One of the most important aspects of your business is branding—developing a persona or perception for your business that will resonate with customers. Your brand will help you define your business, stand out from the competition, and draw your core customers in. It might sound complicated, and it can be, but with these 3 tips, you’ll be on your way to building a strong brand for your business.
#1: Define Your Brand
First things first, you need to define your brand. But how do you decide on the image that you want your brand to project? There are several questions that can help you figure that out:
What problem does your brand solve? Every product or service is centered around solving some kind of “problem” for consumers. You likely already know the answer to the question because it’s usually what drives you to start your business in the first place. Another way to phrase this question is “what purpose does your brand serve?”. The main problem you’re solving and the related pain points your customers experience will be essential to building strong business messaging that consumers relate to.
Who is your audience? When developing your branding, you need to consider who your core customers are, that way you can develop a brand that resonates with them. The demographics of your target audience will have a large effect on all aspects of your branding including the imagery, messaging, and tactics you use.
How are you different from your competitors?
Part of the purpose of branding is to make your business unique, and in order to do that, you need to know what defines your competitors. From the colors they use to the messaging they put out, you need to be different enough from them so you don’t get confused with other businesses in your vertical, especially if they have a large following.
As you answer these questions, you will slowly be able to piece together different aspects of your brand. To keep your thoughts organized and get a jump start on your branding guidelines, we recommend keeping this information in a spreadsheet or shareable document that can be streamlined and finalized later. Branding guidelines are important to develop so that they can be applied in all of your marketing.
#2: Implement Your Branding
Now that you have your brand ironed out, you need to incorporate it into everything you do. From using your logo on custom apparel to your website, and everything in between, your brand needs to be consistent. Uniform branding across all of your platforms, marketing materials, and anything else that represents your business should be the same. This is important because it helps consumers recognize your business.
Neglecting to keep branding consistent could be a serious misstep—if your branding is inconsistent it makes it difficult for your customers to connect and could even lead to confusion.
Implementing your branding correctly will create a sense of authenticity and build trust. Both of these factors are essential to the success of your company and will benefit your business in the long run by helping create a better customer experience.
#3: Stay True to Your Brand
It’s important to take time when developing your brand’s voice and image, and stay true to that image. Making a lot of changes once your brand is established could be damaging. However, small changes are okay, as long as they make sense for your brand.
You might need to make changes to your branding as the times and culture shift so you can remain relevant and relatable. But it’s important that your messaging doesn’t deviate the general essence of your brand. Here are a few tips for remaining true to your established image, even if you need to make some changes along the way:
- Evolve, but don’t change your core principles
- Make sure everyone who works for your company knows your values
- Stay focused on the big picture of what your brand represents and the purpose the business serves
- Be public about changes to your branding with messaging that’s reassuring to consumers
- If you do need to alter your branding significantly, make changes gradually to avoid scaring consumers off
Everything your business does should represent what it stands for and match your business’s image, essence, and messaging.
As you can see, managing your company’s brand is one of the most important business skills you’ll need to develop. These tips should be a good start to understanding branding and how to succeed at it.