Branding is one of the most important parts of marketing. It’s the “face” of your company, your personality, and ultimately how your business expresses itself to the world. It’s also foundational work for any go-to-market strategy to avoid mid-course corrections. Getting branding right isn’t easy, and without a clear direction, it can drag out into a lengthy, not to mention expensive, process. But it doesn’t have to be that way. With the right groundwork, a defined approach and an experienced agency, you can efficiently create a brand that is both thoughtful and delivered on time and on budget. Here’s how:
1. Know who you are
A brand is an expression of your company’s identity, not the identity itself. Your mission, values, purpose—those are the themes that should be reflected in your branding.
When Valer, a healthcare technology company, came to us for a rebrand, its goal was to evolve from a legacy identity created early in the company’s history to a fresh approach that would better reflect the marketplace, its customers and goals for growth. All parties were aligned on a complete visual re-brand along with a company renaming.
2. Know who your customers are
Every business has an ideal customer with whom your brand should resonate. Don’t make the mistake of appealing to the masses. This just dilutes your brand and turns it into a mediocre mess.
The healthcare industry interacts with a range audiences and end users, from doctors and patients to hospital administrators and insurance companies. But in the case of Valer, there was a highly focused effort to reach those that focused on navigating the complex world of prior authorizations, revenue cycle financial management, and patient access.
These targets recognize the current challenges of a highly manual process for managing prior authorization and appreciate, if approached in the right way, the value of the Valer solution.
3. Know what your customers want
Identifying a customer’s need is Business 101. But what do your customers want? These are two different things, and when it comes to branding, appealing to want is the important part. Today’s consumers have no shortage of options when it comes to fulfilling a need, so taking a deeper dive into what they want is how you stand out.
Valer leveraged its existing customer base to conduct market research on the company’s current perception and learn about its customers’ ideal vendor. This helped them benchmark brand perception and chart a path forward.
4. Adapt your vision to appeal to your customers
How companies want to present themselves and what customers want to see don’t always align. But with a solid vision and customer insights, you can spot the areas where the two overlap, and that’s where you find the foundation of your brand.
This is where brand archetypes come in handy.
Adapted from psychologist Carl Jung’s work on personality, brand archetypes are a collection of personas with distinctive traits that can be used to describe brands. Customers don’t relate to brands. They relate to people.
Using the brand archetypes, Valer created a mix of personas that reflected both their vision for the company and what their customers would embrace. This foundational work provided our creative team with a solid footing to creating new messaging and brand identity with clear intent and a runway to scale the brand quickly across all channels for growth marketing and beyond.