Brand building is the process of improving your brand’s recognition so that customers instantly associate a product, service, color, or other elements with your company. Building a strong brand requires a lot of thought put into marketing and design — all aimed at increasing brand awareness.
So, how do you build a brand? In this guide, our experts outline seven effective steps to successfully build a brand. We’ll also define what a brand is, explore its importance, and provide strategies for long-term growth.
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What Defines a Brand?
For most people, a brand is the company and its products. However, it’s much more than that. A brand encompasses a collection of visual elements, stylistic decisions, and other assets that unite to create a cohesive image. It extends beyond mere symbols like logos, names, or slogans, including aspects such as the communication tone and employee dress code that contribute to your company's overall reputation. Essentially, your brand is how the public perceives you.
With 64% of consumers willing to pay more for a brand they trust, building a strong brand identity is crucial for shaping the desired reputation among your audience.
How To Build a Brand in 7 Steps
While building a brand is an extensive process, it doesn't have to be overly complicated. Let’s explore each step of brand building in depth. Here are the 7 steps:
- Understand your audience
- Identify your competitors
- Define your brand’s purpose and position
- Cultivate a distinct brand personality and brand voice
- Focus on the brand name and logo
- Integrate and establish consistent branding
- Market your brand
1. Understand Your Audience
Understanding your audience is the crucial first step to creating your brand. Individuals respond differently to various brand personas, tones, and aesthetics. By initially determining the needs and preferences of your audience, you can effectively design a brand that captivates and resonates with them.
One way to identify your audience is by creating buyer personas. A buyer persona serves as the representation of the ideal customer you aim to attract. It should indicate demographic characteristics such as age, location, and income, alongside more nuanced information like political inclinations, product usage scenarios, and preferences if needed.
2. Identify Your Competitors
Analyze your competitors comprehensively to gain valuable insights on how you can carve out a distinctive niche for your brand. Here are a few ways how:
- Identify your competitors’ market strengths and learn from them. Look for ways on how you can adopt effective strategies.
- Determine areas where they fall short, such as market inefficiencies or untapped sectors, and address these weaknesses with your own efforts.
- Examine key aspects of competing brands, including their web designs, pricing strategies, and tone of communication.
- Study competitor websites to pinpoint areas to focus on and take note of robust SEO practices that drive consistent web traffic through organic searches.
- Conduct keyword research to uncover subjects overlooked by competitors.
- Use a competitor research spreadsheet to systematically prioritize your findings. This approach offers a clear overview of your company's standing within the industry. This will help you differentiate yourself more effectively from competitors.
Tip: Two-thirds of consumers think it’s annoying when brands make fun of their competitors. So, refrain from doing this.
3. Define Your Brand's Purpose and Position
The third step is to understand where your brand stands in the industry. Start with a concise purpose or mission statement that clearly conveys your brand's objectives. This statement should align with your business plan and core values, serving as a guide for all subsequent business branding activities.
To guide you in creating your mission statement, consider answering these fundamental questions about your business:
- Why does your company exist?
- What problem does your product or service solve?
- Why should customers choose you over a competitor?
Remember, a mission statement is primarily for internal alignment, so focus on clarity rather than trying to make it catchy. Nike's mission statement, though less flashy than its slogan, effectively guides the company's activities.
4. Cultivate a Distinct Brand Personality and Brand Voice
Personality is important in setting your brand apart. It's the most straightforward way to convey uniqueness and attract your desired customer base. Maintain a consistent brand voice across all brand touchpoints, including web content, social media, emails, and product pages.
Tailor your voice to align with your audience, mission statement, and industry. For instance, if targeting Gen Z, consider integrating their slang into your brand voice.
Research your audience's preferred personality within your sector and explore the five fundamental brand personalities: excitement, sincerity, ruggedness, competence, and sophistication.
Once your brand's personality is defined, create an editorial style guide. Envision your brand as a person and communicate in a manner befitting that persona. Decide the level of formality and tailor word choices and contractions accordingly.
Harley-Davidson, for instance, employs a rugged, adventurous tone that resonates with customers and has become synonymous with its brand.
5. Focus on the Branding Elements
The next step is creating your branding elements and visual identity, such as your brand name, logo, slogan, and brand colors. Carefully choosing these elements contributes to a strong and memorable brand identity.
Brand Name
Choosing a brand name is a critical decision for small business owners, impacting various aspects like branding, domain selection, and trademark registration. While a name alone may not define a brand, its association with a brand's personality, actions, and reputation gives it meaning in the market.
Additionally, you should consider future expansions, potential imitations, and easy memorability when choosing a brand name.
Logo
The brand logo must be unique, identifiable, and scalable for various applications. Logo types may include:
- Abstracts
- Mascot
- Emblem
- Letter mark
- Icon
- Wordmark
Slogan
Slogans can stake a claim, use metaphors, adopt customer attitudes, or describe the brand literally. Changing slogans over time, as demonstrated by Pepsi — a brand that’s also known for spending $1 million designing its logo — reflects evolving marketing strategies.
