Your business deserves more than just ROI and loyal customers, it also deserves recognition. A brand strategy is what defines your business and its overall personality. A brand should include a slogan, logo, and themed colours, but keep in mind those are just the physical attributes, there’s much more to branding than meets the eye.
Branding is what gets you to stand out from competitors. When you think about specific companies like Starbucks, Disney and Louis Vuitton, you automatically know what each of them represent whether it be high-end products, coffee or kid-friendly content. The fact of the matter is, if you want to capture the attention of surrounding communities and more importantly, your target audience, you need to establish a well-round brand.
Successful branding portrays your business in the best light and shares an impactful message through crafted planning. In fact, marketing specialists can help you build an iconic brand identity from scratch to finish. These professionals follow steps in order to generate the best brand; what are they, you may be asking? Let’s take a deeper look into these stages so you can get a better understanding of how to develop your own brand strategy.
#1- FACTOR IN EMOTIONS WHEN DEVELOPING YOUR BRAND
First things first, list off the beneficial features that your business can provide to consumers. From there, determine the needs of consumers and use that information when coming up with solutions to their problems. Do you have a specific product or service that can help meet their needs? If so, make it known to your audience and give them details about what you have to offer. The most successful brands tap into emotions, so keep this in mind when developing your own brand. You have to develop a clear representation of your resources and their perks.
#2- DETERMINE TARGET AUDIENCE
You must decide on a target audience that you will be marketing to because then you can tailor your main message to meet their needs. In order to reach the right people, the key is to be specific. For example, instead of focusing on all families, you can specifically target families who have kids that are under the age of 10, or instead of only fixating on women in the workplace, you can narrow it down to women who work-from-home. Every business needs to establish a niche market because when you commit to something very particular form the beginning, that is where you gain some leverage.
A few other things to look into when determining your target audience is gender, demographics, age, income, motivations, pain points, desires, fears, and goals.
#3- DEFINE BRAND PERSONALITY, STORY AND GOALS
It may sound silly but every brand has a personality that can vary between sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication and ruggedness. Once you find your businesses personality, you need to incorporate it into everything you produce to the public ie. content, services, products and messages. Come up with a unique brand story, something you can share on your website and on social media to deepen the connection between your business and target audience.
Craft a clear expression of what you are all about. In essence, come up with a set of goals you would like to achieve as a business and use those goals when developing your brand’s mission statement.
#4- FORM A UNIQUE VOICE
Now, your brand’s voice should be relative to your target audience, industry and mission statement. How do you want to portray your business? Do you want to come across as professional, friendly, authoritative, technical, diverse or conversational? There are many options but ultimately you should choose a brand voice that best represents the overall character of your business and it’s services. When you have a distinct voice, you have a stronger chance of connecting with consumers on a deeper level.
#5- CREATE TAGLINE AND DESIGN
Make sure to choose colours, designs, fonts and labels that characterize your brand’s niche and personality. This is the creative visual part when building up a brand and how you will get recognized. Your logo and tagline will appear on everything that relates to your business so you will want to ensure it will show off your business in the best light possible. Not sure where to begin? Fortunately, you can hire brand professionals with experience in creating designs to make your own brand stand out!
Include the following when creating a visual identity:
. engaging logo
. unique fonts
. colour palette
. icon
. photos
. web design elements
#6- BUILD BRAND AWARENESS
It’s up to you to spread the news about your new brand. Word won’t travel around if you don’t take the time to promote your brand. How can you build brand awareness in 2021? You can unveil your business by using clever marketing tactics, increasing engagement and reach. Here are some ways that you can improve growth and brand building:
. Come up with a content marketing plan
. Create a blog on your website
. Post high quality content consistently on social media
. Delve into video ads
. Experiment with email marketing
. Explore PPC ads
. Conduct industry research
. Follow trends and implement them into your content strategy
Be mindful that this process will take some time and the best way to move forward with this is by consulting with a marketing agency who can help you create a long-lasting brand identity. Check out our branding service if you’d like some guidance!
