Branding is not a science, but few things are proven to be certain. If your design and your brand elements, in general, look dodgy your business will look amateur. There are three common mistakes I have identified in the brand of several companies.
1. Not being clear on who their customer is
When I ask a new client who is their ideal customer, 80% of times I get an answer along the lines of “everybody”. And this is one of the biggest mistakes brands do, trying to target everybody, which in marketing terms this is like targeting nobody.
In order to have a coherent brand, you need to understand who is your ideal customer, that person who would buy your product or services. And you need to know everything about them, age, gender, even what they read!
2. Not being consistent
One of my clients sent me a few examples of what they have done with their brand, until that point they have DYIed their branding and communications. A part of design issues, every item (brochure, flyer, social media…) they had a different font, colour and logo. This is an extreme example, but it’s quite common to see brands that they have a huge amount of colours and shade or use more than two typographies.
It’s essential to have consistency with your brand, to ensure that you create awareness but also that when your customer sees a brochure and a social media post, they understand it’s the same brand. Check our 5 simple steps to achieve brand consistency.
3. Not being authentic
More and more brands have to be authentic, in the sense of personality but also with their services and products. Authenticity is not something that you can fake, and your product has to be useful, really useful. I’ll explain the case of a social media guru I used to follow.
He gave a lot of exciting free advice and always showed himself as someone sincere and authentic. I decided to sign up for a paid webinar with him. The webinar seemed great, the content was interesting with some Yes-No interaction questions. My disappointment came when he started to show us life examples on Facebook interaction, saying “see this is me now!”. I decided to check it on Facebook and noticed that his actions were made some time ago and realised that the ‘live’ webinar I paid for was actually recorded.
I have the opposite story to the above with someone so authentic that I not only paid for her services but I’m currently in a professional partnership with her.