Branding is an essential part of marketing and advertising. The story of a good branding campaign seems to focus on getting the general public to remember your brand. Now why would you want people to remember your brand? Well for starters, the more people remember your brand, the more chance you have to make a profit. Take FedEx for example. Whenever people think about a courier service, they think of FedEx first because of the branding awareness that exists around FedEx’s brand. Of course with branding you will want people to associate your brand with a positive energy instead of a negative one so that people will relate to your product as something that works and worth paying money for.
However, there are a lot of branding mistakes that we see in modern advertising these days. Bad branding will often be very costly because not only will you be wasting a lot of your advertising money, you might also be sending out the wrong message to the crowd. And believe me; the wrong message could even hurt your business. Let us take a closer look at some of these branding mistakes that you should avoid at all cost.
Branding without a picture of your product or logo?
Too many times, marketers make the mistake of branding their product without a picture of their brand, logo or even a picture of themselves. This is a bad mistake because branding is usually associated with a visual impression of what you are. If you do not let your image park in the mind of the people who you want to remember you, then you are wasting your time. For example, lately, a popular motorcycle manufacturer released a new motorcycle and created an ad for the motorcycle. All of this sounds normal and good but there’s one huge thing missing. All they mentioned in the ad was the model number of the motorcycle and some useless footage of pretty faces running around. There was no actual picture or footage of the new motorcycle around (not even a hint that it is a motorcycle).
Yikes!
Now, maybe the marketer thinks that their advertisement is smart and different and using curiosity to get people interested in their new product, but to most people (even those who are looking to buy a new motorcycle), the looks of your motorcycle are very important. And if you are not even confident enough to show your product out to the public, you are going to lose a lot of advertising money. Sure only some of the hardcore fans of the manufacturer might get curious about this new motorcycle and take the time and effort to find out more, but mind you… this is in the minority and these people are already your loyal fans. What this ultimately means is that this manufacturer has made a huge and costly mistake.
Using A Bad Name For Your Product.
It happens, sometime… some product names are just lame and it you are out of luck, some of the youngsters with a creative mind out there might just use your name and turn it into a joke or a meme. This would literally kill your business. Hence when you choose a name for your product, you need to take it seriously. Try to creatively think of what your brand name sound like and hopefully it does not sound too silly or funny. A catchy name is good, but you do not what people use it as a Joke.
Surely a joke might go viral and help you brand your product, but if that’s what you were hoping for, it might just backfire. Usually, a bad brand name that turns into a joke will not just stop there. In the internet age, people will not stop until the something new comes up so you can be sure that your brand name will be on the downfall during the trend (it might even leave a sour aftertaste for many years to come).
Another kind of bad name you should avoid is giving your product a complicated name, or a name that is very hard to pronounce or spell. Not only will people not be able to remember your name, some people will even hate your brand because of it. If no one can remember your name well, then it’s going to be hard to brand your business now wouldn’t it? You want people to instantly remember your business and name every single time they think about you. You won’t want people to think of you and then tell their friends that you are that shop around the corner of the last row of shops across Wal-Mart.
Being Offensive.
One of the most deadly branding mistakes you should avoid at all cost is being intentionally offensive with your brand name or logo. Sure people will remember you, but if people remember you for the wrong reasons, your sales and profits charts won’t be on the rise. Hence you have to be absolutely careful not to be offensive even in your ads. If you just anger one or two people with your branding efforts, you will be sure that it will spread virally on the internet and that won’t be good for your business. When that time comes, you might even have to change your brand and logo entirely and you would not want that.
Hence be smart and think of how you can brand your business the positive way, and leave a good impression in the mind and heart of your target market every single time. Even better you should try and install a sense of warmth in the mind of your target market that you are the good guys that gives the best service and professionalism in your business. Show the world that you want to do business with them and that you will break your neck just to please them. A good branded business will never go hungry because people will come to you whenever they need your business or services. Brand early and win big.
