Building a brand from the ground is never an easy task but making it work can make a massive difference in the way your business is perceived by everyone else. A brand identity is what your brand says and what your values are and how you communicate and how you want people to feel when they are interacting with your business.
What do you think when you hear the words “Apple” or “Tesla” or “Coca-Cola”? All of these are established brands that have occupied the space in most people’s heads when they think of a particular sector of services. No matter if it’s cars or delivery services. The companies with the strongest brand identity will always be on top of everyone else and their competitors will struggle to establish themselves at the forefront of the pack.
The brand is basically at the core of your company’s soul and is responsible for influencing people’s perceptions, driving sales, and differentiating you from your competition.
Building a brand isn’t just about creating a logo or a website, the right brand drives people to think fondly of your business. This is something a lot of up-and-coming companies struggle to comprehend. That building a brand is the main driving focus for how successful your business will be. A familiar and liked brand is one of the most important assets for any business.
Most consumers prefer to buy products from brands that are recognizable to them and a lot of times smaller business owners have to compete with already established big companies with unlimited resources for marketing and a huge chunk of devoted customers who love and are loyal and see meaning in the brand.
What is a brand?
A brand is a thing that makes you unique and the thing that differentiates you from everyone else. Think of it as a person. Every person has their own individual set of characteristics that make them themselves. From your personality to style to the way of communicating.
Businesses have their names, logos, colors, voices, and reputations that makeup what they are and how they are perceived.
Here are 5 steps in creating the perfect brand.
Step 1 – Identify your audience and competitors
With branding building, you have to know exactly who you’re trying to reach. You need to have a good understanding of the current market and trends before you take the step of creating a business brand. Thinking of the specific audience that will enjoy your product and services will help build your brand vision.
Here are some of the ways to do that:
- Research your product category and analyze who your top competitors are in that particular field.
- Look up forums that relate to your target audience and see what their opinions and thoughts are.
- Create a persona of your ideal customer– like the age, gender, location, and demographic. Etc
- Look at similar websites and accounts your target audience is following on social media.
Step 2 – Develop your brand purpose
Developing your brand purpose is how you will get differentiated from others. Use the main differentiator that you will benefit the most from. Find something you are passionate about whether it’s the environment, social issues, or a pressing question.
There are some questions you should ask yourself when defining a brand purpose:
- What new things do you bring to the table?
- What makes you unique?
- What social responsibility do you take?
- What problem do you solve?
- Why should people be invested in you?
You’ll use these ideas to inform the foundation of your branding, through a tagline, slogans, stories, and more.
A lot of consumers all over the world say they now buy based on a company’s brand values and impact.
Step 3 – Create a brand name, logo, and slogan
Having a good brand name for your business is the first step in making sure that you will be remembered. Having a unique name that is easy to remember and hard to imitate and even harder to confuse with existing players in the market.
Having a good logo is just and important because it will appear on everything that relates to your business. It will become the identity of your business. Ideally, you’ll want to create your brand with a logo that’s unique and scalable to work in all sizes.
A catchy slogan can be only beneficial for your brand and can be used on social media bios, website header, custom business cards, and anywhere else where you’ve got very few words to make a big impact.
A good slogan is short and catchy and has to make an impression in order to boost brand awareness.
Step 4 – Share your brand everywhere
After you have created your brand vision you need to share it with the rest of the world. Building a style guide for everyone you work with so it’s easy to follow and has consistency is a great way to make sure you’re brand is cohesive with your vision. Here are some channels you need to focus on:
- Social media – Social media is the best tool to build awareness for your brand. You can share posts, videos, pictures, and graphics representing your brand, and even encourage people to share your brand with their friends.
- Online website – Highlighting your brand’s logo on every page of your website will help solidify the brand’s voice and intertwine with your website’s content.
- Marketing – Wheather it’s traditional or digital marketing your brand need to be clearly visible in every marketing campaign. Make sure you’re image is showcased at every opportunity.
Step 5 – Don’t be afraid to evolve and grow with the times as a brand.
Building a brand doesn’t stop with creating a logo or slogan, or even with your brand awareness launch. Your brand needs to remain consistent wherever your customers interact with you, from your website, the merchandise, all the way to how you reply to customers on Twitter.
You’ll continue to grow and evolve your brand design and identity as you expose more customers to it and learn more about who your customers are and how to speak to them.
It’s important to appreciate that just like in real life you can never control how people perceive your brand identity, and that is something you need to find peace with.
You can’t control the individual perceptions that exist in each person’s mind but you can make sure your love for what you doing resonates with your core audience.
