Brand building is a method for companies to set themselves apart from their competitors and become easily recognizable to their target audience. The right brand is the result of many interconnected factors, all of which are intended to alter people's perceptions of your company. Yet, many businesses do not know how to build a brand let alone integrate it into their business growth strategy. After all, how to build a brand is a big concern. Plus, it takes a significant amount of time and resources.
Personal and professional development are intertwined when it comes to brand building. It not only gives a brand a voice and raises consumer awareness, but it also gives it a sense of identity and worth.
To help you out with your brand building, let’s have a look at some important action points you need to complete to make sure your company has a successful brand identity.
How to Build a Brand: Three Distinct Stages of Branding
1. Brand Strategy
Brand strategy is a necessary and foundational component of any successful brand. It's one of the areas that most companies overlook because they focus on design and marketing first. It defines what makes your brand unique, how you want your customers to perceive it, and what sets it apart from the competition.
Your brand strategy will show your ideal customer how you are unique, trustworthy, memorable, and likable. It will communicate your mission, promises, and how you help people solve problems.
When building a brand from the ground up, this is the first step you must take (whether you are just starting or already established).
Isn't it true that you wouldn't build a house without a blueprint or plans? It's the same with your company's image. Think of brand strategy as a blueprint for how you want the rest of the world to perceive your company.
As part of the process, an effective and comprehensive brand strategy should include the following elements:
1. Development of a brand's purpose
2. Development of the target audience
3. Competitor analysis
4. Brand personality and voice
5. The brand's message and story
2. Brand Recognition
Of course, brand recognition is intrinsically tied to its popularity. In general, greater brand recognition translates to greater popularity and, as a result, greater market share, and vice versa.
Brand recognition is important as it helps to increase customer trust which is the most important marketing activity, it reduces price sensitivity, and it boasts user experience.
For instance, Coca-Cola consistently outperforms Pepsi in terms of market share and sales. Customers, on the other hand, show a preference for the underdog in blind taste tests. This demonstrates how strong the Coca-Cola brand is: people will buy it even if another product tastes better.
3. Brand Promotion
The goal of branding or brand promotion is to establish and build a company's name or brand, which is important not only for large corporations but also for small businesses who want to learn how to build a brand. Brand promotion is the process of informing and reminding target audiences of your message, as well as persuading and influencing them to buy your product or service. Companies nowadays use a variety of platforms to promote their brand and communicate their message, ranging from traditional media to online digital channels, including social media.
They strive to introduce their unique personality to target customers while conveying how they can help solve their main points through effective brand promotion methods. Your product or service is valuable and distinctive.
Brand promotion is essentially how you communicate the value of your brand to potential customers via marketing. For example, Coca-Cola did a fantastic job of unifying its entire range in the "One Brand" in this global brand promotion making all its products under the same brand and tagline “Taste the Feeling”.
Important Brand Building Factors
How to build a brand? A brand is built by combining a core product with unique values that set it apart from the competition. Brand development necessitates a thorough understanding of both functional and emotional values that customers consider when deciding between brands.
A combination of seven factors contribute to the development of a brand:
Building a strong and well-known brand is a continuous process that aims to make customers aware of your services in such a way that they are remembered for a longer period. It can be used as a logo, tagline, advertisement, message, or anything else you want to say about your company or services.
Key Steps to Building your Brand
Recognize the Purpose of your Brand What is the goal of your business? This is the first and most important question you should ask yourself before beginning the brand-building process for your company. The way your brand is designed is determined by its purpose.
Once you've figured out what your brand's purpose is, you'll be faced with four questions.
What is the purpose of your brand?
What distinguishes you from other brands?
What issues does your brand address?
Why should people care about your brand?
The answers to the preceding questions will serve as inspiration for your business's branding. The responses may be used to generate ideas for tag lines, logo design, stories, marketing, and so on.
The purpose of your brand is important because it demonstrates an idea of how to build a brand that tells to your customers that you are more than your products, services, or marketing campaigns. You're here for a reason, and it's not just to make money.
Research your Target Audience and Competitors
The foundation for developing your brand is determining who your target audience is and who your rivals are. Before you begin making decisions about how to build a business brand, you must first gain a thorough understanding of the current market, including who your potential customers and competitors are.
