Many businesses get branding and marketing completely wrong – even the big companies, like Coca Cola at times! But what exactly do they do that makes what they’re doing such a big mistake? This post will fill you in, so you can be sure never to make the same mistakes!
Not Sending Out a Clear Message
What is your brand’s objective and message? What differentiates you from your competitors? What’s your brand story? All good businesses need a clear message that they’d like to send out to the public. Some businesses fail because their message is blurry – make yours clear.
Not Knowing Their Target Audience
Who is your ideal customer? You need to know in order to brand your business accordingly and target them in ads, on social media, in physical stores, and other aspects of marketing. Where will you target audience be – in a shopping centre, or online?
Not Having a Consistent Brand Personality
All businesses need a brand personality that will shine through on social media, blogs, in content, posters, and even shop display stands. Your brand personality needs to be consistent, or you’ll send out that blurry message again and people will be confused as to what you’re really about. You shouldn’t be absolutely hilarious on your website, if you’re going to be corporate and professional on your Facebook page, and vice versa. Try to develop a brand personality that suits your product/story and stick to it.
Not Using Social Media (Or Using it Incorrectly)
Social media is one of the best ways to brand and market your company, as millions of people use it daily. If you don’t use social media and have a strong web presence, then you could be missing out on a whole lot of traffic. However, you can’t expect sales straight away as this takes time. Also, you shouldn’t focus on making the hard sell – people are on social media to be social. They aren’t in ‘buyer mode’ yet. Focus on posting quality content and engaging with your audience instead.
Failing to Use a Notable Translation Service
This is where a lot of the big brands have gone wrong. If you don’t use a notable translation service for your ad campaigns, then you could end up sending out the wrong message completely. For example:
- When KFC decided to advertise in china, they had their slogan ‘finger lickin’ good’ translated. The only problem was, it translated to ‘eat your fingers off’.
- Coors slogan, ‘turn it loose’ was translated into Spanish, where it read ‘suffer from Diarrhea’.
- Coca Cola was translated in China as ‘bite the wax tadpole’. They managed to change it eventually to ‘happiness in your mouth’.
- In 1971 Ford noticed that their Pinto model wasn’t doing very well in Brazil. When they did some research, they realised that ‘Pinto’ is Brazilian slang for ‘tiny male genitals’.
- Schweppes once had a campaign in Italy that called it’s drinks ‘Schweppes toilet water’
Avoid these mistakes at all costs, and you might just end up with a fantastic branding/marketing campaign. What do you think of the mistakes that the likes of KFC and Coors made? Let us know in the comments!
