How to Brand Your Business in 7 Steps

Started by Moses joel Adetokunbo, Tuesday, 19 September 2023, 02:42 PM

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Developing a consistent personality and style for your business can be achieved by following these seven steps.

1. Understand Your Audience
To effectively brand your business, it is crucial to identify your potential customers. Start by analyzing your current customer base to gain insights into their interests, needs, pain points, and trusted businesses they buy from. Engage with them directly through calls or surveys or study them to find common characteristics that define your target audience. Additionally, conduct market research to uncover industry trends, customer preferences, buying habits, and information about competitors.

2. Craft Your Value Proposition
Your value proposition goes beyond a tagline or slogan; it is the promise of what your brand offers. To create a powerful value proposition:
- Determine what your ideal customers truly want.
- Showcase how your product or service solves their problems better than competitors.
- Identify the factors that motivate their buying decisions.
- Understand why existing customers choose you over competitors.
Use the voice of your customers to communicate benefits and differentiate yourself from others in the market.

3. Establish Your Mission and Core Values
Define why your business exists through a mission statement that describes its purpose, target customers, products/services offered, and unique approach. Keep it concise yet memorable. Additionally, determine core values that drive goals and shape company culture while avoiding generic words that fail to define what sets you apart.

4. Shape Your Brand Personality
Just like an individual's personality attracts people towards them, so does a brand's personality attract consumers towards a company. Define qualities that align with customer preferences and help build emotional connections while differentiating yourself from competitors
Consider the qualities you want your brand to embody. Do you aim to be visionary, competent, or charismatic? Choose these traits and determine the voice with which you will communicate. For instance, if your brand personality is rugged, your brand voice could be confident and strong.

To assist in this process, refer to this list of emotional words and phrases.

5. Next, create brand assets that will distinguish your business. Examples include colors, fonts, packaging, slogan, and logo. Keep in mind that certain colors evoke specific emotions and convey meanings. According to The Logo Company's suggestions: red boosts energy levels; yellow represents optimism; purple activates the imagination.
Ensure that whatever logo design, color scheme, or style you choose for branding is distinctive and easily recognizable. Consult experts and brainstorm ideas using logo makers like Looka.

6. Once your branding elements are ready, integrate them across all channels. Incorporate visual assets such as logos, colors,and fonts into all messaging efforts. Consider using a longer version of your mission statement as a brand story on the About Us page.

While core values primarily reside on your website,you can also enlighten customers and potential employees about what you stand for through branded videos and posts.Branding is an ongoing process throughout the lifespan of your company.

7. Consistency is key.

Consider Marketing Nutz's finding that it takes 5-7 impressions before individuals can recall a brand.From websites to social media channels to offline interactions with customers,it's crucial for branding to remain consistent.Create clear guidelines to reinforce cohesiveness within your brand identity.Ifyourbrandvoiceisonyouthfulandcasualonsocialmedia platforms,don't feel obligated  to adopt a stiff tone in blogs. Customers should know what they can expect or feel when encountering any content associated withyourbrand—whetheritbe logosorotherbrandassets.Consistency fosters familiarity,trust,and loyalty—all indicators of successful branding.