New businesses are opened every day, and many of these businesses often seem to sell the same thing. Especially on social media, we get exposed to new brands every day. This is obviously great for consumers since we all have plenty of options, but it definitely makes it harder for business owners.
Even though there is a large amount of competition nowadays, your businesses can still stand out in a crowd - you just need to go the extra mile and do it right. There is one thing in particular that will help you differentiate yourself from others: your brand. You need to invest in creating a strong brand that will get and keep people’s attention. With the right branding, you have the chance to gain control over how people perceive your business, so you definitely don’t want to overlook this.
The branding of your business might be the most important thing of all. It allows you to grow an audience or customer base that loves YOU, not just what you sell. More importantly, it raises the value of what you offer -because at the end of the day there’s only one you, and that means that you’re the only one that can offer what you do in the way that you do. Your brand really gives you personality, so let’s take a look at how you can come up with the perfect brand strategy.
But how do you come up with the right brand strategy?
To build a strong brand, you need to work on four main brand pillars: your why, your story, the experience, and your visual identity. Once you have this backbone for your business, you will be able to create a unique brand.
Your Why
Starting with the first pillar, think about why you want this business. What motivates you? What problem are you solving? What drives you? Now, your why should not be “to earn money”, or “to become rich”. That might be a part of your motivation, but it should go deeper than that. Think about the reason you started doing this in the first place. Maybe your product or service can help people with a situation that you have been in before, or maybe it can make their life easier or bring any other value. You really want to find the reason why this is your passion, and what it is that you connect with because this will bring you to your next pillar.
Your Story
Now that you know your why, you need to build the roadmap from “there’s a problem that needs to be fixed” to “I’m the BEST one to fix it, and here is how”. In order to make this as clear as possible, you should build a narrative. If you are consistent with your story, you will attract the right customers. This is where you go from just any company to a company with personality. You put in the emotions that people will connect with. Even if your product is “boring” you can still connect with your story.
The experience
Your customers’ experience should be a translation of your story. Every touchpoint they have with your business should remind them of your story. From the moment they find you until they receive your product at the doorstep. Your tone of voice, the way you treat potential new clients, the relationship you build with your clients, and everything else. As soon as you remove one of these parts, your brand loses some of its power.
Visual Identity
The last part is your visual identity and this is where it all comes together. With the first three pillars, you built your foundation and the visual identity is how you translate that. It reflects your why, your story, and it adds to the experience in the blink of an eye. Your style, logo, colors, fonts etc. should represent both you AND your ideal client. It’s really about merging what feels authentic to you but what also attracts your ideal client. It’s kind of like the face of your brand.
How your brand strategy will help you
As soon as you are set on these four pillars you will see that all of a sudden, you turned an ordinary brand that could be anyone's, into your own personal, unique brand - one that will stand out and touch people. But it will allow you so much more even. Here are the four more ways you will benefit from having your own brand:
People will remember your business
As we already established, branding your business will help you stand out from the crowd and be recognized more easily. If you have a strong branding for your business, people will naturally take note of it, certainly more than they would of a business without it. A business that doesn’t have cohesive branding won’t stay in someone’s mind for very long.
Someone might even see your brand for only a moment, maybe on an Instagram ad or in a video. But, if it stands out in a positive way, there’s a good chance they won’t forget it, even if this person isn’t ready to use your products or services just yet. Once they are ready to take the next steps and if your branding has stuck with them, they’ll come back to you.
You can improve your advertising
The next benefit is that your branding contributes to your advertising since your brand and advertising go hand in hand. If you want to have better advertising for your business, you’re going to need to create a good brand first.
When you’re advertising your business, you want everything to be cohesive and represent your business’s identity and values. If you’re advertising without solid branding, you’re missing out on a lot of great opportunities to create an effective campaign. Incorporating branding into your advertising will help increase the recognition of your brand when it’s all tied together. If you do it correctly, your brand color, font, or even certain words could already remind people of you. For example, if people see turquoise they often think of Tiffany’s, or if you hear “just do it” you most likely think of Nike. That’s a sign of successful branding. You don’t even need to mention the name of the business, but people still think of you when they see, hear or even smell certain things that remind them of you.
You will be able to build trust more easily
Trust from your customers is one of the most important things you can have as a business, but this isn’t always easy to gain, especially if you are new on the market and you still need to prove yourself. Without any branding, it will be even harder to get people to trust you. Branding helps you show potential customers that you’re an established and credible business. You can use this to tell people very early on what they can expect from your business. This investment in your business will improve itself, and potential customers will recognize that you put in the work to create your brand.
Think about it. If you want to buy new jewelry but you come across a brand with no real values, boring visual branding, and no story behind it, it’ll be hard to remember it, right? On the other hand, if you found a business that has clear, professional-looking branding, you probably know which one you’d trust more.
You will have a more loyal customer base
From trust, you get loyalty. Ideally, you want to attract customers who continue to come back. With good branding (and a story that people relate to) you can give your brand a more human side. Your customers can connect with it more than with a company that’s strictly all business.
In many ways, you can make people feel more connected to your business by creating emotions with your branding. It allows you to build relationships with your audience, which can eventually turn them into loyal customers. You can create a brand that people actually care about, and put yourself ahead of businesses that aren’t using this to their advantage.
Once you are ready to brand your business, make sure to check out our blog post on the Branding Basics that any business needs!
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