Branding is important for your business as it determines how your business looks in front of the people. It communicates the value of your products and services and determines the longevity of your business. To stand out from the crowd, a business has to be unique and recognizable, and this is what branding does.
As per Nielsen’s Global New Product Innovation Survey, 59% of people prefer to buy new products from brands similar to them, and 21% purchased a new product because it was from a brand they like.
Everything you do from advertising to content marketing determines your brand identity. Brands like Apple, Nike, etc. have elevated brand identity to an art. If you want your brand to succeed too, you need to build an identity that can convey the essence of your brand. This requires a strong brand strategy. On your road to building a successful brand, we will walk you through some essential steps to develop an effective brand to help you carve a unique brand identity.
Know who you are and determine your objectives:
The first step in building your brand is to fully know who you are. Defining a brand statement and putting across your brand story can be helpful. You have to position yourself and give a brand promise as to why your products and services matter.
For that, you have to define the objectives your brand needs to achieve. You have to determine what you want people to know about your products and services. You should define a clear-cut brand strategy to develop your brand. If you are clear about where you want your firm to be, you will be able to get there easily.
Before deciding your brand statement keep in mind that you have to create a customer, need both marketing and innovation to move ahead, and customers look for results.Focus on your target audience:
Find out who your clients are. Try to research on their preferences and priorities. Based on which you can anticipate their needs and channelize your branding efforts towards those needs. This will result in your message and brand resonating with them, enabling you to connect to your audience.
Create a buyer persona. For putting together a buyer persona, start with market research, list demographics, and touch on their behavioral and psychological triggers. Once you have a complete picture of who your clients are, you will be able to continue with creating a brand they can identify with, deliver them a perfect message and examine your brand positioning. You can try to connect to them on an emotional level.
For instance, while kick-starting a business in the travel industry, you must have a customer-centric approach to give them a better experience in every trip. A travel agency must plan a tour by considering the points like, budget, places to visit, and available facilities which would be provided, and all these points may vary from person to person. Understanding of customers and their preferences may accomplish your task. A businessman with knowledge of human psychology can make customers feel more encouraged to avail of the products and services offered by the company.Research about your competitors:
Research on your competitors. It is essential to differentiate yourself from your competitors and make your brand visible and unique, which requires a comparison with the competitors. Do a competitive analysis to find unique ways to outshine them.
Pay attention to everything from their taglines, to their logos, visual themes, and brand colors. Focus on their vision, mission, and values, strengths, weaknesses, value proposition, products, services, etc. The more details you gather, the more insights you will get to better position yourself.
You can plot your competitors based on different polarities in a Cartesian chart.
The below graph shows the impact of research on a brand’s growth and profitability:
Build your identity through various visual elements:
After you have researched your competitors, it is time to build your brand identity through various visual elements. The first step to this is logo design, which is the basic mark of brand identity. A perfectly designed logo can help in hitting the right chord with the target audience and serve as a foundation of an effective marketing strategy.
When you are designing your logo, the main important consideration is looking at the logos of your competitors’ companies, which will help you to avoid unnecessary similarities between their logos.
Choose the style design and color palette that matches your brand. To know more about how to build a powerful visual identity through colors, refer to the psychology behind logo design. In your logo, concentrate on the typography. It needs to communicate your brand persona properly. You can even design your unique fonts the way Coca-Cola has, which have become synonymous with their logo.
It is also necessary to test the logo on various platforms to see whether the logo design looks good on digital mediums as well as physical form.
You need to even focus on your Mascot, allowing you to interact with your users in a more personalized way. It will enable you to humanize how your customers interact with you.
Similarly, having rich and elegant business cards, brochures and social media banners can be helpful to businesses. They should be able to communicate your brand personality. Keep their colors simple and appropriate. They should be an extension of your logo. Remember to have high-quality and high-resolution imagery.Build a website:
Even if you would have a physical store, you would still need to have an online presence. This is because your target audience will be online too, making it crucial to set up a website for your business. A website can act as a brand development tool, which will enable your audience to know about you and what you do, your processes, your clients, etc.
Your website will raise awareness of your brand and can also bring remote customers to your business. For the convenience of your customers as well as high Google rankings, build a responsive website which can be viewed easily on various-sized devices.
You can even have a blog on your website and keep visitors updated with the latest trends. Google likes fresh and unique content, and you will even be able to establish yourself as an authority in your industry. By using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, you can make your target audience find you and learn about your brand.
However, if your website gives the wrong message about your brand, your prospects will prefer to move on to your competitors.Promote your business:
After you have built your website, it is time to promote your business on various channels. Figure out where your target audience is and select the channel based on that. You can use PPC, content marketing, social media, influencer marketing, guerrilla marketing, videos, etc. to promote your brand. There are many great digital marketing tips that any business can use no matter large or small.
Whatever mediums you use, ensure you use the same logo and posts should have the same tone across various platforms. In content marketing, your collaterals should remain consistent with your brand values and personality. Social media marketing that you do should match with your website and your offline presence. Videos should be a reflection of how your business looks and feels like. If you would like an intro video for your business, be sure to try out OFFEO free intro maker.
Over and above the digital platforms, you can use offline mediums like TV, radio, hoardings, print magazines, etc. which are most relevant to your target audience and where your competitors are present. You can even offer discounts on various products initially to attract customers towards your business.
Once you get established, word of mouth will play an important role to promote your business.Track results and manage your brand reputation:
This final step in the brand development process is one of the crucial ones. After you have promoted your business and started getting customers, you have to track results and manage your brand reputation.
Track your branding strategy as well as results that you achieve from your plan like impressions, time on site, views, user flow through website, number of site visitors, social media followers, etc.
Find out whether the results were as per the plan. What happened with the objective measures such as search engine results and traffic? How many new leads were generated? Where those leads came from and which call-to-actions lead customers to contact you? This will help you in deciding which direction you need to put your efforts in and tweak and adjust your brand development strategy to succeed.
Remember to gather online ratings and reviews from your customers, which prospects consider authentic before approaching business and serve as a tool to have a good reputation for your business.
Reputation management is very important to manage your brand for the long term because once someone gives a review to your business, that can stay for years to come. It is vital that you go through the brand mentions, given both offline and online. Search through blogs and review websites like Yelp, Trustpilot, Google My Business, etc.
If you are getting positive reviews, you are in the right direction. Acknowledge your loyal customers and treat them nicely. In the case of negative reviews, show empathy, accept your mistakes, and apologize.
Concluding lines
From the post, it is evident that brand development isn’t an easy process. Each step has to be well thought, based on the needs of the target market and business objectives.
Building a brand will lead to higher authority in your industry and will instill trust among your customers. This will result in higher sales, which is the ultimate goal of the businesses. Even for beginners, there is a lot of free personal branding course available that you can do to have a better understanding of branding. It gives you what strategy and approach can be followed to succeed in it.
By following the above tips and tricks, you will able to effectively build your brand and stand out from the competition
Branding takes time. It takes a couple of months to do research and define the branding strategy. From there, you have to nurture your brand and continuously add to its growth for years to come. Rushing through things will only deliver outcomes that you aren’t looking for.
Brand development is all about building a brand identity and maintaining clients’ relationship at the same time. Paying attention to brand development as you grow your business is the key to ensure your company’s lasting success!
ProDesigns holds expertise in designing logos and other visual elements to elevate your brand. Contact us today through [email protected] to get more details about our end-to-end services.
