(Following up on STEP 2: Plan your brand’s identity and future)
Step 3: Communicate your brand from the inside out
It’s not just your consumers you have to communicate your brand to, but also all those who are involved with your company. They are: your team, your suppliers and your stakeholders. If they aren’t advocates of your brand, your team won’t be able to communicate effectively with your customers and suppliers.
Engaging your Employees
A way of avoiding misrepresentation is engaging with your team and having them be involved with part of the branding processes. They are just as invested in its success as you are, after all.
As the brand develops, it works well to have the team comment on how they could incorporate the brand values into their everyday lives in the company. You can also put up displays of your brand values around your base, to encourage the team to incorporate them into their day-to-day working lives, as well as reinforcing them to visiting customers.
There are various ways of engaging them:
- Incentive schemes
- Create a culture of “how we do things here’ lead from the Brand Values
- Regular communications
- Involve the team in decisions
- Internal newsletter
- Appreciate the diversity of the workforce (different skills and personalities)
- Make the engagement sustainable – keep the momentum beyond it’s initial launch
Brand Ambassadors
An effective way of communicating your brand is by establishing Brand Ambassadors: These are companies or individuals who have a strong connection with your brand and would recommend you to others and also monitor the brand’s consistency.
These Ambassadors are incredibly valuable as they can further establish your brand and its authenticity as well as policing the consistency and integration of the brand.
These could either be internal Ambassadors (team, suppliers, etc.) or external (customers, prospects, etc.)
It’s important to have all your stakeholders engaged with the brand whether they are suppliers, partners, media relations or any other type stakeholder. This can be done by sending them materials explaining your brand or even arranging events bringing them altogether.
Managing the Online/Offline Blend
In short you will need to make sure that your brand is consistently represented across all manners of communication.
It’s about making sure your LinkedIn advert, direct mail campaign, social media page, press release or other communications can be identified as your brand through the language and imagery.
See our next blog “STEP 4: Brand Communications."
