to the Marketing a Practice podcast with me, Sam Carvalho where you’ll discover everything you need to know about marketing and branding your business. To find out more about how I can help you brand new business visit www.practiceofthepractice.com/branding. And if you’d like to see some examples of my design work, be sure to follow me on Instagram at Samantha Carvalho Design.

Hi there. Thanks so much for joining me today on the Marketing a Practice podcast. Today, I’m going to be going through some common branding mistakes that businesses make, particularly in the beginning when setting up their branding. So many startups make these mistakes in the early stages, and then sabotage their growth later on. We sometimes underestimate the importance of branding and setting it up property and the effect that it can have on our business. Even established companies with bigger budgets have made disastrous rebranding failures that cost them a lot. Many entrepreneurs don’t quite realize the real potential of having good branding and therefore make a lot of costly mistakes.

So to set the record straight, and if you’ve been listening to my podcast for a while, you’ll know this, but branding is more than just a logo and other visual artifacts. Branding is about seizing every opportunity to express why people should choose one brand over another. I’m going to say that again, branding is about seizing every opportunity to express why people should choose one brand over another, hence all forms of communication, not just visual are key in reinforcing those trust and making your brand top of mind with your clients.

So here a few common branding mistakes that people make and how to avoid them. Number one is not defining your brand strategy. You really need to go deeper into the category that you are in to understand the landscape, including the competition and their strategic positions, and then define your brand and who your clients are. You really need to go deeper into the category that you’re in, in order to understand the landscape. This includes understanding your competitors and their strategic positions, which then help you define your brand and who your clients are. You need to develop a brand strategy and understand your business objectives, and then shift the focus to that instead of designing a beautiful logo that ultimately won’t work.

You start out by really thinking on your brand strategy, what it is you want to communicate and who it is you want to communicate to, rather than just focusing on the aesthetic of your brand. After all an argument based purely on aesthetics is doomed, unless it can be tied to accomplishing a business objective. So the design as important as it is, is meant to compliment the brand strategy rather than be what it’s all about. Remember it’s about the big picture and aligning an organization’s vision with its client’s experience. That is the goal of brand strategy. So when you understand your objectives, you’ll see that it’s less about the typeface or the color and more about what is persuasive to your target audience.

Being on strategy and on message with every element of work is what makes it viable. The best brand strategy is developed as a creative partnership between the client, the strategist, and the designer. I have actually done an episode on effective ways to communicate between kind of the marketing department and the design department. This is so, so important. Together you need to determine the business and marketing objectives that should guide the way forward. So really make sure that you don’t make this number one mistake of not defining your brand strategy before moving forward with your design.

Number two is starting with a cheap brand identity. The second mistake people make is using cheap logo design services. Everyone is concerned about budget. We totally understand this, but also we all know that quality stuff costs money. So for a logo and a brand style guide, you can pay a range of different prices, but as usual you get what you pay for, especially when it comes to service. If you pay pennies, you often will get a stock image or a matchup of anything and everything. You can get a logo for cheap, but it will hurt your business. When it comes to logo design and a brand style guide, it’s really not something that you want to skimp on. You want to make sure that you spend the necessary amount of money at the beginning of setting up your brand creating a quality logo that is going to stand a test of time and that is going to set your business up for success.

Number three is failing to differentiate your brand. So part of avoiding the number one mistake is to check out your competition. That kind of falls into this mistake as well, because you really don’t want to be similar to everybody else out there. So we are bombarded with thousands of marketing messages and ads a day. In order for your message to cut through the clutter, it must not only look good, but also be unique. Good design is what makes you stand out, not just fit in. You must be unique so that people can remember you. After all, if you look like all the other companies in your space, then your client will most likely shop around and up for the cheapest option. That’s just the reality.

If they don’t see the difference, why should they choose you? You need to stand out among your competitors in order to communicate your value and design is the ultimate differentiator of any business. But how do you differentiate from the crowd if you don’t really know who you are. So again, that’s circling back to point number one, first, figure out your brand strategy, then move on to design. So you need to research your competitors, look for points of differentiation, then define who you are, who your clients are and how to connect with them. Don’t pretend to be something that you are not. Find out who you really are and build on that.

