Starting a Brand – How it Helps your Business
Starting a brand is both exciting and daunting. You may be a startup, new to business and about to jump into building your first brand. You could be a veteran, savvy in business but new to understanding how to make the most of your brand.
Whatever reasons you have for starting your branding journey, the first thing to know is that it can be a long process.
But it doesn’t have to be a painful one.
Like any great quest, it starts with you answering the call to adventure and taking the first steps into the unknown.
Branding is vital to a business’s success. It’s how we connect with potential clients and stay front of mind when they need us. Getting it right creates opportunities. Getting it wrong builds barriers.
That’s why starting a brand can feel like a daunting prospect – how can you know if you’ll get it right?
This article will act as a guide for the steps involved in creating a brand and how to use it to ensure your business is successful.
First, it’s important to define what we mean by branding. It’s not just your visuals – that’s a part of it. Your branding is how you communicate your unique message to your audience. It’s how you build a strong, emotional connection with your audience.
Building and maintaining this connection is key to creating a successful brand.
Step 1 – Define your Brand
Most people find visual identity to be the most exciting part of branding and tend to jump in there. The thing is, if you begin with logos, fonts and colours, you’re starting your brand in the middle.
So before you make the classic mistake and potentially hamper your brand before you even begin, you should define what your brand is.
Here are a few steps to think about.
Identify your target audience
Your brand lives and dies on how it communicates – that means WHO it communicates with is vital. You can have the sleekest, sharpest brand in the world, but if it doesn’t connect with your audience, it won’t help you grow.
So start your branding journey as you mean to go on – by thinking of your audience first. Understand your ideal client and gather as much information on them as possible. Do you know their likes and dislikes? What do they fear? What problem are you solving for them?
The more data you gather here, the easier it will be to target your brand accordingly.
Define your brand values, vision, mission and purpose
Values – While they are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to brand strategy, values are still important to get right early on. Without them, you’ll find your brand struggles to show why it is different – which is crucial for success.
Think about your values as your brand’s moral compass – guiding principles that dictate what it will and won’t do. This is why they need to be far deeper than corporate platitudes like ‘trusted’ or ‘professional.
Great values show how you are different and provide promises of lines you won’t cross.
Vision – Your brand vision is what you want to achieve. This is the tangible part of your brand identity. It’s goal-oriented, but should be BIG! We’re talking ‘shoot for the moon’ big.
The point of a vision is to give the brand something to strive for – use your vision to align your actions with what you want to achieve.
Mission – The mission is the action. It’s all about how you’ll achieve your vision. Creating a strong mission empowers you to accomplish your vision and fulfil your purpose.
Purpose – If the vision is ‘what’ and the mission is ‘how’, the purpose is ‘why’. This statement is beyond making money – it’s focused on the change you create for your clients or the world.
Your purpose statement should include your motivations and acts as the drive for your brand – what propels it to keep going, even when things are hard.
Create a brand persona
Your brand shouldn’t be flat and dull – it should have personality. The whole point of a brand is to be remembered, and creating a distinct persona helps to do this.
When you create your brand persona, consider building a character around it. Are they bold and adventurous (like me) or refined and classic? Are they serious or funny? Building your brand around a character makes it easier to see their differences. A great starting place for this is brand archetypes, which give a basic template you can refine into a unique personality.
When creating a persona, it must speak directly to your target audience. This makes it feel more personal and ultimately, memorable.
Stage 2 – Develop Your Brand Strategy
A defined brand is easier to market – and the next stage of your branding journey is all about how you appeal to your audience. This also covers the rest of your brand identity – focusing on the external brand that acts to attract your ideal clients.
Create a brand message
The message is what your clients will hear – so above all it needs clarity. Focus your brand’s essence into a compelling message that communicates your values.
It also needs to resonate with your audience, so create a tone they will respond to. And for the love of everything holy, use storytelling in your message. It’s incredibly powerful and an often missed opportunity for brands to connect directly with their audience.
