17 Feb How to Build your Brand from Scratch
How to Build your Brand from Scratch
If you think about a brand, the first thing that crosses your mind is likely a logo, a slogan, or a unique experience.
Nowadays, branding has many advantages for small and medium-sized businesses too. It promotes recognition of your company, and customers can identify it easier.
Not to mention, a brand can also set you apart from your competition, which is crucial if you want an outstanding product or service.
Boosting customer loyalty is another excellent reason for an own brand. Companies are now competing in global markets, so building a brand is an excellent idea to find some advantages.
Nobody said it would be an easy ride, though it is a great idea. Starting from zero might take several months or even years to build a brand. It is about building your company’s reputation, so aim for a positive image.
Hopefully, our tips will help you to start your successful branding journey.
1 – Develop a brand strategy
No matter what we are talking about, starting a company, a new hobby, or in this case, building a brand, a strategic plan is a must.
The perfect strategy must contain long-term and specific goals, which you set as a target to achieve with branding. Create a well-defined plan that covers all aspects of your business.
The main components should be the brand purpose, personality, and experience. Work on these elements, so you’ll be able to have such an experience that attracts and retains customers. Without a plan, the chance is high that you’ll get lost and give up the whole process.
2 – What is the purpose behind your brand?
One of the most important questions to answer: Why does your company or brand exist?
The question is more about the passion which brought the idea to life, not about the financial goals. Defining your brand’s purpose is needed to build a more emotional relationship with your customers.
First, think about those things your brand believes in and stands for. Please get to know your customers, what they want, and what the world needs. This way, you can fit your brand to their expectations.
An outstanding brand purpose is related to the product or service, so make sure these two are in harmony.
3 – Research competitors in your industry
Building a brand is suitable for differentiating your company from its competitors. Be aware of their activity and developments but never imitate the same.
Doing your research in your industry helps you to collect ideas and, at the same time to position yourself in your mind. This means research can help you avoid under or overestimating your brand.
Nothing is worse than thinking your product is the best, while users are more likely to choose something else from your competition.
Also, by being up-to-date on what is going on in the industry, you can keep up with the latest trends, so you can adapt to what fits your business.
4 – Set your target audience
A service/product can be fantastic and super helpful, but there is no such thing for everyone. Find a specific group as your target who may buy your brand and become loyal to it.
Get specific when defining your audience. When you develop a trait of your target group, aim to narrow the focus.
For instance, instead of targeting “college students”, choose “college students who like to play football in their free time”. Focusing on a specific group will save you money and help you start more effective marketing campaigns.
The best way to define such a group is to think about buyer personas. Imagine the perfect customers for your brand!
- How old are they?
- What do they do for a living?
- What is their hobby?
- What is the group’s problem that your product can solve?
These questions can give a perfect base, but research is needed in this case too. Defining buyer personas help to achieve better results with targeting and doing it on a budget.
5 – Define the brand focus
As we mentioned earlier, you can’t be everything to everyone; for that reason, you need to set a target audience. In addition to the specific group you choose for your brand, you need to decide what to focus on.
Loyal customers are one of the main goals of most brands. Know what you are offering them and highlight what you are doing the best. Mark everything you do better than the competition.
Focus on the solution that your brand provides to the consumers’ problems. You can catch their attention by developing a statement.
This briefly includes all the most essential details, like the product/service you offer, your target market, the brand’s unique proposition, and the problem it is meant to solve.
6 – Think about brand personality
Brand personality is a set of human-like characteristics that consumers can relate to. Using strong personality traits like innovative, rebel, honest, or spirited makes a brand seen as powerful.
Top brands like Nike, Apple, and Coca-Cola have a strong brand personality that makes them stand out from the crowd of many different brands.
One can be sure that consumers don’t check everything in detail. They go for the unique and eye-catching brands and their products. This is the point where brand personality comes in.
Brand personality brings the company and the audience closer to each other. Humanising your brand benefits getting more customer recognition as it differentiates your brand from the competitor’s.
We assume one of the goals is to get loyal consumers as well. A well-defined brand personality can achieve that too.
