Want to make sure your brand is standing out from the rest? Follow these helpful tips.
Branding is an essential part of any business. It’s how you communicate the value of your company and differentiate yourself from the competition. But it can be confusing to create a brand that reflects your company’s true identity and sticks with people when they think about you. We’ve come up with some tips to help make sure you’re doing it right:
Know your audience.
Great brands know their audience. They know how to talk to them, when to talk to them and how best to make them feel good about what you have for sale.
The same is true for your brand: You need an understanding of who you’re speaking with, what they want from life, and what kind of message gets through most effectively.
Define your brand
Before you get started on your branding journey, it’s important to understand what a brand is and how it differs from other marketing terms. In short, a brand is the sum total of all of your company’s communications. It encompasses everything from your logo to the customer service experience to your business strategy. Brands can be both tangible (like an actual product or service) or intangible (such as an idea).
“A strong brand can become the ultimate competitive advantage in any industry,” says Phil Brinded, Chief Commercial Officer at consulting firm Brand Finance. “It’s like having a magical shield protecting you from competitors.”
Brands aren’t just for big businesses; they’re key to survival for startups too! They help attract investors who want to invest in companies with sustainable value—and they also help attract customers who are willing to pay more money for products and services from brands they know and trust.”
Make it memorable.
It’s really important to make sure your brand is memorable. It’s not just about making sure the name of your company is easy to spell, but also memorable.
How do you make it memorable?
- It should be unique and stand out from others in its industry so people can easily spot it in a crowded marketplace.
- The logo and design should be simple, clear, and consistent across all marketing materials so that consumers can easily recognize it as a single brand instead of multiple brands (which would dilute its power).
Here are some examples of brands that are very memorable:
Don't limit yourself to just your logo.
Branding is not just about your logo, it’s about all the visuals you have in place to represent your brand. You can’t always rely on the same thing for every medium—for example, if you use a logo as part of your email signature, you won’t want to use it in social media profiles or advertising (unless the image is used very differently).
To take branding to a new level, understand that logos are not just for websites and business cards anymore. They’re also for emails, social media profile pictures, and more.
Think beyond visual branding.
As a branding expert, you might have heard of the book Think and Grow Rich. Well, we’ve got some news: it’s not just about money. It’s also about how you can use your brand to tell a story that resonates with your audience, creating an identity that’s relevant to them by being consistent in your messaging and building trust with your audience through consistency across all channels.
It all starts with making sure that everything from your logo to website copy is consistent across all channels — which means hiring a professional designer who knows what they’re doing so they don’t mess up their design by using Comic Sans (yes, this really happened). Once you do have an established visual identity for the brand itself—whether it’s just a logo or something more complex like a color palette—make sure those aesthetics are carried through into all aspects of the business, including social media images and web pages. This way everything looks cohesive without feeling forced together; instead, it should look like these aspects belong together because they came out of one mind rather than multiple designers coming up with random ideas based on what seemed cool at first glance but didn’t necessarily make sense once put together into one cohesive whole (see above paragraph).
Consistency is key
Consistency is key to a strong brand. Your customers will remember you, and your business will grow because of it.
Consistency builds trust. When you see something or someone over and over again, they become familiar—and trust is built into our DNA as humans! This means that even if a customer doesn’t know who you are yet, they still might trust the brand because they’re seeing it so many times (and in different ways).
Consistency has been shown to build more sales than novelty ever could—and this is true when it comes to branding as well! If all of your marketing materials look different from each other or don’t feel like they belong together on any level, then how can anyone even tell what kind of company you are?
Be authentic when communicating with your audience.
If you want to stand out in your industry, it’s essential that you focus on the essence of who you are. Why? Because there are countless other companies offering the same service or product as yours. If your brand isn’t unique, customers won’t be able to tell you apart from the rest of them. Customers need to know what sets you apart as an individual and why they should choose your business over someone else’s.
So how do you go about communicating this uniqueness? It starts with knowing who your target audience is: what kinds of people would find value in the products or services that you offer? Next, ask yourself what makes those people tick—what motivates them and inspires their decisions? Finally, identify which parts of themselves they’ll be most drawn towards when deciding where to spend their money (or time). The answers will provide insight into how they see themselves and where they want others to see them as well—which gives us a better idea about how our brand should present itself.
Set yourself apart by communicating your story in ways that are uniquely yours.
Don’t forget, a strong brand isn’t just about what you say—it’s also about how you say it. It’s important to remember that your brand is more than just a logo or a tagline; it should be an expression of who you are and what makes you unique. Good branding not only helps clients find you in the crowd but also gives them an idea of what they can expect from working with you.
