With the right branding efforts, you’ll be able to shape your customers’ perception of what it is that you stand for, and resonate deeply with your client base.
While establishing a brand requires a long, soul-searching process for some businesses, it can also be kicked off with a much quicker procedure when needed.
WHAT IS A BRAND?
Brand consultant, author and designer Debbie Millman defines branding as “deliberate differentiation.” According to this definition, a brand is the unique point of view which sets a business apart from its competition, while doing so intentionally, with planning and strategy.
Put simply, a brand is the way a business is perceived, or the story that it chooses to tell. This story should repeat itself across all of the various means in which audiences come into contact with the brand, amounting to a cohesive and unified brand identity. These assets are many and diverse: from the name of the business, to its visual look-and-feel, and the written language it applies.
HOW TO BUILD A BRAND
Research the competition
Establish your brand personality
Choose the right business name
Craft a catchy slogan
Design a professional logo
Define a visual language
Build a brand voice
Apply your branding consistently
1. RESEARCH THE COMPETITION
Conduct market research in which you define your target audience and look up your direct and indirect competitors.
TARGET AUDIENCE: Understand who your customers are and create buyer personas.
MARKET COMPETITORS: Find out which other companies are already targeting this same market.
2. ESTABLISH YOUR BRAND PERSONALITY
Now is the time to dream up everything you want your brand to be. We know that a brand can’t appeal to all of the users at all times. Good branding is about what sets a business apart, which requires you to commit to a smaller, well-defined niche.
3. CHOOSE THE RIGHT BUSINESS NAME
The question of how to name a business is hardly ever easy to answer. A good name can greatly improve your business’s brandability and credibility, helping you convey your essence right off the bat.
Look for a name that’s short and sweet, easy to pronounce and memorable. This will let people recognise you easily. Try and reflect something about your brand personality - from your core values, to your product.
4. CRAFT A CATCHY SLOGAN
In addition to a name, try to come up with a short slogan for your business which captures what your brand is all about. It should sum up in very few words the spirit and values of your brand, while being catchy, impactful and memorable.
Although not all businesses have slogans, these phrases serve as a handy little branding asset, helping people connect to your work.
5. DESIGN A PROFESSIONAL LOGO
While branding is the culmination of many different assets together, applied consistently and over time - it’s safe to say that your logo is at the very heart of your branding efforts. A logo is often the very first, and most prominent, element which your business presents to the world, and can largely impact the ways in which it’s perceived.
In order for your logo to be scalable and look great on all of these various assets, make sure that your logo is either clearly legible in all sizes, or that it’s a flexible type of logo. A flexible logo means that you have various iterations of your logo that can be used in different contexts. This would allow you to show your full design in most instances, while at other times opt for a more limited version of the logo, such as the icon or wordmark alone.
6. DEFINE A VISUAL LANGUAGE
Another aspect that stems from your brand personality is your brand’s look-and-feel, or your visual language. While this does have to do with the design of your logo, there’s also much more to it.
There are two main elements that make up a brand’s visual identity:
BRAND COLOURS: Brand colours are a palette of around five to ten colours, used to represent a certain company. A consistent and strategic application of brand colours can increase brand awareness and recognisability. As an example, think of Google’s quartet of blue, red, green and yellow, or Instagram’s gradient of warm hues. When crafting your business’s colour palette, keep colour psychology principles in mind. In addition, think of the colours that are most commonly associated with your industry. If we look at the food and restaurant industry, for instance, we see that red, orange and yellow are often used to evoke appetite, while green is usually used to promote notions of well-being. Blue and pink, however, are customary for sweets and desserts.
FONT SCHEME: The typography that your business uses can speak volumes about who you are, and a consistent use of the same one to three fonts will result in a cohesive, easily recognisable look.
7. BUILD A BRAND VOICE
Now that your brand has its own visual language, it’s time to hone the textual language to go with it. A brand voice is your style of communication, meaning the ways in which you talk and write to your audience. Your voice should extend to everything from your website’s written content and microcopy, to your e-mail signature, and even the words you choose when talking to clients face-to-face.
8. APPLY YOUR BRANDING CONSISTENTLY
The single most important branding tip is consistency. In order for a brand to be effective and connect with its client base as much as you’ve intended, it needs to be applied over and over again.
Use all of the above mentioned elements - your logo, slogan, visual language and brand voice, in anything you create or do as a business.
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