Enhancing a development organization’s brand is a wise investment. The more that your image reflects the image that you wish to attain, the closer you are to achieving your long-term goals as a developer. There are quite a few steps in order to fortify a brand or to rebrand entirely, so in this post we will start with the fundamentals of analyzing your current brand and the direction that you ought to take in order to enhance it accordingly.
This is the fifth instalment in our continuing series on brand enhancement. In this series we cover the basics of branding, why it is so important to a developer, and how a developer can use several strategies to increase long-term business through their image. If you’ve found this article of use, you may find the rest of the rest of the series of use as well.
Follow the links below:
Part 1 – The Fundamentals of a Development Firms’s Brand on the North Gulf Coast
Part 2 – The Importance of a Developer’s Brand on the North Gulf Coast
Part 3 – The Threats to a Development Organization’s Brand on the North Gulf Coast
Part 4 – Developer Strategies for Brand Enhancement along the North Gulf Coast
Part 5 – The Keys to Enhancing a Development Organization’s Brand
Part 6 – Obtaining a Development’s Desired Brand through Planning and Design
Part 7 – How to Protect a Developer’s Brand through Planning and Design
Part 8 – How to Avoid Brand Risks in a Development Project’s Plans
Size yourself up
In order to move forward, it’s important to first understand exactly where it is that you stand. To understand your current position, there are a couple of fundamental questions that can help in sizing up your image. They go as follows:
- Has the architecture and design associated with your development organization enhanced your business? Has due attention actually been given to ensuring the best design for the product’s environment and market?
- In hindsight, do your development projects fit in with their environment? Do the people in the neighborhood seem content with the addition? Do the occupants?
- From this point on, how does a shift in your brand affect your development organization, if consciously considered? There are obvious advantages and disadvantages in extreme cases, but in all reality a conscious shift will most likely produce incremental changes in your development portfolio, so consider it as an method to shift into the organization that you want to be in several years.
Strategic branding questions
To continue on with your current situation, here are a few more detailed points to consider:
- How clear and consistent is the development organization’s current brand? Remember that a brand is your reputation times your visibility, so take these two into account. How far reaching is your name, and what does your name inspire when it is heard?
- Who are your brand publics? Which parties are involved with your name, how do their views of you differ from one another, and how could a shift in their view of your development organization benefit you?
- Does your brand convey a promise? If so, what is that promise, and at whom is it directed to?
- Does your brand inspire an image? If so, what is that image, and how does it differ between your publics?
- Does your brand convey an experience? If so, define that experience and research which of your publics is experiencing it.
- How is your brand currently communicated to its publics? More importantly, is your brand reaching your desired publics at all? Much of the time, having a website and a set of business cards aren’t quite enough to get your name out there, and expanding business opportunities is a stunted venture if no one knows who you are.
- Is there a delta between your current brand and your desired brand? In other words, what are the alternatives that you could take in order to reach your goals, and what in your current model does not work along this path?
- Are you putting enough attention into site planning and design? Have you considered the ways that these two factors could reinforce the current brand or close the delta between your current brand and your desired brand?
With this information, your can make a solid plan of action to lead you to the next stage of your business. Join us in our next article covering the first steps to achieving your desired brand during a development project.
