“What should my products look and feel like?”
“What should my products do for my customer?”
“Will my products resonate with my target audience?”
These are questions that inevitably come up when you start thinking about how to connect the dots between what you want to sell and who you’re trying to reach.
Whether you've got nothing but a business idea or want to pivot your existing brand, here's what you need to know about building a strong identity for your business.
What Exactly Is a “Brand”?
A brand isn’t just a recognizable name and logo that distinguishes you in a crowded market.
Your brand is how people perceive you however they interact with your business—both the impressions you can control and the ones you can't.
When you think about it, people have brands too. We each have a name, a face, a style, a way of communicating, we make different impressions on different people, and what they say about us… when we’re not in the room.
Likewise, businesses have names, products, logos, colors, fonts, a language, and reputations to manage, that make up who they are and affect how they’re perceived.
You can't build a brand without being consistent and maintaining that consistency as you extend your brand to every part of your business. But it all starts with establishing what that consistency, or goal, is going to look like and the feeling you want it to evoke.
How to Build a Brand
Building your own brand essentially boils down to 7 steps:
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Research your target audience as well as your competitors.
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Pick your focus and goal
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Choose your business name.
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Write your business plan and slogan.
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Choose the look of your brand (colors and font).
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Design your logo.
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Apply your branding across your business and evolve it as you grow.
Let’s start with laying the groundwork to inform the way you go about building your brand.
Figure Out Your Place in the Market
Before you start making any decisions about your brand, you need to understand the current market: who your potential customers and current competitors are.
There are many ways to do this:
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Google your product category and analyze direct and indirect competitors that come up.
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Talk to people who are part of your target market and ask them what brands they buy, and what they like about them.
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Look at the relevant social media accounts or pages your target audience follows and are receptive to.
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Go shopping online or offline and get a feel for how your customers would browse and buy products.
As you go about your research, make a note of:
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Who your “lowest hanging fruit” customers are—the ones you could most easily sell too.
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Who your top competitors are—the brands that are established and known in the market.
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How your customers speak and what they talk about—the interests they have and the language they express them in.
It’s important to have a handle on this before moving forward as it will inform what your brand should focus upon and how it can position itself apart from competitors.
Define Your Brand’s Focus and Personality
Your brand can’t be everything to everyone, especially at the start.
It’s important to find your focus and let that inform all the other parts of your brand as you build it.
Here are some questions and branding exercises to get you thinking about the focus and tone of your brand.
What's your positioning statement?
A positioning statement is one or two lines that stake your claim in the market. This isn't necessarily something you put on your website or business card—it's just to help youanswer the right questions about your brand.
Your positioning statement should go something like...
“We offer Natural and Organic Skin and Hair care for people who care about their family’s health, and the
betterment of the environment.”
“Unlike chemical products, we care about you, your family, and the environment.”
Your unique selling position is the one thing you're competing on. Find it, go in on it, and make it a part of your brand's messaging.
Alternatively, if the company you want to start has a cause at its core, you can also write this out as a mission statement that makes a clear promise to your customers or to the world.
What words would you associate with your brand?
One way to look at your brand is as if it were a person. What would he or she be like? What kind personality would your customers be attracted to?
This will help inform your voice on social media and the tone of all your creative, both visual and written.
A fun and useful branding exercise is to pitch 3-5 adjectives that describe the type of brand that might resonate with your audience.
What metaphors or concepts describe your brand?
Thinking about your brand as a metaphor or personalizing it can help you identify the individual qualities you want it to have.
This can be a vehicle, an animal, a celebrity, a sports team, anything—as long as it has a prominent reputation in your mind that summons the sort of vibe you want your brand to give off.
If you are targeting “Environment” types, like “organic only” You would pick something from nature, like something growing. See Part 2…