You might have the ultimate product/ solution or a killer business idea, but without conveying it to your potential customers in the right way, success is hard to achieve. This is what brand building is about.
Brand building doesn’t simply mean a name and a logo. It can include everything from your brand’s tone to personality, mission statement, and aesthetic choices such as color palette, images, and more. Ultimately, it can influence how customers and competitors see your brand.
In this article, we will be going through everything you need to know to craft a strong brand identity and build your brand from scratch.
What is a brand?
A brand can be defined as a distinguished product, service or concept in a market. A brand differentiates a business from other businesses within the market, making it stand out as unique, with its own set of guidelines regarding how the business will be presented, marketed or promoted to the audience. It is more than the company’s name, logo and product and evokes a recognizable and consistent feeling regarding the business.
The process of establishing a brand by deciding on its aesthetics, tone, target audience, etc. is known as branding.
Now that we have defined what a brand and branding is, let us look at the building blocks of a band.
What makes a brand?
To build a brand in the most memorable and impactful way, you need to be familiar with the building blocks that help in making up a brand. This includes:
Target audience
When building a brand from scratch, the first step is to define who your target audience is. This helps you understand who your brand is speaking to, thus further helping you strategize on how to speak to your audience.
Brand identity
Brand identity includes your business’s name, story, and competitive edge as well as the visual elements such as your logo, choice of colors, photography aesthetics, social media handles, etc. that define your brand.
Brand voice
What your brand will sound like is your brand voice. Having a unique and consistent brand voice is crucial to maintaining your brand personality across channels at every touchpoint. If your brand voice is funny and personal on your website, you should sound the same on your newsletters and social media pages.
Brand values and mission
Your brand’s mission and values should be defined to help you establish your goals and your promise to customers. In other words, it is what your brand embodies and strives to work for. Defining your brand values and mission helps you make guided decisions and deliver customers a consistent experience.
Style guide
As part of your larger brand guidelines, your style guide will outline how your brand will be presented on different platforms. From the use of your logo to fonts to brand voice to other aesthetic choices, the style guide can guide you or other agencies that work on your behalf to stay consistent with your branding.
What are brand guidelines?
Brand guidelines are a document or a set of rules that define how your brand should be visually and verbally presented. It will outline every aspect of your brand and define how it comes up in different channels. In short, it is the ultimate playbook that will assist your brand-building decisions.
An effective and well-constituted brand guideline will be able to:
- Ensure consistent branding across all customer touchpoints
- Offer help in crisis communication
- Will be able to guide the brand as it scales
- Assist in hiring staff and training them
- Keep your teams, retail partners, agencies and freelancers informed and aligned with the brand
7 steps to build your brand on Shopify
Brand building doesn’t happen in an instant. It is crucial to build it with a solid foundation and by considering every aspect carefully. Here are the seven key steps to build your brand from scratch:
1. Research the target market
To build a successful brand, the first and most crucial step is to understand what your target market is. This will involve defining who your competitors are and who your potential customers are. Without knowing what your audience wants, creating a brand identity that sticks and creates an impact is difficult. Here are a few ways to conduct market research:
- Do a quick search on your product/service to identify all the direct and indirect competition in the industry.
- Talk to your potential customers to understand what brands they prefer.
- Look at different social media pages that are followed by your target audience.
- Read publications, blogs, social media posts, etc. using Google Trends to identify trends.
- Recognize your Unique Selling Points to differentiate yourself in the market.
2. Define brand voice and personality
Define your brand's voice and personality by taking into consideration things like what your audience wants, while setting yourself unique. Start by creating a proposition statement that states what you sell, who you are selling to and what sets your brand apart. This is important to give your brand an edge over competitors.
Find your brand's niche by brainstorming a few words that best describe it, so that it is translated to your customers in an impactful manner. Your brand voice should also be established, with a list of dos, don’ts and other guidelines to govern its consistency.
3. Choose the name for your brand
The biggest marker and key identifying element for your brand is your business name. Your brand name should be unique and not be used by any other company. You should also check the availability of social media handles for the name and ensure that it suits the product/service and brand. A few ways to create a brand name are:
- Using a metaphor or suggestive word for the product/industry/ service etc.
- Make a new word as a brand name.
- Change the spellings of a word to create a unique name.
- Turn a longer name into an acronym.
- Create a portmanteau like pin+interest= Pinterest.
- Use the name of the owner/creator.
Note that if your choice of domain name is not available, you can find creative ways to find a name that is available while being identifiable to your brand.
4. Write your brand story
The next crucial part of your brand you need to present is your brand story, which provides customers with a closer look at your brand’s roots and its guiding principles. This gives a human touch to your brand and customers find it easier to relate or commit to your brand.
Your story should be compelling, honest and transparent and should adequately appeal to and resonate with, your intended audience.
Once you have written down your brand story in the best possible way, you can use this to further create a catchy slogan that creates a lasting impression, while summarizing the brand’s values. A few approaches to creating a good slogan include:
- Using a catchy rhyme.
- Speak directly to the target audience and adopt their attitude. For example: Toyota’s “Let's go places!”
- Make it a unique metaphor. Such as Skittles' “Taste the Rainbow”
- Convey your claim or your uniqueness in a simple statement.
5. Create a style guide for your brand
Now that you have your target audience and market defined and your brand name, story and voice established, you can start by building the brand visually, with a style guide. Having a style guide is crucial for designing your brand website, social media profile, product packages, photographs etc.
Here are a few things to keep in mind:
Choice of color
Colors have a psychological impact and potentially influence how customers feel about your brand. The colors and moods you choose perfectly complement the product and the personality of your brand. For example, a fitness brand with sporty products can go for edgier color tones while a baby product brand can use soothing or fun color schemes.
Fonts
Make sure that the fonts work alongside the colors that you have chosen. It is ideal to stick to two fonts as more font types can make your brand websites or social posts look cluttered.
Choice of effects and aesthetic elements
If your brand uses a lot of images, it is important to establish rules and guidelines for mood, colors, photo effects etc. to maintain a consistent aesthetic across all your graphical elements and visuals.
6. Design logo and brand assets
Logos can be of different types including, emblems, icon logos, mascot logos, abstract logos, wordmarks or letter marks. When designing your logo, you should look to convey the spirit of the brand in a unique and identifiable manner. The logo should also be crafted with scalability taken into consideration, as it is hard to change once you have decided on it.
Since your logo can appear on different platforms and places including your products, video ads, email, YouTube channel, social media avatar, website etc. you should have versions of your logo, adapted to these uses. To create a logo on a budget you can rely on a free tool like Canva.
7. Consistently apply your branding across your business
Now that you have a brand up from scratch, it is time to apply your branding across your business. Customers should be able to recognize your brand from your advertisements, social media posts or retail stores. You should frequently refer to your brand guidelines, values and mission statements, thus ensuring that your brand is presented cohesively, and makes the best impact on your target audience.
Conclusion
Building your brand is a continuous process that you have to consistently work on to strengthen your brand identity and establish your brand among your audiences. This means that beyond your logo, name and aesthetics, you need to also have consistent messaging and marketing.
Evolving your brand and establishing it may not be simple, but is extremely rewarding. And there is no one right way of doing it. This is why it is ideal to go for expert help in order to build a successful recognizable brand.
