Five Red Flags to Avoid in Brand Building:

‘Red flags’ is buzzy on toxic and narcissistic love relationships on social media platforms like YouTube and Tik Tok. Here is the thing about red flags in life and business. It is not only in social life, love, and romantic relationships that we should watch for red flags. Even in business relationships, processes, procedures, and executions, there are red flags to watch for that can make your brand questionable and lack credibility in the market. In a business landscape that has become entrepreneurial, creative, and dominated by AI tools and machine learning, be wary of thinking, acting, and working like a robot with no aorta of human emotions that are a prerequisite for building a human-centric brand that contributes to making the world a better place to live, learn, work and do business. Here are the red flags to check for and avoid in brand building.

Meaningless domain name

An uncompelling and meaningless brand name can mislead your brand identity and positioning online. Your domain name is like your parliament seat that marks your presence on the web. It must be legible and express some sense in consumers' minds and capture their attention and curiosity about what you are into with your brand. Brand domain names are saturating the internet. So, only domain names that are crawlable by search engines can easily stand out on the web.

That means your domain name needs to be legible and SEO optimized, if possible, by making it simple, short, meaningful, and not confusing search engine crawlers, which can only read binary language that is 0 and 1. That means simplicity and relevance to what you are doing are the guiding principles in creating and crafting the domain name of your business venture.  Do not make your domain name look like a mathematical equation with figures and letters that hardly make sense to your consumers. And hardly reflect and spell out the purpose and value of your business. Your domain name is the starting point for enhancing all the marketing strategies for solid brand building in the market.

Unclear Industry and Niche 

Do not be a Jack of all trades in presenting and positioning your brand online. Be you, and do you and your brand with clarity of what industry and niche your brand will fit in and establish itself. Do not make consumers keep guessing, asking these questions; What are these people offering? Can they help me with my business needs, hunger, and pain points? Your target audience should never ask those questions or get confused about your brand and who it serves. You can clarify that with a clear and transparent value proposition statement.

That is the first identifier of what you offer and your target market. Identifying the industry and niche will help to attract attention from relevant prospects without second-guessing what you can offer them as a solution to their pain points. A well-defined industry and niche mean having a big picture of the role you want your brand to contribute in that industry and niche. That will make consumers within that industry identify with your brand and the differences you are steering.

You can look at the AI tech industry and what is happening now. There is a lot of mixing up about machine learning and what to offer in the AI tech industry that can contribute to bringing clarity to this industry and niche. That is why many of them in the tech industry are experimenting with different models of chatbots to come out with valuable solutions that consumers can trust and see as practical tools for their business solutions, whether in marketing or managing their business projects and processes.

Competition Centered

Competition based businesses are toxic and narcist. Confidence and courage to compete with yourself and your brand to be its competition make brand building adventurous, not competitive. That can be toxic for yourself, your employees, your stakeholders, and everyone concerned. And if not well guarded, can cause mayhem in the industry and niche you need to make sure quality business is conducted. Some people believe being competitive helps consumers receive adequate attention from service providers and makes the service providers maintain quality in providing competitive services and products. However, be wary as a brand of losing focus of the drive and passion behind your brand-building strategies.

Do not let hip-hop marketing strategies muffle your brand-building efforts. That will compromise your professional stance in building a sustainable brand that will pass the test of time in the market in both the slow and busy times of your industry and niche. You must always be in perfect control of what is happening in your industry and that your brand remains standing out and performing without being shaken by the winds of change and competition.

Whether it is price slashes or other sales campaigns, your competitors might be pushing. The best for solid brand-building is to believe in well-planned marketing strategies so that no matter how saturated the market is, you will not feel intimidated by the competition. The blog marketing approach is never compromised because once you are set up and establish your business blog, it will continue to highlight nothing but the purpose and value of your business venture. And its strong identity as a brand that is relevant to your consumer’s pain points. So, dare never be shaken by any competition around you. And never create a brand solely based on competition. Look at the value and benefit of your brand through the product and services you are offering in your industry and niche against any competition around you.

Heavily Automated

Has your brand become like a higher institution of AI automation and machine learning tools? It should not! If it has, that is a red flag of working against your brand-building efforts. You must go to the basics and be simple and human in using AI and automation tools. Heavily automated tasks can compromise the human presence of your brand in the market. Be minimalistic, practical, and functional in automation and machine learning tools. Automation is okay, but when your business becomes packed with robots and chatbots everywhere without human assistance, it might lose the human-centric value that comes with reasoning and understanding of the market.

 Here is the thing. There is no such thing as the total elimination of human beings in any AI-automated and machine-learning operation or process. Automation can never substitute human capabilities in thinking and decision-making. Automation is about the application of technology that minimizes human input. That includes business process and management automation. Basic automation takes basic tasks and automates them. That way digitizing the work using tools for streamlining and centralizing routine, repetitive, and simple tasks like sending reminder emails, compiling data entries, setting up notifications automatically, bill payments, data management, and communication and collaboration tasks.

 Right now. We cannot rule out automation in business processes and management. Used wisely, it has proved very helpful and practical in content management, document management, workflow automation, decision management, and process mapping. However, be sure it does not turn your whole branding strategy into a robotic circus and chaos with zero human touches and presence. People want to deal with real human beings most of the time. Especially where help in understanding stuff is concerned. Though, data-driven services are the norm these days. However, allowing automation on everything, like content creation and writing, is missing the creativity and originality of the essence of your brand in the market. 

Remember, chatbots are limited in observing, analyzing, understanding, and empathizing with your target consumer's pain points and needs. Neither can they conceptualize the purpose and value of your business and promote It through blog marketing. They can only do so when you have already created that content and uploaded it on the internet for them to generate it for answering the consumer's queries and hunger for knowledge and information.

 Inconsistency in Quality

Playing the yoyo game in quality and consistency in production and delivery will never take you far in your brand-building process and journey. The most business model where you can understand the aspect of consistency in quality is the Food and Hospitality industry. Most people have experienced that kind of user experience [UX], even in the neighborhood that you only trust to buy food where the quality and taste are always the way it should be the first time you ordered and found it could be your go-to place each time you want something tasty, fresh and delicious. A good brand is a business model that is well organized to serve its customers with consistent quality products and services and uplifts the standards in its industry and niche.

It is a common observation in business that the other powerful brand marketing and building tool is the word of mouth of those who have had a good experience in the interaction with your brand. Your brand mantra wrapped in your brand value proposition should be the guiding principle in maintaining consistency in the quality of your product and services. You can think of Uber’s simple mantra that embodies the concept of providing low-cost, more reliable, and convenient transportation than traditional taxes. And it seems they have managed to do that in the industry. Zara has proved to be the most creative and innovative retail brand with a global presence with design creations based on the principle of providing uniqueness at minimum production. That way, changing the retail industry forever.

Entrepreneurship on the global market in the present-day creative economy calls for resourcefulness, creativity, and innovation to maintain quality and consistency in offering the best of your brand in the market. The success of your brand lies within quality delivery, dedication, creativity, and commitment to the value proposition of your business for solid brand building and longevity in the market that will boost revenue generation.

It is an adage that if you want to create and build a sustainable and successful brand, allow yourself permission to create and deliver something of high quality and value that your target audience will be willing to part with their hard-earned cash in exchange for whatever you are offering them as long as it is of consistent quality that satisfies their needs and expectations. So, be wary of any red flags in your brand-building process and journey and try to turn them into green flags for solid brand-building in the market