Make sure you complete the below steps during brand building:
Examine the direct and indirect competitors that come up when you Google your product or service category.
Examine subreddits about your customers and listen in on their discussions and product recommendations.
Talk to people in your target market and find out which brands they use in your industry.
Examine the social media accounts or pages that your target audience follows and responds to.
Go shopping, either online or in-person, to get a sense of how your customers would look for and purchase products.
Make a note of the following as you conduct your research:
Who your "lowest hanging fruit" customers are—those whom you could sell to most easily.
Whom your top-of-mind competitors are—the established and well-known brands in the market.
What your customers say and how they say it—their interests and the language they use to express them.
Before moving forward, it's important to understand this because it will determine what your brand should focus on and how it can differentiate itself from competitors.
Create your Brand Personality
You can't expect your brand to be everything to everyone right away, especially if you're just starting. It's critical to identify your focus and allow it to guide all other aspects of your brand as you develop it. Here are some questions and branding exercises to help you consider your brand's focus and tone.
What will your Positioning Statement be? One or two lines that stake your claim in the market constitute a positioning statement. This isn't something you should put on your website or business card; it's just to help you answer the right questions about your brand and to help you come up with a tagline. The only thing you're competing on is your unique value proposition. Find it, capitalize on it, and incorporate it into your brand's sending messages.
You can also write this out as a mission statement that makes a clear promise to your customers or the world if the company you want to start has a cause at its core (e.g., if you're starting social entrepreneurship).
What words come to mind when you think of your brand?
Imagine your brand as a person when thinking about how to build your brand. What kind of person would he or she be? What kind of personality would entice your customers? This will inform your social media voice as well as the tone of all of your creativity, both written and visual.
Pitching three to five adjectives that describe the type of brand that might resonate with your audience is a fun and useful exercise for how to build a brand. This list of characteristics was compiled to help you in getting started.
What metaphors or concepts come to mind when you think of your brand?
Consider your brand identity as a metaphor, or personify it, to identify the unique qualities you want it to possess.
This can be a vehicle, an animal, a celebrity, a sports team, or anything else as long as it has a well-known reputation in your mind that conjures up the vibe you want your brand to elicit.
For example, if you want to build a brand that targets entrepreneurs, you could start with the raccoon: they're scrappy survivors who will do anything to survive.
What animal would your brand identity be if it were an animal, and why do you think it looks like that animal?
Choose a Tag line
A captivating tagline is a nice-to-have asset that you can use as a slogan in your social media bios, website headers, custom business cards, and anywhere else where you only have a few words to make a big impact on your business.
Remember that you can change your tagline as you discover new marketing opportunities, Pepsi has gone through over 30 slogans in the last few decades alone.
A good slogan is succinct, memorable, and leaves a lasting impression to increase brand awareness.
Design Look After you've decided on a name, you'll need to consider your brand design, or how you'll visually represent your company, including colors and typography. Integrating your brand into every aspect of your business is one of the most important steps in branding. That means your brand must be consistent across all platforms, whether digital or physical.
Your brand's voice, logo, colors, tag line, photos, story, and all other elements should be consistent. Your brand should never be misunderstood by your customers, which is why you must incorporate it into every aspect of your business. The visual imagery of your brand is heavily influenced by your logo, font, and colors. To summarise, a color scheme and fonts are effective tools for creating a successful website. Colors, font styles, and images are used to draw attention to your business and connect with your customers. Build out and advertise your brand
When hiring new employees, make sure they fit in with your company's mission, vision, and values. Encourage employees to develop a personal brand that complements your company's branding efforts, extending your reach even further.
Provide a platform for your loyal customers to speak up. Encourage them to leave reviews or share your content by encouraging them to do so.
Wrapping Up
Building a brand is raising awareness about your company through strategies and campaigns, and creating a distinct and long-lasting image in the marketplace. To achieve this, you need to create a consistent message and visual identity to help people remember your objective. Make sure you integrate your brand into all aspects of the customer experience, from the shopfront to the website to personal interactions. Once you complete these steps, your company will have a solid brand identity.