Choose the right channels to reach your audience
A great message won’t do much if it’s yelled into the void. Even the clearest message is useless if it’s shown to the wrong people.
That’s why your brand needs to be where your ideal clients are. Don’t waste time building channels that your audience doesn’t use. Instead, focus your strategic efforts on the places you KNOW they hang out.
Develop a brand visual identity
Here it is, the part you really want to do – the visuals!
Your visual identity is a huge component of your brand. So it’s important to get it right, but it’s also a fun place to experiment. Logos, colours, fonts, patterns and layouts all combine to create a visual fingerprint that your audience can recognise.
It’s important to think about clarity and consistency in your visuals when starting a brand. They should reflect what your brand identity shows. Use visual elements to build the feelings you want your audience to feel
Step 3 – Implement Your Branding
A strong strategy only works when properly implemented – this is where your brand starts to come into contact with the wider world! It’s also where you’ll start noticing potential issues and can begin to tweak and iterate your brand.
Create a brand style guide
A style guide sets boundaries and rules for your branding. This may sound restrictive, but in reality, it’s incredibly healthy for the brand. With no rules, there can be no consistency, creating a muddled, confusing message.
A brand style guide helps you stay aligned – keeping you oriented towards your goals and objectives. It should prevent the brand from sending a confusing message but allow enough scope for innovation. From a technical standpoint, it contains rules for which colours and fonts to use, how to use the logo and the persona the brand should get across.
The brand guidelines show your team how to use the brand identity to create a consistent brand experience.
Consistently use your brand across all channels
You know that style guide I told you to create? The one literally in the previous point? Yeah, it’s time to use it.
From your website to your business cards, ensure your brand remains consistent. All your touchpoints should get across the same feelings and values.
There’s a simple reason for this: consistency creates recognition and trust.
Monitor and adjust your branding strategy as needed
Sometimes things won’t act quite how you thought. There’s an old saying ‘no plan survives contact with the enemy’. It’s the same with your brand. There’s loads to think about, so sometimes something isn’t quite right or doesn’t get the response you hoped for.
Don’t panic. It’s ok.
Usually, you don’t need to throw everything out and start again – so long as you monitor the brand and make adjustments where necessary. Make tweaks as you start to get audience feedback to build better connections.
Step 4 – Measure Your Branding Success
There’s a reason I see branding as an epic adventure. It’s because it’s about the journey. And a big part of any journey is pausing to look at how far you’ve come and to see where you’re going next. Setting objectives and measuring your brand’s success helps keep you on track.
Set goals and objectives
Define clear, actionable goals for your branding. Do you want more awareness, higher engagement or improved sales? Knowing what you want to achieve helps you do it. You can’t reach your location if you don’t know where it is.
Track key performance indicators
Although branding is about feeling, data is still vital to track your brand’s favour. Look at metrics like website traffic, social engagement and brand sentiment regularly to check your brand’s health.
Analyse and adjust your branding strategy based on results
It’s no good taking that data and not doing anything with it. Use it to find weaknesses in your branding and adjust your strategy to create better results. Little tweaks often are more effective (and less expensive) than infrequent, colossal changes.
Starting a Brand helps Grow your Business
If your business isn’t growing, then it’s declining. And a strong brand is a vital part of business growth. Consumers prefer to buy from brands they trust – and a huge part of building that is a clear, consistent brand.
The most important thing to remember about starting your branding journey is that it’s not a one-time voyage – it’s an ongoing expedition. When you commit to starting a brand, it becomes a constant partner on your adventure: the Sam to your Frodo.
And that means it’s not a one-and-done exercise.
The best brands are constantly managed and iterated to get the best results. And while it may not be feasible for you to check it every single day, you must set aside time to ensure it’s clear, consistent and communicating effectively.
The landscape may shift and the winds may change – but with a clear vision and strategic navigation, your brand can chart a course to lasting success.
All you need to do is be brave enough to take the first step.
That first step looking out of reach? Compass may be what you need – an hour-long session to focus your energy where you need it. Click below for more information.
