Branding, by definition, is a marketing practice in which a company creates a name, symbol, or design that is easily identifiable as belonging to a company - this helps to identify a product and distinguish it from other products and services.
Your brand will identify you as the solution to a consumer's healthcare problem and is what will set your business apart from your competition, therefore, making it a crucial part of building your business.
But, the benefits of branding do not stop there... Branding can change how people perceive your brand, drive new business, and increase brand awareness. Brandingmag acknowledges a few more reasons as to why branding is so important:
🌟Branding gets recognition
🌟It increases business value
🌟Generates new customers
🌟Improves employee pride and satisfaction
🌟Creates trust
🌟Supports advertising
Now we are all fully aware of the importance of branding and how it can help your business, it is time to divulge into those very important brand-building strategies.
1. Define your brand
I couldn't throw you all in the deep end, so to begin, we have the most obvious yet important step which is: to define your brand and determine what it truly stands for/ what you want it to become.
When defining your business brand, you should create a list of the core strengths that your brand possesses, especially those which allow you to stand out and make you different from your competitors.
As well as this, you will need to establish what your brand stands for and what you find important as a business, or in other words, your brand values.
CoxBLUE explains that your values should, in one way or another, show that you are contributing to the environmental, social, and economic well-being of consumers, so that could be something you could begin to investigate.
2. Develop a winning name, logo and tagline
If you are new to the business, undergoing re-branding, or are burdened with a name that no longer suits your brand ethos, a change in name might be your next step to building a successful brand.
Even if you decide that changing your firm's name isn't the best idea, you may find that a new logo and tagline might better support your brand positioning. If you are struggling to decide what kind of logo will suit your business, a previous blog post How To Choose the Perfect Logo For Your Brand, could help you decide.
Hinge Marketing states that "Your name, logo, and tagline are not your brand. They are a part of your brand identity, the ways to communicate or symbolize your brand. You must live it to make it real." How will you adjust your day-to-day work so that it is coherent with your brand positioning?
3. Create unique brand experiences for your patients
As a health professional, the customer experience is a highly significant part of your business; it should align with your brand promises and values, while remaining consistent so that all of your patients are satisfied with the service and are motivated to return.
If you establish strategic initiatives like developing your messaging and communication, you will begin to build a great brand by raising awareness and making the messaging behind your brand positioning even stronger and so impactful that even Arnold may consider revisiting your health practice 😜
4. Expose your brand
What would be the point of working so hard to define, establish, and create an amazing brand and customer experience if you don't show it off so that potential customers can see and choose you for their healthcare needs?
Although it would be incredibly silly not to gain brand exposure, I will admit that this is one of the most difficult steps of building your brand, and will sometimes take a lot of time and consistency to get it right so that the exposure begins to convert to sales.
You can expose your brand by using promotional channels, blogs, forums, and social media like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to create a voice for your brand.
5. Review your brand
Plan, action, and review... that's how most processes work, right? And so building a successful healthcare brand should be no different.
In the business environment, every circumstance, opportunity, and challenge will alter your business ever so slightly. This could allow your brand to grow in strength or even recede with time. These changes give you, as a health professional, the power to take charge and organise your brand-building activities.
CoxBLUE recommends that, to ensure brand growth, you should review your activities and evaluate your successes through metrics such as levels of brand awareness and levels of engagement.
Regularly reviewing your brand and its positioning will help you to seize and exploit any new opportunities; it is always beneficial to look back at how things are going and steer your brand back in the right direction if it loses track of your original vision and brand strategy.
This may become increasingly important as you move to the future as you can ensure that your brand remains relevant.
That sums up my 5 brand-building strategies for health professionals. I hope these steps will help you develop, build, and expose your business so that you can become more visible, more credible, and more influential.
I hope you enjoyed this post. Let's have a chat in the comments about what you think of these steps. Can you think of any that I haven't listed?
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About the author
Jasmine is a Public Relations assistant at the High Profile Club. She is currently completing a BA degree in Marketing with Public Relations at London South Bank University and has a keen interest in PR and the fashion and communications industry.
After growing up in Hampshire, Jasmine decided to move to London in order to pursue her career aspirations and work among some of the most established thought-leaders in the world of public relations and communications.
Find Jasmine on LinkedIn here.
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