How to Build a Brand
What are the crucial branding tools no one should forget to use to get their company noticed?
Here are the top ten branding tools for you to use in your construction from guest blogger Justin Osborne who writes about marketing and strategy.
Research
Research is necessary and often overlooked. An idea or concept created without deep research is just a materialized vision from inside your head. Great for the lucky few, but not a winning approach for the majority. A good brand should respond, solving a specific problem, not another market offer. So, your task is to find out whether your product or service solves the problem with an answer (solution) to someone’s need.
Research is a complex but highly effective exercise that could become a cornerstone of your brand. The work involves analyzing market segments to define the niche, targeting audience research to specify your potential customers, and product research to get insights for shaping anything you create.
Target Audience Avatar
Your future customers dictate everything your brand needs to be to become successful. The most original disruptive products and brands get their impressive rapid popularity thanks to distinct customers loving their innovations. (left-handed gardeners or reusable wine bottles)
Your branding journey would rely on how and where you see people buying from you. Gender, age, occupation, lifestyle, education level, economic capacities are essential. But often, people buy because they have a job to be done and you have a solution.
For any brand message to reach the right eyes and ears, a company should have a very detailed human portrait or avatar of their customer. This avatar represents the type of person, people, or audience you are serving. Therefore, you’ll need to know clients’ triggers, personal preferences and dislikes, daily routines, and many more.
Strategy
No ship would come to the destination harbor without the captain’s map. Brand strategy is your navigation plan towards long-term business goals, both profit-related and reputational.
A great branding strategy covers the company’s mission, values, value proposition, positioning statement, taglines, development milestones, key messages, their delivery, etc. Here is a moment to ask yourself (a company) what your objectives are and how you see your mission coming to life. Your strategy would adequately represent business goals and the target audience’s expectations.
Visual identity
Finally, we come to the logo and other classic branding attributes. Remember, the visual system must be based on the brand’s values, mission, and differentiation or lovely pictures and colors. Nobody remembers an empty candy wrap; the content should be great to match the visual impressions. Great packaging and design sets the stage for your emotional experience with the brand.
Tone of voice
If you ever got reprimanded as a kid for disrespecting an older person by telling a silly joke or using slang, you understand the importance of choosing the right words. Your typical customer’s avatar would help identify appropriate language and relevant lexicon. Would you greet a customer by saying hello, hey, or what’s happening?
You could even test some of your messages on focus groups to check the reactions – involve diverse audiences for more representative results, like homeowners and renters, students and professionals, office workers, etc. Such an exercise would help segmentation your target audience and respective messages.
Social Media are the New Business Cards
Not that we’d recommend you get rid of traditional business cards. Keep those for networking and physical brand locations like stores. However, a company’s social media create those first critical impressions that predefine any further contacts with a customer.
Social media exist for communication before other valuable opportunities. Use them wisely to get closer to your clients. An Instagram account can help bring out a brand’s personality, whereas LinkedIn can give you a platform as a thought leader.
Website as a Safe Harbor
As a risk mitigation strategy, it is highly recommended that any business have its website. Its ownership can be fully vested in your hands. But except for safety, the company’s website is another representation tool to broadcast the brand’s mission.
The day Facebook went down was hard for people solely dependent on Facebook for their brand. Less unique but even more stressful events are blocked profiles or ad accounts on social media. It’s happening every day with smaller businesses. And not everyone got their accounts restored.
Your website is your home, and you should own and control it. It isn’t your only place of business but the safe harbor.
Compelling brand storytelling
Modern trends in branding swayed from short one-way messages towards legends, myths, and stories. Brand’s ability to turn rationale behind the company or create its products into a compelling, attention-grabbing binge-worthy narrative defines its success on the market. The important part is to bring all the company’s communication in tune to tell a unified story. Your brand story is one of many assets in a branding platform and your pathway to an emotional connection.
Applicable content as a free trial
A warm audience comes not through advertising but with accessible first touchpoints with a brand. The great incentive to become a loyal, long-term customer is an opportunity to benefit from the company’s expertise for free. Content is an excellent example. It can broadcast the brand’s values and bring valuable information to the audience. For inspiration and model, look at the blog at www.bestessays.com, where the brand demonstrates its core principles and assets while providing insightful, practical articles.
Foundations for a love mark
You shouldn’t stop at the essential attributes of a famous brand if you’re aiming for greatness. Kevin Roberts from Saatchi & Saatchi suggested building love marks, not brands. These are companies that incite “loyalty beyond reason.” It’s an ambitious long-term goal, but it can be organically incorporated into any branding strategy. Decide what aspects of your company’s communication and operation may create a tight circle of brand advocates and invest in them.
Branding is a challenging but exciting journey. Rely on provided recommendations for a smoother start and grow your brand from an ambition to greatness.
Building a brand is like building a house. It would help if you had bricks, wood, and a great story.
This is a guest post from Justin Osborne who is a marketing specialist and essay writer from Leicester, UK. When not working and rooting for Leicester FC, he likes to discuss new trends in digital marketing and share his ideas with readers on different blogs and forums. Currently, he is working as a content marketer at bestessays.com.
You can set up a time to chat with me about your marketing challenges using my calendar. Email me jeffslater@themarketingsage.com Call me. 919 720 0995. The conversation is free, and we can explore if working together makes sense. Watch a short video about working with me.
