Brand Communication

Brand Communication, Digital brand book

Why an online brand book is key for your brand communication

Papirfly
3 minutes read

When communicating your brand, do you ever get the feeling you’re talking to a wall? Or wonder if anyone ever reads your messages? Successful branding demands proper brand communication. And it requires an entire company pulling in the same direction. For this to happen, everyone needs to be on the same page, receiving the same information about your brand. But the fact is that 74% of employees feel they are missing out on company and news. So, what do you do?

You invest in an online brand book!

What is a brand book?

Brand book or brand guidelines are two and the same. It’s a document that describes your brand from a-z. The brand identity and its origin, the brand values, and its purpose in life. A brand book also includes branding rules – Every detail on how to apply your brand in different scenarios as well as how to communicate your brand. This all sums up to a brand book.

Your first reaction is perhaps that all companies have a brand book. Surprisingly, this is not the case. A study done among US organisations found that only 30% have well-known and used brand guidelines. The remaining 70% do not have any, or no one knows where to find them and it’s random who follows them. What does this tell us? First and foremost, having brand guidelines in place is not enough to secure your brand. Next, how a brand book is shared and distributed affects how your colleagues engage with your brand and communicate it.  

To get everyone pulling in the same direction, communicating ONE brand, everyone in your organisation needs to be informed and included in your branding efforts. You need to make sure everyone is familiar with your brand and its guidelines, and you need to secure availability and accessibility to avoid ending up in the same situation as the US companies mentioned above.

Also read: Who do you need on your team when building your brand?

An online brand book enables seamless brand communication

Aligning everyone can seem like an impossible task. You know first-hand how hard it is to get everyone to read your messages about brand updates and new assets, and they never seem to remember where to locate the brand book. At the same time, they feel left out of the communication loop. Clearly there is a mismatch somewhere.

Accessibility and user-friendliness are key if you want everyone aligned. Remember that for most of your colleagues, the brand book is perhaps needed once or twice a month and if it’s “hidden” in a marketing folder and the link was sent to them ages ago, how can you expect them to remember where to find it? And perhaps there was an update you emailed them about, but they have downloaded your brand book to their desktop for easy access, and they missed your email update. Then what?

An online brand book removes these worries and makes brand communication effective, easy, and seamless. One link, updated in real-time and everything collected in one single location. Everyone receives the same information at the same time. Communicating news, guideline updates, events, campaigns and more has never been easier.  

Also read: Build your brand with effective brand communication 

An online brand book enables consistent brand communication

Communication is part of any branding effort. How you communicate internally, how you communicate with the market, your customers, and other stakeholders. And it’s not only how you express yourself with words, visuals and choice of channels are also a form of communication.

All this needs to match and align. How your brand is presented and communicated by everyone in the company needs to match the brand strategy and the brand book. By managing all of this online from one single location, you can rest assured that your brand will look and sound the same everywhere.  

An online brand book unifies your brand communication

When everyone and everything is connected to one source of truth, getting your message distributed and your brand shared is easy.

Any update or news you have about your brand runs smoothly online. Publish updates and news, connect necessary brand assets, campaign information, marketing collateral and more and communicate your brand with ease.

Also read: How to communicate your brand

Get started with an online brand book

An online brand book is more than uploading a PDF document to your SharePoint or Google Workspace. This is about establishing an online solution where you can properly present and connect your brand securing automated workflows. This is where you connect your rules to the actual brand assets, and even self-serviced brand templates. The right brand book activates your brand online.  

Brand Communication, Brand management

Mastering brand communication with a brand management platform

Papirfly
4 minutes read

Without a clear brand identity, it’s hard to establish your place on the market – perhaps even impossible. At the end of the day, your brand is your ID. It makes you original and separates you from your competitors, driving brand recognition and helping you craft unique customer experiences.

But originality requires more than plastering your logo over every piece of content and last-minute messaging. Behind every logo, there should be a well thought out and defined identity, brand strategy and a story.

Creating and defining your brand identity and identifying core strategic measurements is a major assignment and includes a range of different tasks. In this blog, we’ll take you through why effective brand communication will improve your brand marketing, and look at why a powerful brand management platform should underpin your efforts.

What is brand communication?

In everyday life, communication is more than words and text. Communication encompasses how you act, dress, move, face expressions and what you do. Great communication helps build a great reputation. The same applies to branding.

For your company, a well-built brand with a good reputation is an essential intangible asset. How your customers feel about your brand, how they talk about it, and the position it occupies in their day-to-day lives, matters.

Underpinning this are the ways you communicate your brand. The look and consistency of your brand assets, your tone-of-voice, your customer engagement, social responsibilities, your values, your pricing, store location and more, all fall under brand communication. Said differently, every part of your branding processes is about communication. It’s the different approaches and methods you choose to use your brand and build brand awareness.

Establish effective brand communication

You have established your brand identity and your branding strategy goals are defined. Now you’re ready to tell your audience that you are here. It’s time to get to work.

The first thing you need to do is to acknowledge that nothing should be set in stone. Your audience and the market are destined to change, and you and your team members have to be prepared to adapt. Next, you need a communication strategy to keep you focused and aligned with the brand strategy.

Define your communication channels


You know who, but what channels and sources do they engage with and trust for their decision-making? Don’t limit this in the beginning. Most likely, marketing teams need to test and experience how your audience reacts to your brand before you narrow down the most effective communication channels.

Remember, just because a channel exists does not mean that you need to use it. It’s not about the channel, it’s about your audience. There’s little point in focusing too much effort on a social media platform like TikTok if your target audience isn’t using it – or indeed any effort at all.