For those of you who are therapists, your business is centered around you. Therefore, you can include a lot of who you are in your marketing, but really take time in figuring out who that is before figuring out your brand strategy. Once you have a clear mission and vision in place, then you can create visual and verbal messages that will help you stand out and communicate your value.
[HEARD]
Tax season got you feeling anxious? You’re not alone. That’s why therapists turned to Heard. Built and designed specifically for clinicians in private practice, Heard offers affordable bookkeeping services, personalized financial reporting and tax assistance to ensure you’re making the most of your business and your time. Heard saves therapists an average of $5,397 on bookkeeping and taxes each year.

When you join Heard, you’ll work directly with financial specialists to track your income and expenses, file taxes online and grow your practice. You can say goodbye to guessing your tax deductions and stressing out over quarterly tax payments, focus on your clients while Heard takes care of the rest. Plans begin at $149 per month and can easily be tailored to fit your business’ financial needs. Sign up now at www.joinheard.com.
[SAM CARVALHO]
The fourth mistake is not connecting with the right audience. As we mentioned earlier, connecting with the right audience is crucial. It’s not just about finding a great designer with the style you like. What you like may not necessarily be good for your business. This is where a lot of people fall short. So if you start the branding process, you must know your target audience and some points to consider around, figuring out who your target audience is, is where they are, what they do, how old they are, what their income is and what their needs are. Essentially, you want to come up with an avatar that is based on your ideal client, that you can then focus on when creating your branding.

If you don’t connect with your clients in a personal way, you are fall behind competitors that do. Whether you’re a startup or an enterprise corporation, you’ll find that personalization is more important than ever before. So this goes for small businesses and big businesses and specifically therapy businesses. As I said earlier, yours is such a personal field as it is and so you really want to make sure that you include that personalization or that personal touch into your branding.

Number five is stretching your brand too far. So over the last decade brand extension has become one of the hottest subjects in brand management. However, many reusable companies have learned that stretched brand extensions can easily go wrong. So an example of this is virgins brand architecture. Not sure if you are aware of this, but it is absolute chaos. There’s Virgin records, Virgin radio, Virgin media, Virgin holidays, Virgin games, Virgin comics, Virgin experience, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin active, Virgin money and the list goes on. Unlike traditional line extensions, like for example, from Coke Classic to Coke Diet, a brand extension can lead into new and often unknown territory that may be dominated already by other big competitors. So if you’re already an established business and you’re thinking of creating a brand extension, just think very carefully about it. Again, make sure that you do your research in terms of other competitors out there and see whether it’s actually worth it, or whether it’s going to ultimately hurt your brand.

Number six is not providing a great brand experience. This is so, so important. According to recent research consumers say that negative interactions with staff is the top cause of bad brand experiences. Other top contributors to bad brand experiences cited by consumers are a lack of understanding of individual needs, no staff available to help when necessary and delivering products or services that are not what they expected. The survey that produced these results also found that companies significantly underestimate the impact of a bad brand experience. Yet some 23% of consumers say that they would stop using a brand after a bad experience.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve definitely stopped using a brand after having a bad experience. Definitely, and this definitely includes dealing with bad staff, for example. So remember that brand experience is not only about your staff, it’s not only about your products or your services. It’s also about your website experience, which is super important, and every other touchpoint where clients come into contact with your brand. So that includes your receptionist, it includes your office environment, it includes you obviously. So just really remember that your branding stretches across every touchpoint and not just your design or your social media.

The seventh mistake that people make when it comes to branding is failing to protect and defend. This is with regards to trademark, which is another way of referring to brands and you must protect your brand. So this is referring to trademark. Trademarks are another way of referring to brands and you must protect your brand if you want to build a real business. Clients’ purchasing decisions are influenced by trademarks and the reputation that such brands represent is important for business people to have an understanding of why trademarks are important assets and how they help grow their business.

So make sure that you do your due diligence before investing a lot of time and money in launching a new brand. Make sure that the business name and visuals can be protected, obtain a clearance search to make sure your new brand is available and doesn’t infringe on anyone’s prior rights. Failing to research a brand before adopting can lead to denial of registration by the US PTO or worse is cease and desist letter from another brand owner. So you really want to check all of this out when setting up your brand strategy when thinking of the name of your business. And the look and feel that you want to go for, you really want to make sure that it isn’t really out there.

