Building Better Branding – Part 1

 

Branding is a huge part of the market strategy for any business. Increasingly, people shop with brands that speak to their core values. With so much choice, they can afford to. As such, your brand needs to be strong and clear to stand out amongst the others in your market. This is often a mammoth task, and one with no clear right and wrong solutions.

 

Build Branding

 

 

We’ve formulated some tips to help you understand what to look out for when creating your brand. Although this is not an extensive list, it should give you some ideas of how to better brand your business.

 

Tips for Branding your Business

 

1 – Make a Plan

 

It may sound obvious, but the best brands begin with a plan. Consistency is far easier to achieve with a coherent plan in place. Look at your research and think about your target market. Who are they? How are you going to reach them? People often forget that a brand needs to appeal to the market, not just the owner’s ego! Look long and hard at your target market and make decisions based on what you want them to see.

 

You need to be thinking from a very early stage about the ‘end goals’ of your brand. If you do so, you will find it far easier to reject bad ideas further down the line. You open yourself up to creating a lacklustre brand if you fail to think about it’s direction and end goals.

 

2 – Research

 

Done your research? No? Then go out and do it. Understanding your market and your competitors is the only way to create a brand that can survive in the business world. Good research will open up new avenues for you and give you confirmations on great ideas or help remove bad ones from the equation.

 

Not only should you be researching at the beginning of your branding journey, but also throughout it. By researching beyond the start up stage you ensure that your brand stays true to your mission. It is no good allowing your brand to go off track as this will lose you customers as fast as any other bad business decision.

 

3 – View your brand from your customer’s eyes

 

Your customers are your lifeblood, so make sure to see your brand how they see it. Try not to be too precious when making changes to your brand based on what your consumers want. If it comes down to a decision between what you like and if it’s right for the business, try to accept the compromise even if you’re not personally fond of the change.

 

Remember, you can’t tell your customers what they like, it is important to understand what they want. Looking at your customer’s likes, dislikes and trends allows you to mould your brand to better suit their needs. This will set you up as a more attractive prospect in the eyes of consumers when they come to choosing whether to use your services.

 

4 – Don’t be afraid to get assistance

 

Branding is tough, especially when you attempt to do it for yourself. It’s easy to miss or overlook something important when you’re too close to your own brand. It is not an exaggeration to say that a badly fitting brand will cause major problems for your business. Get a branding expert to look at your brand or even better, pay to get it designed by a specialist. Though this can be expensive, it will pay off down the line. Brand designers know what they are doing and the potential pitfalls to look out for when creating a brand, so their expertise is invaluable.

 

You should also look at getting assistance from other sources. Do market research on your brand – how does it make your potential customers feel? Use family and friends if you have to, but remember, they may have a slight bias, so getting research from neutral sources is more favourable.

 

5 – Transparency is important

 

If you build up walls between you and your potential customers, they simply won’t come knocking. By using transparency as a selling point, you build up trust in your market before they have even used your product or service. A customer base that trusts a brand will show significantly in your conversion rates.

 

Transparency will drive business leads and help you make great business relationships. If you network as a part of your marketing, this transparency will really shine through in your relationship making. Transparency will help you grow your brand and will certainly get you referred to others.

 

Interested in learning more about branding? Contact us here.