Building a solid brand for your company is almost as important as the business itself.
Having a recognisable and consistent brand is a crucial part of long-term customer relationships. Successful branding can improve the recognition of your company and can, therefore, stimulate sales.
A coherent vision for your company is critical for building a successful brand. Understanding what you want the purpose of your brand to be and the image you want it to hold in the eyes of customers and employees is critical to shape the path you will take on your brand building journey. Here are some tips to help you understand your business vision and build a strong identity that resonates with your target market.
Understand Your Audience
The first part of building an identity for your company is to understand your target demographics. Those that you wish to appeal to with your business will likely be both internal and external. Internally, part of building a solid brand is to have a robust company ethos that resonates with employees and partners alike. Externally, your focus will be more customer-based.
Understanding demographics is mainly a data-driven affair. It is essential to be very specific when it comes to building your knowledge of your target market. Information on things like the age range, interests, and dislikes of your customers is critical to help shape the public face of your company. Ultimately, successful branding will allow a company to transcend being just a logo or a product; it will continually evolve and hold a place in the hearts of its customers.
Outline the Core Elements of Your Brand
When it comes to creating successful brands, the vision is everything. It is essential to outline what you see as the essence of what you are trying to build with your company. Thinking up six to twelve criteria that you think to define your brand can be helpful here.
A single thought or phrase cannot describe branding strategies. They are instead an amalgamation of ideas that come together to form a coherent identity. Without defining the key elements you wish to be present in your brand, you risk having an incomplete vision, making it more difficult to understand what you must do to grow your ideas.
You can break down the vision for your brand into core elements and extended elements. The core vision is ultimately the most important, and these should be the ideas for your brand that you feel differentiate you from your competitors most strongly. The core elements of your brand vision should closely match the values you wish your company to have and will be the primary focus on branding decisions.
Build Up the Extended Vision
It is crucial to think of the extended vision elements for your brand as extra descriptors to help you build your image in line with the core vision of your company. These parts of your vision will help your strategies to remain on brand, as they can significantly flesh out the overall idea underpinning your business.
Clear ideas at this stage can help to define the “personality” of your brand. These might not make up a fundamental part of your brand identity but can be helpful to provide texture to your overall plan and ensure that your brand identity is as complete as possible.
These extended goals will help your brand appeal to the target audiences you have decided on and can help to clarify how your company can differentiate itself from your competitors.
Customise Your Vision
While a vision is vital for building a successful brand, it is also crucial to pay attention to what you are offering. The types of products you sell, your interactions with customers and clients, and your key demographics will all impact how you implement your vision.
Some parts of a vision will be more important for certain types of business. For example, suppose you are in a tech industry that is constantly developing. In that case, it is likely the case that you will need to place a greater focus on innovation and R&D rather than other brands producing packaged items. Additionally, if your company is aspiring to be more corporate, having a strong brand personality might be less important than a brand that sells products directly to customers.
These different needs for different company styles will impact how you should go about realising your visions.
Your Logo and Presentation
Once you have a robust vision for what you want your brand to be, you should begin to think about how you wish to appear to represent this best. A logo is not necessarily the entirety of your brand identity, but a good one will play a huge role in creating a consistent and recognisable image for your company.
A logo is often the most recognisable part of a company and will help to form a coherent and memorable image. Creating a successful logo is more complicated than it might initially seem. Several criteria should be met that will help to enhance how recognisable your brand is.
Your logo should be exciting and different yet simple enough to be instantly associated with your company amongst your customer base. Having a recognisable colour palette associated with your brand can be an excellent way to increase visibility. Consistent colours can help build a unique look and feel for your company while maintaining a coherent image that is faithful to the vision for your brand.
Once you have a logo that fulfils these criteria, you must use it in all places that are associated with your brand. Emails, websites, business cards, etc., should all use the logo to help build the association between your brand image and your company. A good idea might be to fly your logo from a flag at your company HQ or your retail locations. Flagmakers offer a wide variety of flagpoles for sale that could help you to display your new logo wherever you desire proudly.
Develop a Coherent Brand Language
How your company communicates through emails, press releases, social media, etc., should have a consistent and recognisable style. The language you use through different platforms should reflect the personality of your company. For example, if your vision is for a more relaxed image, maybe social media teams would best adopt a playful online persona.
Your advertising strategy should also reflect the brand language and personality. Advertising will spread the word about your company, but using a consistent style and presentation for advertisements across all platforms will help people recognise your brand. Advertising can be a powerful way to build the relationship between you and your target audience, as often people will prefer brands they feel they can relate to.
Build a Brand, Promote Longevity
Overall, branding is the secret that has allowed companies like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s to transcend from businesses to cultural icons. Building a brand takes a lot of effort, but if you put time into understanding the vision for your business and making an identity that is coherent with this, your company can benefit to no end. Branding can help bring a small company to become instantly recognisable and generates lots of customer loyalty, so if you wish for your business to grow, some thought on branding is essential.
