The term “brand” gets thrown around a lot, especially today as branding enjoys a resurgence. In recent years, it was often viewed as being the domain of large household companies. When smaller businesses considered it, it was often secondary to digital strategies.
However, as the digital landscape has become more crowded, as changes in SEO, email, and social media have eroded performance, and as AI has filled most channels with lookalike content, companies are again turning to branding. That’s because, when done well, branding is a competitive advantage. It’s what helps make your firm distinct and unique, separating you from a crowd of cookie-cutter companies vying for limited attention from the same audience.
This can be particularly true in financial services, where branding has often been overlooked and undervalued. For those financial services companies willing to invest the time and effort, branding is an opportunity to shine.
First, Here’s What Brand Isn’t
You need to build a brand.
Everyone says it, repeats it, screams it from the mountaintop. And yet the more I hear it, the more I’m left feeling that very few people truly understand what branding is.
Before we go any further, let’s quickly check off what branding isn’t, because it too often gets reduced to one or two elements.
- It’s not a logo
- It’s not a tagline
- It’s not a website
- It’s not social media
- It’s not your tone or voice or personality
- It’s not your colors
- It’s not your brand guide (the mere existence of a document does not mean you have built a brand)
All of those things are elements of a brand, and some, such as the logo and tagline, are so prominent that they can be inextricably linked to and confused for the brand.
But a brand is much more than the sum of the individual parts. Not to get too philosophical, but imagine being asked, “Who are you?” You could answer with your name, personality traits, titles, and family role. You could go on and on, and each answer added to the next could get us closer to understanding who you are, yet it would still fall short. Because there’s something essential about everyone, an essence, that fills the gaps between list items, something ineffable that serves as the glue that helps shape our identity.
Heady, right?
The best branding operates in much the same way. It’s your heart and soul. To be effective, it can’t just be manufactured.
Why Brand Matters in the Age of AI
AI makes it possible for us to do many things quicker than ever before. A one-person team can create all of the content you’d ever need for a website, emails, social media, and campaigns.
The trouble is that, left to its own devices, AI content typically looks, sounds, and feels remarkably similar to everyone else’s AI content. Generative AI relies on probabilities. It predicts what the next output should be based on the most probable answer. You know the saying “zig when everyone else zags”? AI will always zag and, with lightning speed, head straight for the middle of the pack.
Zigging is a very human trait that defies expectation and prediction. It’s often born from individual human experiences, oddball choices, accidents, and even mistakes. (I always think of Stevie Nicks writing “Edge of Seventeen” after mishearing Tom Petty’s wife say they met at “the age of seventeen” in a thick Southern accent.)
Branding favors unexpected choices and outside-the-box thinking over predictability. AI’s default is to stay inside the box that has already proven successful. As the world adopts AI, most companies will zag. Branding allows you to zig and stand out in the process.
Where To Begin
There are many playbooks, frameworks, and processes for brand building. I use one that’s been modified to what I believe produces the best results. But just following the framework doesn’t produce a worthwhile brand. It’s valuable as a means of collecting information and details in a structured way that builds upon itself and reveals which directions to explore.
Rather than share a framework, let me instead share three foundational exercises that you can start today, no branding experience necessary. They often work well as team workshops that encourage open discussion and exploration.
1. Know yourself: Before you can build a brand that connects with customers, you need to know who you are as a business. At your core, who are you? What do you care about? What makes you you? What things make you different or special, and why should anyone care about them? How do you want the world to see you? This should involve a high level of self-awareness and authenticity. Don’t try to be someone you’re not. The most successful brands tend to have a degree of honesty and authenticity that makes them relatable.
Common questions that can be used to explore your identity include:
- What do you sound like? Are you bold and daring? Helpful and human? Premium or accessible or relatable? Polished or personal? These decisions tend to get to the heart of who you are and your brand personality.
- What do you look like? This can include colors, types of photography (stock vs original), and even preferences about things like shapes (angles vs curves; boxes vs circles vs hexagons). What types of logos do you like?
- What brands do you admire and why? The point isn’t to copy them, but to get a sense of what you gravitate toward. It’s like admiring good qualities in others with the intention of developing them in yourself.
2. Know your audience: Many companies, especially in financial services, have never taken the time to create buyer personas or an ICP (ideal customer profile). Demographic data is useful. Psychographic information is everything. Step into your buyer’s shoes and try to truly understand their fears, dreams, aspirations, and goals, and the unique ways that you address those.
3. Know your competition: Look at your competitors. Review their websites and their social media feeds. What are they saying? What’s their message? What’s the overarching story they’re trying to tell? What colors and design elements are they using? Note what they’re doing that’s working well and what’s falling flat. The idea isn’t to steal from them. It’s the opposite. You want to carve out some blue sky for yourself, a position that you alone can own. That can’t happen if you’re saying the same thing as your competitors and look exactly like them.
Branding Is an Opportunity in Financial Services
To be clear, branding has always been valuable. There are times when it’s been de-emphasized in favor of other strategies, but it has always represented an opportunity to create an emotional connection with your audience by clearly defining who you are, and living it across every interaction and touchpoint. As the foundation of your business, it also serves as the engine for all of your other marketing efforts. Everything you do flows out of your brand.
Outside of the industry’s biggest players, financial services has typically not embraced branding, relying instead on referrals and word-of-mouth. Even now, few pursue it, and even fewer do it well. That makes it an incredible opportunity. Just remember, simply having a brand doesn’t make it good or a competitive advantage. Having a strong brand does.
Looking for guidance bringing your brand to life? Our Advisor Brand Builder experience blends the efficiency of AI data collection and synthesis with our team of human creative experts to tell your unique story through stunning visuals, compelling content, brand collateral, and a fully built website.