You receive a call. Your new marketing budget has been approved for the quarter and you couldn’t be happier. It may be more or less than you expected, but you immediately start thinking what you could do with it. Before you pick up the phone and call your agency to discuss a new campaign or activity, first ask yourself the following questions:

• What does our brand stand for? Can our whole team explain it?
• Do I like how our brand looks?
• Does the logo project what I want to say?
• Does my brand match my objectives?
• What is our brand’s promise to the customers?
• How does our brand make our customers feel?

If you answered “I don’t know” or struggled to find the answer to any of these, you probably need to reassess your Brand’s Foundations. Here at Bang, we liken Brand Foundations to building a house: If you build a house with a couple of messy bricks and fill in the gaps with whatever you can find to make it look okay, it will not last and will eventually collapse. If you want good, lasting results, you need to invest time and effort in building a lasting structure that will support your dreams well into the future.

So, what are your Brand Foundations? Brand Foundations are the perfect mix between messaging, objectives, defined target audience and aesthetics. They define who you are, what you do, what you believe in, and how you should be seen and perceived by your ideal audience. In a world oversaturated with ads, how can you make your brand stand out? What really makes you different? It’s not about listing a few words that describe your company's benefits, it’s about asking if what you think makes you different is an actual differentiator or just an industry standard.

When you think about your brand, it’s not all around how it looks, but more importantly, how your brand makes the customer feel. It goes beyond reputation and is all about the message, emotion, beliefs and impression. Eighty-eight percent of customers say quality is the main reason they become loyal to a brand. The impression of quality starts the minute a user goes onto your site. If they like it and consider it engaging enough to keep reading, you’re on the right path!

However, if the user doesn’t like what they read or it’s not the kind of information they’re looking for, there is a 50 percent chance they won’t engage with you now or in the future, and a 23 percent chance they won’t recommend you, or will have something negative to say about your brand.

It’s been said that in initial meetings with a potential client you have just seven second to make a strong impression . Seven seconds - that’s all you’ve got! So before jumping into your next campaign, stop and think. A campaign will bring a few leads in a short period of time, but investing in Brand Foundations will give you stronger leads, based on a better first impression, and provide a solid support for generating more businesses opportunities well into the future. So, ask yourself: Have you got a firm Brand Foundation?