What Are Brand Guidelines?
For an effective branding exercise, you should consider having a comprehensive branding guide that clearly highlights your brand characteristics. This should have the following features:
Brand story
Every company has its own unique story that should be effectively communicated to the public. In this section, you should explain the market you operate in and the key role you play in the industry. Such insights should include the customer pain points you solve, the unique features of your products, product type, and your target audience.
Vision, mission and positioning statement
Your brand document should also tell the public about the bigger picture. You should articulate your short-term and long-term goals and how these objectives will positively impact the business environment and the world at large. Also, include a mission statement that presents what you stand for, as well as a positioning statement that includes your target goals.
Target market and competitive positioning
Your brand guide should also highlight the target audience. You should define the businesses you intend to sell your products to and their industries, as well as your stakeholders and partners. This section should also educate others about your marketing decisions and strategy (how you intend to reach your target audience, customer attraction, and retention, etc).
You may need to partner with a brand expert who can help you refine your brand document. Brand experts will help you develop the right logo and color tunes that align with your brand message. Also, you need to have a strong marketing budget and campaign to push out the brand when you are done working on it.
More importantly, the perception of the public, especially your ideal customer, defines your brand as a SaaS company. Therefore, you should not only work on developing a good brand guide, but you should also work on increasing both retention and customer lifetime value.
Here are some tips on how to strengthen your brand identity:
Have a good brand design
The first thing people notice about your company is the brand design. Many new buyers and active users are attracted to companies with good brand designs. An effective marketing approach is to have a nice brand design that is crafted by an experienced and creative brand designer who can constantly help in improving your brand identity to match current developments.
Brand content and marketing strategies
Beyond having a compelling brand design, your top-of-the-funnel content such as blog posts, case studies, fact sheets, and videos. Using the right words will significantly influence how your audience feels about your company, the reason why B2B businesses adopt the use of content writing to push out a brand image. You should hire a full-time content writer who can help you develop captivating content to explain your product vision and push out your products.
Give a bigger impression of your brand
Competing as a small SaaS company can be quite challenging due to the pronounced presence of larger companies. However, as a startup, you can recreate your audience’s perception of your brand identity. One example of an important marketing tool is the use of billboards. Many of the giant SaaS companies use billboards for their marketing campaigns. As such, frequent usage of the billboards can make the public perceive you as a large and influential company.
Social proof
One of the growth strategies of leading B2B SaaS companies is that they are trusted vendors. When your potential customers trust your business, attracting and retaining them become easier. To build a trusted brand, you should ensure that business operations, products, and service delivery align with your brand promise. Also, share the feedback of your customers in your content marketing efforts like publishing social media and blog posts and encouraging key influencers to promote your products using captivating content.