If you are starting a business, you probably already know that you will need a brand to present your company to your future clients, partners, target audience and your market segment. But it is important to know that building a brand is not only about creating a logo and printing it to your business cards. Of course, your logo is part of your branding; however, branding is much more than the graphic representation of your products or services.
So, what is brand building?
Before we can speak about how to build a brand, it is necessary to understand what exactly it is. And the best way to understand is reminding of what is a brand: it represents your business in all occasions. It includes your store’s visual and colors, your prints and packings, website, social media, content marketing and even sales and customer service.
So, brand building is the process of creating a brand, deciding its characteristics and all the resources related to it, such as how you are going to communicate with your clients, how you are going to engage with them on social media and other digital channels, etc.
How to build a brand
Building a brand is not something that happens in just one day. It is a process and it never ends, since after you decide for a logo, details and set up all channels to communicate with your audience, you will still be practicing your branding.
To help you give your first steps, here are 7 branding tips for your business:
Find out who is your target audience
The first step to start building a brand is to understand who your target audience is – because your future customers will need to understand and relate to it. Try to analyze age, gender, location, motivations, professions, goals, pain points, etc.
Determine your brand’s positioning and voice
The next step is to determine your brand’s personality: how it will communicate with your customers? Should be friendly or more professional? Technical or promotional? You can choose your brand’s voice by deciding what is the best way to talk to your target audience.
Create a logo and a tagline
Now it is time to create a graphic representation of your business: your logo. It should characterize your goals, your voice and what you want to sell. The best way to create a nice logo to represent your company is hiring a professional designer or an agency. Also, develop a good tagline – it will help your logo to explain what your business is about.
Find your message
Of course you want to sell your products and services. But it is also important to know how you want to sell: what is your message? How you can help your customers? What is important for them to know? Think about your goals and features and how to include them on your communications.
Be consistent
If you decide that your brand should be friendly and young, you should be consistent and use this kind of language in all your channels. That applies to your visuals, voice and message – it should be always the same, so your customers will recognize your brand even without seeing your logo.
Manage your marketing channels according to your brand’s identity
When you create a website or social media channels, it is necessary to remember not only of adding your logo and using your colors; it is also important to be loyal to your identity by using your brand’s voice when writing or even designing. Don’t forget about your audience: you should always connect with them. With that in mind, focus on creating good content and on building a meaningful relationship with your audience.
Remember that you and your team are advocates of your brand
After building a brand and keep engaging with your customers with it, remember that you and your team represent your company too. It is possible that a future client will research about you (or find your employees’ profiles on social media) - so try to reflect the most important aspects of your brand on your personal life and encourage your employees to stablish their personal brand too, if possible.
Building a brand is an endless process – but it is an important part of your business. It can also be very fun and rewarding job, since you can interact with your clients and realize how much you are able to help them with your products or services.
