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Branding presence is your brand’s ability to resonate with your target audience on a frequent basis. This is different from brand awareness, which is simply the recognition of your brand’s existence and values. Brand awareness does not breed brand loyalty for your CPG/retail business, whereas brand presence will do just that. Branding presence encourages meaningful interaction between the brand and consumer, resonating through their core values and interests.
In order to improve your branding presence, you first need to understand your core audience. What do they like to watch and do? Are you able to provide these things? If so, where and how will you do it? Although there isn’t an all-inclusive equation to defining branding presence, we often see consistent brand presence as a combination of channel and message.
Channel + Message
You want to be where your consumers are. This is a simple statement, but often poorly addressed. Although Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are all great social media platforms, the fact is that not all your consumers will be on Twitter 24/7. You should address the “third space” that your consumers often visit – whether it’s an online trading card forum, reddit, the gym, or a local community centre.
Being at the right place at the right time is simply not enough. You’re not trying to promote brand awareness, but rather branding presence. In order to effectively do so, you’ll need the correct message in the form of Copy and Creative.
- Copy – The statement that most accurately addresses your customer’s pain point and emphasizes your branding statement.
- Creative – The image that grabs your audience’s attention. Use images that align with your brand values and ideally use your brand colors. These image should evoke your brand keywords – Happy, Tough, Reliable, Fast, etc.
By identifying the correct messages to push through each of your social channels, you maximize the amount of meaningful interaction with your audience. Quantity does not imply quality; you need to think it through before spending your time posting on social media! Check out our post on defining brand touchpoints or AB testing to help identify your best mix of message and platform!
How will your message stand out from the thousands that your consumers observe every hour?
Building Your Brand
A core element of branding presence is to stay consistent. Your customers will only notice your brand over time if they are exposed to the same successful, positive elements in the same format again and again. This is why it is important to identify your brand colors and fonts ahead of time in your brand book – you want to “own” specific colors and keywords so that your brand can be recognized on a regular basis. Think of Starbuck’s “owned” keywords – Tall, Grande, Venti. Think of Coca Cola’s “owned” colors – Red and White with the signature swirl. If your brand consistently delivers excellent content on a regular basis with consistent formatting, it will be hard for your core audience NOT to notice you.
Want more insight into creating a brand book? Or how about some specific instructions on how to launch your branding strategy? Stay tuned for our Green Paper which will be released later this month! The Green Paper is Cucumber’s version of the industry whitepaper, and will outline the specific guidelines you can use to create a brand book, schedule an editorial calendar, conduct Brand audits, and more! Subscribe to our newsletter or contact our marketing agency for more details on the launch!