Branding is an attempt to create a unique identity for a business that is attractive enough to grab the attention of a wide group of consumers. Creating a brand identity for your business isn’t just about crafting a unique logo, but also making sure it resonates with your business’s mission, vision, and values. You also need to determine your brand voice for future content.
Strong branding will drive high income for small businesses because it will act as a marketing effort. Appealing branding will drive people’s purchasing power and reduce your marketing budget.
In this branding guide, we will walk you through several steps to help your business survive.
Understanding Your Brand Identity
First, determine your brand identity. It involves your brand voice, values, and mission. To determine your brand voice, you need to know your target market. Then, you can decide whether you need to deliver your stories in an informal, semi-formal, or casual way.
Your values should also resonate with your brand, whether it is sustainability, manufacturing practices, or ethics. Missions are about what your business will be in five years and beyond, and how you would like it to grow and scale.
When starting a business, you have to define your target market. The target market is the customers who will buy your product or use your services. You can only target specific customers whose problems would be solved by your business.
Then, you also need to define your Unique Value Proposition (UVP). Your UVP should state why your customers should buy from you. When defining UVP, consider customers’ motivations for choosing the right business, including reputation, status, necessity, and the balance between quality and price.
Crafting a Memorable Brand Name and Logo
In the age of AI, finding a memorable name is an easy job. You only need to craft an AI prompt to find a memorable name that matches your brand identity. You may also add some details, like “make a catchy, warm, and fun brand name for my service business that (add your brand identity)”.
The way to craft a logo is no different from finding a name. The color, image, and font you use should resonate with your brand identity. Use AI tools, like Canva, to create your first logo at a low cost. Need professional help? Hire from Upwork or another Freelancing website.
Building a Consistent Brand Voice and Visual Style
Here we come to the next branding guide. After determining your brand voice in the previous step, now it’s time to think about visual style and put it into consistent practice.
Visual style should complement your brand voice. Your brand voice can be either friendly, professional, or witty. Then, craft a visual style that comes with it. Consider the color palette, fonts, and visuals that represent your brand identity.
After that, combine your brand voice and visual style to be applied to your social media, email marketing, and website content. Practicing consistency in all marketing channels can help build trust and credibility with your audience. Sometimes, loyal customers may sense a difference in your tone and speculate that you’re rebranding or that there are changes in leadership, which can affect your sales.
Telling Your Brand Story
Telling a story is everything for any business. A story can build an emotional connection and trust by making your business relatable to your target audience. So, if you want to succeed, make sure you share inspiring and appealing stories, but keep them authentic. Truth is the foundation of trust.
To craft a compelling story, start by telling a background story that motivated you to start your business. You can also discuss the missions or goals you hope to achieve with your business. Your story can be something like your personal journey, struggling to find the best product or service for you.
Monitoring and Evolving Your Brand
Practice makes perfect. This also applies to your brand. Your branding strategy may look good at first. However, in three years, you may start to compare your brand with others, and then you realize “a change needs to be made”. If you have the same thought, maybe it’s time to make some changes.
When changing things, you need to consider many points of view. A change will impact your team, partners, and customers. You need to collect feedback from those groups. You can do this by holding a meeting, reading reviews, conducting surveys, and reading comments on social media. Then, you can decide whether you should make the change. If the answer is yes, determine the areas or things that need changing.
If many things need adjustment, rebranding may be necessary, especially when you change values. An offline business may need rebranding when moving to a new location because it will have a new target market. Mergers and acquisitions also force every business to rebrand.
Branding is like marketing your business identity to your target audience, so they can know you better and know when and why they need to reach you. This branding guide only requires you to start small and be consistent. Whatever you do with your branding, make sure to make it count!