You’ve heard the saying, ‘See yourself as others see you.’ The key to branding is to see yourself as others would see you.
Two words capture the essence of branding: congruence and alignment. Both words mean that all aspects of everything you do regarding your brand must fit together. The visual images, the verbal messages, the strategy, the market and the product must all be conveying the same thing, looking for the same thing, or providing the same thing.
That sounds simple. It’s not. Google a product or service category (“donuts” or “hotels”), click on some links, and in less than a minute you can probably find instances of incongruent, misaligned branding. In your own category, are some of these branding errors yours?
If so, it may be because you’re so familiar with your company, and how it sees itself its products or services, that you find it difficult to take the perspective of an “outsider” who doesn’t know everything you know about them. In addition, you may be so familiar with how your company’s marketing materials that you’ve developed a blind spot in this area. “They look fine to me — just like they’ve always looked.”
We don’t have that insider’s blind spot. We can spot incongruities and explain how each one might be hurting you.
One of the most common — and most blatant — areas of incongruity is the company’s website. Fortunately, this is also one of the easiest and least expensive areas to fix, bringing your site into alignment with the rest of your branding strategy. It also happens to be one of our strongest areas of expertise.