It’s part of also setting yourself up to be unique, which is a point that we mentioned earlier on and spending the time. And money up front to determine whether your brand is available will help avoid the very high costs of a dispute or litigation later on. So definitely spend some time looking into a trademark. As I said, it does help with the credibility of your brand and people will more likely choose you over somebody else who isn’t trademarked.

Number eight is applying the work inconsistently. Another common mistake most people do with branding is not being consistent. This is mostly with regards to visual assets. So whether it’s using different color schemes on different mediums or switching up the logos every month, if you’re inconsistent, you can’t build trust with your clients. You’re going to look different every time and you’re going to break that trust. The best way to stay consistent with your brand is to create a brand style guide. I’ve spoken about this quite often. A brand style guide is a document that specifies how to take disparate elements and unify them into a whole system.

So your brand style guide will include things like different logo mockups and configurations, primary and secondary color palettes, primary, and secondary type faces, styles for images, icons, illustrations, and so on. You want to make sure that you have the same colors and the same logos, especially on every single medium you use. The rules on how you use your brand assets, which can be included in your brand style guide will ensure consistency every time your logo or other visuals need to be used. This goes for if you change designers or you have different staff working on different things. A brand style guide can ensure that everybody keeps the look consistent, whether it be print or digital, always, always, always be consistent with your brand.

Number nine is ignoring the brand aging signs. So one of the reasons to embark on a rebranding process is that the work looks outdated. Perhaps you started your company a long time ago, and you feel like your brand is not on point anymore. Your competitors may have left you behind, your offerings may have changed, or your brand is simply not aligned with who you now aspire to be. So here are a few thoughts on knowing when your firm’s brand needs a visual update; a nice example, or a nice way to look at it is just because you can still wear clothes from high school or college doesn’t mean you should. Fashion styles are often representative of the era and as time passes, those styles change. Likewise, some brands just look visually dated and are in need of an update.

So with few exceptions, failing to convey a progressive with the times message visually can be detriment to your brand. Again, you want to be sure not to stick too much with trends and keep your designs timeless specifically with regards to your logo. But there is a line. Obviously if your branding was created 20 odd years ago, it might be time for a slight refresh.

Finally, number 10 is not living up to your brand promise. A promise is a promise whether you make it or you break it. For your personal life or for your professional organization, keeping promises matters and breaking them leaves a mark. We’re all familiar with the feeling created by broken promise. It hurts. In the corporate world, breaking the brand promise hurts your client’s trust in your brand and creates a feeling of deception. Once you lose that reputation, people hold grudges and it becomes really hard to win them back. The larger the scale of the relationship, the harder it is to repay the break.

Today in the real of social media, clients are vigilant about the brands they interact with. They do their research seeking brands that are authentic, honest, and do what they say they will do. When a brand follows through with its promises, a loyal and proud client base will rise up, tell friend after friend and carry that brand to the promise land. However, if a brand breaks its promises, it also shatters its client’s trust. A strong, effective brand, on the other hand, inspires people to feel connected to the business. So definitely make sure that you follow through on your promises and you’ll ensure that you build up a loyal client base that comes back to your brand and also recommends your brand to other people.

So those are the 10 branding mistakes to avoid. If you’ve been on the move while listening to this, we will have all of them in the show notes. That’s available for you to go back and look on. I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode and I’ll see you in the next one.

Thanks again to Heard for sponsoring this episode. Remember that when you join Heard, you’ll work directly with financial specialists to track your income and expenses, file taxes online and grow your practice. Sign up now at www.joinheard.com.

Thanks for listening to the Marketing a Practice podcast. If you need help with branding your business, whether it be a new logo, rebrand, or you simply want some print flyer designed head on over to www.practiceofthepractice.com/branding. And if you’d like to see some examples of my design work, be sure to follow me on Instagram at Samantha Carvalho Design.

Finally, please subscribe, rate, and review this podcast on iTunes if you like what you’ve heard. Talk to you soon.

Marketing a Practice podcast is part of the Practice of the Practice podcast network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you market and grow your business and yourself. To hear other podcasts like Beta Male Revolution, Empowered and Unapologetic, Imperfect Thriving, or Faith in Practice, go to practiceofthepractice.com/network.

This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or any other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.