As a company that works with businesses and institutions of all shapes and sizes, Pacesetter sees a great deal of variation in brands. From local non-profits to global manufacturing corporations, our clients’ brand strategies and resources run the gamut. We always aim to help our clients utilize the assets they’ve established and expand on them wherever necessary. We specialize in applications that utilize branding not only visually, but strategically. Our strategies elevate brands to produce specific results by incorporating brand elements that contribute to the feeling of value and trust a customer or potential donor places in an institution. This makes consistent and effective branding especially important for the work we do.
Branding for Nonprofits
In the non-profit and education sectors especially, it’s important to instill confidence that donor dollars will be well spent, lowering the threshold of giving and encouraging gifts. Establishing a professional and consistent brand helps donors feel comfortable. This can be achieved with a consistent and professional look, yes, but also through language and tone. Much like an individual, brands should have a personality that donors identify with and recognize easily. Individual campaigns and initiatives can be unique, but the heart of the brand should always remain.
Branding for the Private Section
In the private sector, we often build internal tools for companies that need to ease the complexity of a particular process or organize data for their team. This may not be an application that is typically thought of as needing great branding, but it can be especially helpful in these instances. A well-executed brand for these applications can help give a sales team clear direction, feel more confident in the voice of the company, and better prepared to disseminate that voice into the world. This leads to a more skilled and productive team and ultimately, higher sales.
How to Establish a Better Brand
In the most basic sense, a brand is a representation of your company or institution. The best way to establish an effective brand is to establish clear visuals and voice. Setting up brand guidelines that map out the visual parameters of your brand can help your team and any outside vendor that works with your company remain consistent. These guidelines typically outline colors, typography, and images, but also how they are used and under what circumstances. Having these items clearly established helps whether you are a small non-profit or a very large corporation. It gives employees direction and instantly identifies your company to end consumers. Employees that understand who they work for and what is expected of them perform better. Consumers that understand the companies they interact with don’t have to spend time gathering information and can move down the sales funnel more easily and without hesitation.
To establish a brand voice, your team should evaluate what about your current messaging aligns with the image you want to portray to customers and employees. Try to identify future goals and determine if the voice you’re using promotes those goals. Then, outline a mission statement or possibly edit your existing one. From there, you can start to develop supplemental pieces that utilize your voice. One of the most important aspects to consider is tone. Consider the product or service your selling. Price point, demographic, and perception are all aspects that will affect the tone of your brand.
Better Brand, Better Results
The combination of strong, consistent visuals and an appropriate voice can be used over and over to produce results in more ways than one. Not only externally, but internal team efficiency increases as employees begin to understand the values of the company they work for. Processes become easier to flush out and sales efforts easier to communicate. When a brand has been thoroughly flushed out, the clarity to the consumer becomes assumed and they can immediately begin focusing on the product or service you want them to focus on, improving results of marketing efforts and achieving goals.
