Branding has become a very popular concept in this social media age. It is a process that companies maximize to influence their target audience and potential customers. Business owners must deliberately work at building a great brand in order to scale up their business.
In branding, public perception of your business is very important as it guides the choices your potential customers make. Your customers need to perceive your products or services in a positive light and have a memorable experience before, during and after purchase.
What is a great brand?
A great brand gives you a unique image in your industry and makes you stand out from other similar businesses. Your brand communicates your company values and determines if customers would stay loyal to you or face other alternatives that are at their beck and call. A brand message must be consistent in building customer loyalty and establishing relationships between the customers and the products. A great brand is a combination of various factors that come into play.
Brand building is the process of creating a unique image for a company in the mind of your target audience and customers. In simple terms, it regulates or translates into what people think about when the name of your company, product or services is mentioned. Great brands are known for consistent messaging. This establishes a differentiated presence in the market and also maintains a brand voice the customers are familiar with.
How to build a Brand
In building a brand, your major aim is to gain the trust of your customers through consistency. You need to be able to keep your promises on delivering quality products or services. You must decide on how you want your business to be perceived and stick to it. This should reflect on your website, social media platforms and also in your advert campaigns. To further stand out, here are five steps to building a great brand:
Know and Understand Your Target Audience
One of the first things you must understand in business is that you cannot get to everybody. You must find out the range of people that are actually in need of your products so you’ll be better guided on how to reach out to them. A company making diapers cannot be focused on reaching old men, rather their focus would be on young wives and mothers. You need to know what kind of problems your business is solving and the people who actually have these problems.
Knowing and understanding your target audience gives you an idea of the image you would portray when branding. This is where you take into consideration certain variables such as logo, color, slogan and so on. You must also be able to identify their interests, likes, goals as all of these must be considered when building your brand. For instance, certain colors are peculiar to a particular gender or ideology, if you know who your target audience is, you would know what kind of color will appeal to them.
Distinguish your business from others through Positioning
You have to position your business in a unique way that catches the attention of your prospective customers. While doing this, you must carry out research on your competition, products, prices, strategies. You must make your brand stand out as different from the others and suitable to meet the exact needs of your target audience.
Have a Unique Brand Identity
Create a brand identity that makes your customers identify you without hesitation. A brand identity helps to communicate your brand message and business goals to your audience. This also shapes the perception of your brand in the mind of your customers. It entails all the visual aspects of your brand like your logo, colors, slogan and so on. All of these must be chosen in consideration of your target audience while still ensuring it is unique and particularly for your brand. Your brand identity portrays your style, beliefs, quality of your products and services and any other message you want to pass across.
Develop a Strategic Brand Image
Brand image is how your customers see your brand. It is formed over time through consistency in your brand positioning and consistency in your message. Having a strong brand image keeps you ahead in the competition and gains you loyal customers. How you treat your customers, how your products make them feel all contribute to building a positive and optimistic brand image. The goal is to ensure that your brand identity and image are not far apart from each other.
Utilize Winning Brand Strategies
Start ups can employ unique brand strategies to help them keep up with bigger businesses. Focusing on building relationships with new and existing customers helps foster brand loyalty as every customer feels a special sense of belonging.
Small businesses can utilize social media by having active social media pages and providing good customer care service that draws your customers to you. You can also engage in telling stories through your adverts that your target audience can easily relate to and enhance your brand image. Listening to customer feedback shows that you are interested in their opinion and can help you gain their loyalty.
And finally…
In building a great brand, you need to integrate marketing strategies such as content development, search engine optimization, integrated marketing communication as well as digital public relations into all your brand building processes to achieve optimal results. At Deixis we are specialists in the brand building process. Let’s take the stress off you while you concentrate on making more money. Click here to get a free quote.
