A brand is more than just a cool logo or well-placed advertising.
Your brand is defined by a customers overall perception of your business. A successful brand has to be consistent in communication and experience, across many applications:
- Print, signage, packaging
- Website & online advertising
- Content marketing & social media
- Sales & customer service
Audience
The foundation of building your brand is to determine its target audience that you want to focus on. When brand building keep in mind who exactly you are trying to reach then tailor your mission and message to meet their exact needs.
The key is to get specific. Figure out detailed behaviours and lifestyles of your consumers and then learn how to create a brand identity which can be understood and relatable.
Identifying the target audience for your services or products is an exercise that will affect and benefit all areas of your brand building process, particularly marketing efforts. Ideally, you want the right people consuming your content, clicking your ads, opting into email lists, etc…
So, defining an audience is definitely an important first step!
Mission
What’s your mission?
Before you can build a brand that your audience can trust, you need to know what value your business provides.
The mission statement defines a purpose for existing. It will form every other aspect of your brand strategy.
Everything from your logo to your tagline, voice, message and personality should reflect that mission.
Research
You should never imitate exactly what the big brands are doing in your industry. Instead, be aware of what they do well and where they don’t.
The goal is to differentiate you from the competition – convincing a customer to purchase from you over them. Research your main competitors, study how they have effectively and ineffectively gone about building a their brand name.
Remember, for a brand name to be effective, it needs to be easy for consumers to recognise and recall.
Qualities
There will always be brands with bigger budgets and more resources to command the industry. Your products, services and benefits belong solely to you. You have to figure out what you offer that no one else is offering.
It’s important to note that this is not going to be a laundry list of the features your products or services you offer to the customer or client. Think about how you provide value that improves consumers’ lives.
Logo
When you think about how to build a brand, visuals probably come to mind first, especially a logo. This step may be the one where you need help with execution.
The most exciting and arguably the most important piece of the brand building process is to create a brand logo and tagline for you company.
It’s important to note that this logo will appear on everything that relates to your business. It will become your identity, calling card and visual recognition of your promise. So be willing to invest the time and money to create something exceptional to reinforce the visual identity for your business.
You can get in touch with me if you need one that does this *wink wink*.
Voice
Your voice is dependent on your company mission, audience and industry. It’s how you communicate with your customers and how they respond to you.
Ultimately you want to choose a voice that makes sense and resonates with your target customers. You’ll find that if you use the correct brand voice, you have the strongest chance of connecting with consumers.
This is particularly important when publishing blog articles or social media posts. Maintaining a consistent voice will help your brand image become recognised on multiple channels in the same way.
Message
When building a brand, tell customers who you are. Use the business voice you have chosen.
This part of the brand development process goes beyond you logo and tagline to define the key aspects of who you are, what you offer and why people should care. Address not what your product can do, but, why it is important to your customer.
Make it simple and clear.
Integrate
Your brand should be visible and reflected on everything that your customer can see, read and hear.
If a client walks into your office or a customer walks into your store, your brand image should be on display both in the environment and with personal interactions.
On digital platforms, ensure that your brand looks the same everywhere. Use your brand style guide to create consistency with visuals such as colour, logo use, typography, etc.
Conclusion
Brand building can be one of the most significant things you can do for your new or existing business.
A solid brand building process can transform your business from a small player into a successful competitor.
Develop a consistent message and visual identity to reinforce your mission. Integrate into every aspect of your customers’ experience.
A brand is a story that is always being told – Scott Bedbury
If you need want your brand to have a better connection with your audience, get in touch with me and see what heights your brand can reach.
You can also download the this post as a .pdf copy for ease of access with bonus material included!