7 – Give it a memorable name
We can agree that a brand is much more than a simple name. Although, it is almost always the first thing people come across about a brand.
The name gives them the first impression, which can determine whether they will engage with the brand or not. That is why it has to be something memorable.
The name will headline advertisements, it will be seen on products, on social media, on the company’s website, and you’ll register the domain on this unique name.
A good business name sums up a business. It tells a lot about a company, its products, or the owner. What is more, the brand name can convince them your product is the one they need.
Finding a suitable name depends on the industry as well. Choose a name that relates to it and the products/service. There are various ways to come up with the right name.
Make sure it is uniquely relevant, and no other company owns it. Another important thing is its pronunciation.
Choose one that is easy to pronounce. Please get to know your country’s laws and regulations about naming a business and aim to be following them.
8 – Write a slogan
“Redbull gives you wings; just do it, The happiest place on Earth.”
Who doesn’t remember these brief but still catchy sentences? Their purpose is to make a brand or campaign memorable for people. These few words describe the product or brand and boost brand awareness.
A good slogan is a must alongside the logo and the brand name for successful marketing campaigns. They are short, but they can make a massive impact if well-written. It has to be something powerful, simple, and memorable.
There can be different goals with a slogan. Use them for advertising as a motto that promotes your product and persuades the audience to purchase from you instead of the competition.
Creative slogans are also for differentiation from the other companies in the industry. You can also use them for description, so people can get to know the brand and what it offers to them.
Slogans are also excellent for giving particular feelings to the audience to fulfil their emotional needs depending on the product/market.
9 – Work on brand guidelines and style guide
Visual elements like a logo, the primary colours, and font types are fundamental and should be picked carefully.
Next to the brand name, a logo is another crucial component. It is also something that people notice in the first place.
A logo is like the face of the company, which is printed on almost everything related to your brand, starting from the packaging of products to the online platforms you broadcast it.
Never try to save money on this, so dare to hire a professional to design something unique, identifiable, and scalable to be able to see it scale up and down for different purposes.
Another element of a great logo design is relevance. It has to be relevant to your brand’s message, the industry you are in, and the company’s activity.
When deciding on the brand’s primary colours, consider colour psychology. It is good to know that each colour has a different meaning and gets specific feelings.
Choose warm shades like orange or yellow to seem friendly and optimistic, while green represents peacefulness and red is the colour of excitement.
If the goal is to be seen as creative or worthy of trust, aim for blue colours. Once you make your choice use the same scheme for everything related to the brand.
10 – Choose the right channel for promotion
Lately, social media has played a crucial role in brand promotion, so companies can not ignore how powerful it is.
You can apply influencer marketing and work with those who have access to your target group. This way you can have more effect on their buying decisions, and reach even more people.
Social sites and forums make it possible to write reviews, and in case of more positive feedback, word-of-mouth marketing is a possible way to promote as well.
Online marketing provides many possibilities and advantages, starting from e-mail marketing to having a youtube channel. Create content for these social platforms and use SEO to make your content outstanding.
Don’t forget that consistency and posting frequently is highly needed. Work out a schedule and a content plan that you can follow, so you can find the balance between posting too much or too little.
If posting too much content in a short period, people may feel you are spamming them and lose their interest.
To sum up, intelligent content creation saves your budget for more extensive marketing campaigns and provides excellent promotion.
Evolve as your brand grows
Once you have finished designing your logo, found the right colours and an appealing brand name, your job still hasn’t finished yet.
You need to understand there is no recipe for branding, but one thing is sure: it is about constant learning, research, and fitting the brand to the latest trends and expectations.
Even the top brands pivot their name, slogan, or style elements. The market changes all the time. New demands and expectations appear day by day and if a brand wants to keep up and stay alive in this innovative world, renewing older patterns is a must.
Conclusion
As a business owner, one of the best options you have to differentiate from competitors is to develop a brand. The biggest goal of different companies is to realise significant revenue, but you can’t achieve that without loyal consumers.
A brand is a differentiator and a tool to find a specific audience and maintain a good relationship. While the idea of a brand seems simple, it needs long working hours to create something that lasts.
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