Identify what your audience is looking for and is triggered by


Unfortunately, what you want to be acknowledged for and what your audience looks for don’t always match. You need to know these details when creating marketing strategies. Otherwise you’ll be spending a lot of time and resources shooting blanks – it’s ineffective and pointless.

Be flexible and adaptable with your message

“One voice – one brand” is a key attitude when building a brand, but don’t mistake this for one message. You need to acknowledge that your audience is varied and consists of different personas.

The better you meet your personas needs, the more relevant you’ll be with your message and the more precisely you’ll hit home with the target audience(s). It’s all about adapting to what the audience wants, but remember to be honest, reliable, and relevant. If your audience catches you lying or feels you’re wasting their time, you’ll lose them.In other words, don’t use a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Effective brand communication occurs when you use your resources wisely and meet your target audience with what they want to hear. The smarter you are about it, the less money it will cost you and the more successful you’ll be at building your brand.

Unleash your brand with a brand management platform

With the above in place, it’s time to initiate your strategy and build your brand. Through your website, chosen social media channels, a blog, advertising or any other channel or platform you see fit, you’ll present your brand. 

Bear in mind that a hectic work life puts strains on your ability to deliver on demand, and if you have limited resources as well, you may get careless with your brand assets. We’re only human after all, and inconsistency is a fact of life. 

Unfortunately, inconsistency quickly undermines your brand equity – the perception customers have of your brand, and the trust they place in it. Any ground lost here is very difficult to recover.

A brand management solution is a life saver. Great brand management tools will provide all you need to create memorable brand experiences, while also establishing clear brand guidelines to ensure 100% consistency in everything you do. It’s no use going to all that effort to create great brand communication, only to drop the ball on the touchline due to human error. With brand management software, you can be sure that your work will be embedded in a powerful platform that everyone in your organisation can trust and rely on.

 

Table of contents:

  1. What is brand communication?
  2. Establish effective brand communication
  3. Unleash your brand with a brand management platform
Brand Communication, Brand identity, Brand strategy

How to communicate your brand

Papirfly
3 minutes read

Branding is all about communicating your brand – building a strong brand presence that creates desire and attracts customers. Successful branding = Business growth. Consistency and brand experience are two of four key qualities consumers value and that keeps them coming back for more. How effective is your brand communication? Are you attracting the right customers, and are they loyal?

Factors that impact your brand communication are your colleagues, available resources and manpower, the number of channels and platforms that require your brand presence, your competitors, and your audience to mention a few. As always, there are some dos and don’ts that affect your success rate.

Here’s a short list on how to successfully communicate your brand

1. Establish brand identity guidelines

A key goal for any brand should be to achieve consistency. Consumers expect your brand to be consistent and it is connected to the growth potentials of your company. This is not an impossible task, but it does require effort and dedication in addition to a real plan.

For brand consistency to happen, you need brand rules. Proper brand identity guidelines that concern everyone who is communicating your brand. These brand guidelines need to set the standard for all employees and external stakeholders on how to use and apply your brand across any and all channels.

Also read: Create branding guidelines with a brand management platform

2. Establish internal brand guidelines and align your branding processes

Employees are the central participants in your brand communication. It’s impossible to communicate a brand if you don’t have your employees on your side. Think of it as a football team playing a game. If the team isn’t aware of the purpose and goal of the game, and no one knows what position they play or how to do it, you will have a team scattered all over the football field, running in different directions. It’s safe to say that team won’t win the game.

The same applies to branding. Everyone in the company needs to know why branding is important and what role they play on the team. Therefore, make sure your brand guidelines include internal brand strategies and align your external and internal branding processes.

Also read: This is internal employee branding and how you get started

3. Establish proper brand asset management

Having brand identity guidelines in place is unfortunately not enough to achieve brand consistency. In fact, 95% of organizations have branding guidelines, but only 1/4th have formal guidelines that are consistently enforced. One step in the right direction is to establish brand asset management.

Brand asset management is the system that connects the dots between your brand guidelines and your brand assets. This is the system that enables seamless and intuitive user workflows, making it effective and easy to apply your brand regardless of who’s in need, or which channel or platform is utilized. By having this in place, growing and developing your brand becomes easier, and everyone who needs to use your brand can do so effortlessly and quickly from one single location.

Also read: What is brand asset management?

4. Create a brand communication strategy

To win the football game, or in this case, win against the competitors by achieving brand consistency and building a strong brand identity, your employees need to be included and informed about the strategy.

It’s not enough for them to know that they are a part of the plan and their role. They also need to know what is required from them. This part is essential in brand communication. Although a customer service representative and a receptionist represent the same company, their role and how they need to interact with the audience is different. To succeed, this needs to be accounted for in your brand communication strategy. By adapting the brand communication strategy to each role individually, you’ll have a better chance of realization.

5. Develop and grow your brand continuously and meet market expectations

There’s no resting when it comes to branding. How you communicate your brand today, might not fit or be sufficient tomorrow.

The market changes and so do consumers. On one hand we have a fast-growing Martech space that puts pressure on marketing teams and our ability to follow our own brand communication strategy. It’s not easy to deliver on demand when deadlines are behind us, and resources are short. On the other hand, we have consumers. How they search for information, what they value and how they engage with your brand varies between them. When communicating your brand, you need to adapt at the same speed and meet these expectations.

Communicate your brand with digital solutions

Just as you digitize your private life to simplify and increase your own efficiency, you need to do the same for your work life and your brand. By digitizing your branding processes, following the above steps will be easy. Everything about your brand can easily be maintained, developed, and communicated from one single solution.

No second guessing. Everyone will know everything they need to know to communicate your brand with ease.