Visual Design
Research suggests that 55% of brand first impressions are visual. Once a name and slogan are established, attention turns to brand design, encompassing colors, fonts, and logos. Color choices and psychology convey emotions and consistency, differentiating the brand from competitors.
6. Integrate and Establish Consistent Branding
After establishing the groundwork for your brand, the next step is to seamlessly incorporate it throughout your entire company. Develop a style guide or brand book to guarantee a consistent voice and presence across all channels.
Clearly outline how you want your brand to be perceived in terms of tone, appearance, and overall vibe. Ensure that your brand's distinctive personality shines through in every social media post, marketing initiative, and layout of your website.
For example, Warby Parker’s brand integration and style guide emphasize a customer-centric approach, focusing on engaging experiences both online and in-store. The company's clean and sophisticated design extends across all facets, and its brand voice is direct and mission-oriented, ensuring brand consistency.
7. Market Your Brand
The final phase involves introducing your brand to the world. Here are some ways how:
- Establish a clear-cut marketing strategy and generate buzz on platforms frequented by your target audiences to capture their attention.
- Utilize your brand guidelines and marketing plan to connect with your audiences.
- Implement your branding consistently across all communication channels, spanning from packaging and stationery to websites and marketing materials.
- Explore additional avenues like email, the web, and affiliate partnerships to effectively promote and reinforce your brand.
Why Is Building a Brand Important?
A brand is what people know your company for and can transform small businesses into multimillion-dollar companies. Building a brand is essentially the foundation for your business and its future success.
Aside from these benefits, other reasons why brand building is important are:
- Influences decisions to buy: People tend to trust established brands more than regular shops. Sometimes, even if the product is cheaper locally, customers will turn to the competition simply because of its brand.
- Builds brand recognition: Branding gives your company something to be remembered by. Good brand building will help customers recall your company and associate it with colors, items, or phrases.
- Complements marketing: Brand building amplifies the impact of marketing strategies. By creating something memorable, you can reduce the amount you spend on marketing efforts.
- Connects your company with the customers: Branding is all about bringing your company’s visions and missions closer to the target audience. Through the brand building process, you’re creating a connection with your potential buyers.
- Conveys professionalism: A well-established brand communicates credibility and a commitment to offering quality at a fair price. It instills security and confidence in people, knowing that your business is reliable and here to stay.
How To Grow and Evolve Your Brand Over Time
Once you build a brand, the story doesn’t end there. Here are a few tips you can use to grow and evolve your brand over time:
- Follow customer preference: In today’s fast-paced market, customers’ tastes are changing by the day. To stay ahead, monitor trends and social media to always know what your customers want. Adapt to what’s new, so you can make timely and necessary changes to your offerings.
- Re-check your competitors: Regularly revisit competitor analysis. Same as you, your competitors will adapt to shifting customer preferences; assessing their strategies can tell you how they’re addressing these changes and what you might adapt to your own brand.
- Follow the tech wave: New technologies constantly transform the way businesses work. Artificial technology, virtual reality, and machine learning are just the beginning. Incorporating these into your offerings or marketing efforts can boost efficiency and position your brand as a market leader.
- Understand globalization: Prepare for international expansion by considering expenses and logistical challenges such as shipping, order returns, etc. Ensure your brand is inclusive and resonates with diverse audiences across different cultures.
- Utilize multi-channel marketing: To evolve, your brand must take advantage of every marketing option you have at your disposal. And today, that’s a lot of options. From social media to email marketing and even PPC, marketing via several channels will spread the word about your business.
- Engage your employees: One of the most important ways to grow and evolve your brand is by making sure your employees are satisfied and motivated. Provide team building activities and opportunities to acquire new skills and certificates through various training.
How To Build a Brand Takeaways
Brand building is a comprehensive process that involves shaping your strategy, identity, and marketing approach to influence how you want your customers to perceive your brand. It includes everything that defines your brand, from your business name and objectives to its visuals, tone, and campaigns.
This multifaceted approach enhances visibility and helps your audience to only recognize your brand but connect and build a relationship with it.
If you don’t know how to build a brand by yourself, consider partnering with small business branding agencies that can help you brand your business the right way.
How To Build a Brand FAQs
1. What are the 4 essential components of building a brand?
The four essential components of brand building are brand identity, brand image, brand culture, and brand personality. Executing a successful brand strategy that nurtures these four elements also enhances brand trust, loyalty, and awareness.
2. What makes a strong brand?
A strong brand is easily recognizable and consistently expresses the company’s identity. It's more than just products and services — impactful branding also imparts meaning and value. Essentially, a strong brand is central to a company's success and is built through a compelling and effective brand strategy.
3. What are the most popular branding examples?
Some of the most popular branding examples today are household names like Apple, Coca-Cola, McDonalds, and Nike. Their branding is so distinct and memorable that even their slogans, like McDonald’s “I’m lovin’ it!”, and color palette, like Coca-Cola's distinct red, can instantly make you think of the brand.
4. How much does it cost to build a brand?
Generally, brand creation takes around $5,000, but it can go well over $50,000. This depends on your industry, what you want to include in your brand strategy (logo, slogan, website design, etc.), and whether you plan to outsource the work. For a more detailed brand-building cost estimate, check out our guide.
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