What is Brand Visibility and how can you improve it?

Building a strong brand means, a combination of:

• Reputation 
• Visibility 
• Differentiation from others​

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Visibility is more than just being seen by your audience. It is about making a connection, delivering a message and creating a unique experience with visual design.

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Before you start reading it is important to mention that if you need insight about your brand, competitors, and the marketplace to make the right decisions regarding visibility. 
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For that reason we recommend you reading about clarity and positioning   
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What is brand visibility?

Brand visibility is the impression that any client or customer feels when they see your brand. At that moment, individuals decide if this brand is trustworthy and how good it is compared to others. 

Some may think that your brand image is controlled solely by marketing campaigns and promotions. However, most of the time this is not effective enough, resulting in a waste of brand resources. 

I am sure that in the past you were looking for a product or service and you were unfamiliar with all the brands. What did you choose? Most people tend to prefer the most well designed and consistent brand, since it seems more trustworthy than the others. The same applies for professional services firms.
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Professional services are different from consumer brands. Brands that sell to customers, focus their branding to their product. However, service firms have to focus on the expertise. You need your brand to look professional, trustworthy and capable to handle clients.

As you can see, brand design is more important than anything else in terms of effective visibility. Therefore, before you spend resources in promotional marketing campaigns you need to have a strong brand design, guidelines and identity.

What are the benefits of brand visibility?

The benefits of brand visibility are:

• Attraction and retention of clients
• Memorability and recognisability
• Clear differentiation and uniqueness
• Seem and feel more trustworthy 
• Improve the perceived value of the brand
• Sell an experience not only a product or service
• Improve your marketing by enabling self growing word of mouth

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How to achieve brand visibility?

Being seen is the first step of achieving brand visibility. Appearing in front of your ideal prospects doesn't mean that they will buy what you are selling. 

Clients are people, and people are driven by emotions. Therefore you will attract more clients if your audience notices your presence and also enjoys the fact that you are there. This is where your brand comes into the picture.

In order to be noticed by your clients you need two things:

1. Engaging brand experience
2. Consistency​

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Creating an engaging brand experience with consistency throughout the years, means creating a story beyond your product and services. 

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You need to make them have conversations related to things that matter to them. You need to create experiences that are surprising, aspirational, and useful, not boring or predictable. These experiences must also be filled with emotion which is the biggest acquisition driver.

You have to remember that people buy for people. Therefore, your story has to reflect on them, not just your service. Creating an engaging brand experience requires a strong brand identity and guidelines.

What is brand identity?

Brand identity is the reason why your product and service gets noticed and not just seen. It enables your brand to be recognisable, memorable and unique. The identity of a brand will create strong experiences related to your brand which will lead to client attraction and retention.
 
Brand identity is everything that revolves around visual language.

Brand identity consists of elements like:

• Logo and logo alternatives
• Colour palette 
• Typefaces 
• Typography style
• Image style
• Graphic elements

All of which comes together to form a Brand Identity Guidelines document.
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​What are the brand guidelines?

Brand guidelines is a document with rules which demonstrate how a company brand must be perceived.

These guidelines can be used by anyone who interacts with the brand, internally and externally. It is important that these rules are followed since they enable consistency and will ensure that the brand is perceived as it was designed to. 

Brand guidelines are used to create all the marketing material, communications and documents of the brand. In addition, they ensure that the logo and company are portrayed and perceived professionally and accurately, at all times.

Brand guideline examples

1. The primary colour palette are the colours which the brand is known for. When you think about colours that are associated with a brand, you may imagine Coca-Cola red, Cadbury’s purple and Facebook blue.
2. ​The tagline logos are versions of a logo which includes a tagline. One of the most recognisable taglines is ‘Just Do it’ from Nike.
3. Abbreviations or acronyms are shortened versions of your name. Think about Coca-Cola or Pepsi-Cola, we commonly refer to them as Coke or Pepsi.

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Why are brand guidelines important? ​

Brand guidelines are the key to sending a clear brand message to your ideal clients. If guidelines did not exist or did not get followed then the brands value and reputation would be damaged.

Brand guidelines are important because:

• Attracts clients with consistency 
• Perform day to day procedures efficiently by setting standards and guides 
• Attract and retain clients by enabling recognisability
• Connect effectively with your audience
• Improves perceived value

1.    Consistency

Having set rules and restrictions, it becomes possible to communicate a consistent brand identity. Consistency will make your offerings easier to consume and it will enable you to attract clients and convert leads into sales.

Think about every time someone visits your website, watches your video, read your article or sees your business card. They will automatically have a perception about your company outside of the content they actually consume. If your brand is consistent, your sales will be consistent along with your client attraction and loyalty.


2.    Setting Standards 

Your brand guidelines are composed of rules on how to use your brand’s visual identity. Your team knows your brand and business really well, however the new employees and clients do not. Make the process of communication easier and quicker for your teams by outlining your brand strategy.
 

3.    Recognisability

Your audience are humans and act accordingly. We always tend to avoid unfamiliar situations and prefer the safer and more familiar approach. 
Therefore, they will always prefer something that caught their attention in the past.
Being recognisable within your marketplace allows you to beat your competitors, attract clients and retain them. 
Creating a recognisable brand takes time but not effort as long as a brand follows the brand guidelines.


4.    Effective communication

Brand guidelines enable you to communicate visually with your audience. Moreover they highlight the best path to aim your brand and business interests with your clients. This will attract client interest and eventually lead them to a conversion.

5.    Higher perceived value and trust

Brand guidelines make it easier for your brand to appear more professional and reliable. Making people trust your brand is the most effective way to acquire new clients since the behavior is affected by emotions. 
In addition these set of rules will enable you to produce a higher quality and integrity of your brand image which will reinforce the feeling of trust.

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Conclusion

As we saw before, professional service firms have the need for a professional design as much as consumer brands. The only difference is the focus and for service firms this means having a memorable brand design focused on expertise.

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Having brand visibility is much more than just being noticed. It means creating connections with your audience and earning their trust. ​

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To achieve it, you need a strong and unique brand identity which creates memorable experiences and brand guidelines which will enable you to use your brand design and attract your ideal clients.

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