12 Steps to Creating Your Brand To Ensure Your Financial Success: Part 1

Reading time: 7 minutes.

Concentrating your company resources to create your Brand is a planned process and journey that positions your company and creates long-term success. Few companies plan this process, but those that do, increase their success rate.

While a patent loses its value as each day approaches the expiration date, when you work on your Brand, it increases in value each day, ensuring your future success. Whether your clients are B2B businesses and you execute an Account Based Marketing strategy, or B2C homeowners are your selected consumer audience (Tribe), concentrating your efforts to improving your Brand will have the highest ROI project of any marketing tactics that you execute.

Research studies by industry-leading research companies in 2018 confirm the importance of your Brand:

Moz and Wordstream2018 analysis: well-branded companies have higher organic Q scores, and a better SERP (search engine results page) rank. Their summary: the higher your brand rating, the higher your page rank, and the higher your page rank, the more viewers see your availability.
Search Engine Journal May 2018: Brand name recognition is more important than content strength and can propel a #10 SERP listing to click perform as well as a #1 listing company. (your SEO efforts can be overcome by a competitor’s better Brand which reduces your contacts for contracts).
Nielsen May 2018 study: consumers are 200% more likely to click on the organic search result and purchase, due to a ‘recognized, trusted Brand’.

If you do not have a high page rank, or are shown on the ‘local area map’ when a potential client ‘Googles’ the search term: ‘’architects in my city or village’, you may have a poor Google Brand rating, as Google considers your Brand to be a very important relevance criteria when ranking you. The purpose of this two-part series is to help you to understand that concentrating on your Brand can be one of the most important marketing programs that you can create.

The 12 steps to creating your Brand will be summarized in two-parts:

Part one covers:

Brandcept
Brand Strategy
Brand Voice
Brand Story
Brand Promise
Brand Perception

Part two covers:

Brand Consistency
Brand Value
Brand Authenticity
Brand Selection
Brand Loyalty
Brand Advocacy

1. Brandcept

There is a proven track record on improving your success when you focus on a Brandcept, not a concept:

CONCEPT: An idea from YOUR point of view that YOU think is a great product or service.

BRANDCEPT: An idea from a specific consumer audience (Tribe’s) point of view, that you learned from researching that Tribe’s opinion. When it is THEIR idea, it is easier for them to accept their own idea and act on it with a purchase, than to listen to, and accept your idea.

A SUCCESSFUL BRANDCEPT: convinces your Tribe that you have learned THEIR personal problem and can solve it in a way that no one else understands, but you do. When you make it clear that you are interested in THEIR needs, and tell them you understand their WHY, they will be interested in what you say. A successful Brandcept is developed by reversing standard thinking: “who are the people, with a problem that we can solve, if we offer service X? (it is from their point of view, their need).

2 Brand Strategy

BRAND STRATEGY: what you intend to do, to create your service (not just serving them technically, but emotionally satisfying , in order to educate and make your Tribe believe you are different, and you solve their unmet needs (or better than another architect).

Your Brand Strategy has TWO targets:

external ( consumer Tribes in the market place )
internal ( to your workforce ) tell them what you intend to accomplish and WHY.

Your Brand Strategy should be created to become your Value Proposition, or is the reason a potential client becomes a client. It is the value that separates you from another architect. That, is what your strategy needs to center on.

3. Brand Voice

How you tell people who you are, and what you stand for, in a way they can relate, and resonate. Use the words that are in their vocabulary, for them to feel that you are talking specifically to them. When you do, they will respond.

Your customers ultimately will hire you due to your capabilities, but you have to be ‘chosen’ first to be hired. And the most effective way to be chosen is to research them to understand their needs, and your Voice needs to let them know you understand their needs or problem. You then become someone who understands them, and are chosen.

4. Brand Story

A distinctive benefit explanation WHY your Brand will satisfy that Tribe’s specific unmet need… in their vocabulary, in an emotion that resonates with them.

Whereas your Voice is HOW (tone, approach, use of facts) you present your company, your Story is explaining WHY you can meet their needs because you understand them (you are on the same page! Your Story needs to be personal, it needs to show that your potential client is not working with a Company, they are working with a person who ‘understands them’.

People do not buy features, nor even benefits. They purchase solutions. THAT is your Story. When your Story is that you are their solution, their need, you are hired.

5. Brand Promise

A distinctive benefit explanation WHY your Brand will satisfy that Tribe’s specific unmet need every time they experience your service…in their vocabulary, in an emotion that resonates with them. Your Brand needs to be a promise. A good Brand is a promise kept.

Brand Promise

Your Brand future, and ultimately your company’s future, depends upon delivering what you say you will. Whether you use the ‘under promise/over deliver’ approach, the probability of enjoying a recurring customer for future projects depends upon delivering THIS project. Your client will remember that when it’s time to choose another.

Not delivering on this project may not only miss out on another project with this client, the problem is they may talk to others about you not delivering, and that Story may eliminate other potential projects.

6. Brand Perception

The marketplace’s recall of your Brand Promise experience, that caused them to remember and perceive your company/product experience when someone speaks your Brand name.

“Perception is reality, and the consequences it delivers”. This is why your Brand Voice and Story can be the reason you are well perceived, and the one chosen. An internet or social media platform viewer will perceive you and how you ‘speak’ to them. Do you answer the questions they have in a Voice that resonates with them? When you do, they perceive you well, and will be the reason they recommend you to a friend.

Summary

This article is Part 1 of a two-part topic. Part 2 illustrates the benefits to you for concentrating on creating your Brand.

Creating your Brand is a skill set just like any technical, creative skill set that you have. However, not many companies are able to effectively complete only with their company’s skills.

Architect Marketing Solutions can be your partner to help you identify your Voice and Story, communicate with your Tribes to improve your Brand. If you are interested in creating a Brand that separates you in a crowded architect marketplace, and motivating traffic to become your customer give us a call at 331-303-0959, or contact us at info@architectmarketingsolution.com.