If you are hoping to get your business’ name out there a little more effectively in the year 2020, then there are going to be some unique challenges and difficulties you are faced with – as well as some unique opportunities that you can hopefully make some good use of along the way. Building a brand is always going to be a challenge, but at the moment businesses are having a particularly tough time. It has never been more important to get back to basics and work out exactly what you need to do in order to have a stronger brand with greater awareness and visibility across markets. In this article, we’ll look at how you can hope to achieve this in the current situation this year.
Resurfacing As A Priority
One thing to point out about brand-building is that it is likely to resurface this year as a particularly important concern for businesses all over the globe. At least one sensible marketing response to the pandemic outbreak and subsequent lockdown is to realise just how necessary it is to make a brand strong and clear, and to keep it almost as a separate entity from a real-life, walk-in business. You want it to have a lot of flexibility, and to be able to move it around as you wish in order to change with the times, and that is where a lot of the focus lies on brand-building in 2020.
Besides, if your business has been forced to become an entirely digital one, then you are definitely going to need to make sure that you have a strong brand to pull it through. Without that, you are not going to survive the change, and you will find that your business belongs to one that we had to turn our backs to in the year 2020. To avoid that, you will need a prioritized approach to brand building which is going to recognise the value of the brand as one of the most important things in the entirety of a business.
Emerging Channels During The Pandemic
Luckily, there are a number of ways in which this current situation can be seen as a genuine opportunity for businesses to get back to grips with their brand-building. In particular, you can think about utilising some of the emerging channels which have started to appear during this pandemic. Some of these are not entirely new, but are certainly not places that businesses had thought about making strong use of before. Two that seem particularly important right now are gaming and streaming. These are likely to be difficult to get to grips with, but mastering them could open up considerable pathways for your business and your brand.
There is plenty of opportunity for advertising in these channels, and if you can work your brand around so that it fits in with these markets and their demographics well, then you could find that this is all you need to do to keep your business surviving during the pandemic. There are many more channels like this to consider too, but these are two that look to be particularly profitable in the near future.
Focus On The Long-Term
One of the major lessons of the coronavirus for businesses everywhere is that you need to always be focused on the long-term if you want to survive. If you are only ever thinking about short-term results, then when something like this pandemic crops up – as it could do at any point in our lives – your business is going to be somewhat blindsided. In building a brand you need to ensure that you are thinking as long-term as possible. And now that we know just how possible it is to suddenly have the world plunged into chaos, you need to really prepare for every possible eventuality you might come across in the future. Increasingly, a good brand will be one that is tailored to a long-term vision, and able to morph as the times change rapidly. Especially given that we can expect more of the same in the future, and more and more rapid changes to occur.
Lead With Brand Authenticity
There are certain things which appear to be even more important now than they have been in the past, and one of them is the ability to lead with brand authenticity. This is important for a number of reasons, but most importantly it’s a response to having to shift entirely online. To put it frankly, most of the potential customers you are targeting online are more well-versed in the online world than many of the dinosaurs of the business world, and they are more sensitive to false branding than you might assume. You have to be more careful than ever to be as genuine and authentic with your brand as you try to become more and more an online business, otherwise people are simply going to reject you.
That authenticity can’t be faked: and that is why the future of branding looks likely to be about telling the truth more than blowing your own horn in a false manner. If you can be truthful and yet boast your benefits, you will find that you are going to have the respect of today’s online youth culture, and that is a powerful position to hold for anyone. A lot of this is very basic work you need to do to back up the promises you make as a brand: if you claim to be eco-friendly, actually do the work and become eco-friendly. This one is especially important given just how central political and ethical issues are becoming in how people see brands. Speaking of which…
The Branding Of Ethics
Most young people today are very keen to virtue-signal their ethical beliefs, and to cast out of the online cultural world (or ‘cancel’) anyone or anything that doesn’t fit in with it. This is certainly something that has both positive and negative consequences, of which much has already been written. But if you want to ensure that your brand is going to fall in line with these people who are, after all, your likely future consumers, then you need to make sure that you are thinking and acting in as ethical a way as possible.
It has always been a strong move to promote the ethical decisions that you make as a business. But it is now more important than ever. You should be thinking about prioritising this kind of virtue-signalling branding approach, as it is something that is increasingly going to help you to come across well to the emerging generation. And more than you might think, that is where a lot of the money lies.
Be green, and treat your workers fairly, and you are going to have a much more successful brand in no time, one which people not only recognise but also respect. In 2020, it is no longer enough to be recognisable and bold – you have to be true.
Don’t Forget About The Old Classics
All of this doesn’t mean that you should forget about some of the more traditional means of branding necessarily – there is much of that which is still going to do a lot for your business, and which you should therefore absolutely keep an eye out for as best as you can. But it’s about knowing which of them are no longer useful and which are still powerful, and that can be a hard route to figure out.
In general, the more powerful ones that still work are anything that makes use of merchandising to help spread the word about your brand. That remains powerful even in a digital, lockdown age. Whether that requires you to get on to air freshener manufacturers and have them print your brand, or whether you are going to go back to printing t-shirts with your logo on them, you can be sure that these things still have an impact. Besides, you want to be prepared for the future, and that means getting ready for when lockdown is lifted for good and people start going outside more and more again. It’s already starting to happen, and if you put all of your brand-building energy into the online world, you are going to feel left behind once things start churning out in the real world again.
That means being prepared for the near future as well as the long-term. If you completely abandon the old ways, you might be as stuck as you were at the beginning of this new strange period. It’s all about finding a balance, and ensuring that you can keep on top of the increasingly bizarre situations we often find ourselves in. Now more than ever we can see just how vital it is to ensure that your brand can roll with the punches and change with the times. If you fail on that front, your business may not survive the year, and 2020 could be a tragedy in more ways than one.