Your brand is so much more than a logo.
A brand encompasses the culture, missions, values, and public identity of your practice. Your brand should be clear, obviously identifiable, and inviting to your target audience – new patients. Iconic brands such as Apple and Disney embody these characteristics. Brand identifiability is important in order to promote vision and grow patient and team member ties to the practice’s mission. Brand identifiability is made up of the logo, voice, messaging, and brandscape of your practice – all should be unique and easily identifiable.
The most important part of creating a brandscape is the vision of the brand, which is the vision of your practice. The vision is the guiding light that gives direction to the path to the future. Vision is what motivates your brand. Vision allows for goals and milestones to be made, however, a vision without a mission cannot easily survive or gain substantial buy-in. A mission is like a map for the vision. The mission shows how your practice can measure the successful fulfillment of the vision.
Another part of a brandscape is the values of the brand. The values are like landmark signs on the path to your practice’s vision. Values should be created by core leadership and founding members of your practice – these values are what help keep the practice accountable. This should be the makeup of every brandscape.
Focusing on a brandscape rather than products or services is how a practice grows both internal and external culture. When a dental practice focuses simply on what they do and not how they do it, it becomes much harder to gain support and buy-in from team members and patients. A brandscape is the how without focusing on services. When vision, mission, values, and culture are aligned, team members and patients, in general, know exactly how to promote the company and deliver the messaging with the highest quality – turning them into your very own personal PR professionals. Understanding a dental practice’s purpose for why they do what they do is always more important than simply knowing the services. Overall, for any practice to have a successful brand, a strong brand must be created.