It’s fair to say that building a brand from the ground up isn’t easy work. You first need to learn how to build a brand. There are multiple obstacles you will most likely step on, such as:
- What should it be?
- Will my audience love it?
- How do I make it attractive?
- How do I build trust?
The process might look hard. But make no mistake, a trusted brand is what sells the most.
60% percent of customers favor buying new goods from a familiar brand rather than switching to a new one, according to Nielsen.
A Brand Isn’t Just a Name and Logo
To make a successful brand, you can’t just slap a name and logo together and expect to sell millions of dollars’ worth of products.
A brand is how people perceive your business. Anytime someone sees your product or brand somewhere, there’s an impression that gets created inside their brain. It’s not as easy to change this as you might think, so make sure to get it right the first time.
Think of it this way. People have names, faces, clothing styles, dreams, work routines, colors and things they like to do. All of these things make a person’s brand, they determine how a person is recognized by others.
But the most important factor in branding is consistency. You can have the best branding elements, but if you don’t keep them for a long time, nobody’s gonna affiliate those elements with your business.
If you really want to learn how to build a brand, don’t skip any of the steps. In fact, analyze them even deeper. The more information you have at your hands, the better you can build your brand.
1. Have a Great Website
A brand’s website is the first point of contact between the customers and the brand. It’s essentially what determines if a customer will purchase or not. If a brand’s website isn’t the best it can be, that brand will definitely lose some customers because of that reason.
This step will ultimately help you learn how to build a brand online, but a website is crucial even for local businesses.
81% of shoppers conduct online research before buying anything.
It’s understandable that you might not have a huge amount of money when building your brand. But fear not, because cheap hosting for your website can be as good as a more expensive option.
To build a great website there are a few steps to complete:
- Get a domain – Make sure your domain name is as close to your brand name as possible. This can’t always be accomplished, because only one person can own a domain at a time.
- Choose a website platform – The recommended platform is WordPress, because of the huge community and a wide arrangement of WordPress themes and plugins to help you customize your website.
- Choose a website template – Make sure your website template allows for easily changing colors, this is important in order to brand your website.
- Populate the website with your content – I don’t just mean your products and be done with it, you need a landing page that sells. Generate leads from customers that don’t buy. Start a blog to improve your SEO and attract more people.
- Get business emails – This step is optional, but it looks much more professional when an email is sent from office@pettoys.com, rather than sending from pettoys@gmail.com.
Keep in mind that in order to build a great website, you need to make it responsive. That means it should adapt to many screen sizes and still function perfectly. This is very important because over 50% of traffic comes from mobile devices.
Source: https://gfycat.com/negligibleincrediblefritillarybutterfly
2. Understand Your Target Audience
The key to a successful brand is understanding your target audience. Dig deep into this, don’t take shortcuts. Your audience will determine who you are.
You can achieve much more if you get very specific. Write down detailed information about your potential customers. These can include, but aren’t limited to:
- Age
- Location
- Gender
- Education
- Interests
- Goals
To learn how to build a brand for your business, you might not need all of the above details. But they will be crucial to some businesses. Other businesses might require even more details.
If I had a business of selling pet toys and I wanted to turn it into a brand, here’s the info I would gather.
3. Determine Your Position in the Market
Just as Adidas can’t be a source of laptops for tech geeks, your brand can’t be everything to everyone.
The most important thing is to find something to focus on and do only that. For Adidas, this is sporting gear. The main question you need to answer in order to build a successful brand is – What’s your position in the market?
The answer is usually very simple. The first part of the answer is about what you can offer to the market. “We’re selling pet toys for pet owners to entertain their dogs.”
The second part of the answer is how you’re different from the competition.
“As opposed to most other pet toy retailers, our pet toys are made with materials that will not harm the pet, even if it eats the toy.”
This is important because this is what you’ll be pushing to consumers. What makes you different is what will be your selling point.
You can also write this as your mission statement if your business type allows it. It won’t always fit, but it might be nice to have.
4. Build Your Brand’s Personality
The brand’s personality is how you’ll be interacting with customers. It’s different for every business and factors like target audience will make a huge impact on brand personality.
This step is crucial to learning how to start a brand. It’s even more important for growing that brand.
But it doesn’t have to be hard. It can be as easy as using “I” or “You” in blog posts. That sends a personalized tone, which resonates with the reader. This would be better suited if you’re selling to consumers, but not to other businesses.
Other examples of building a brand personality can be:
- Sharing videos of the manufacturing process
- Posting stories with real experience
- Posting about your products in an unconventional manner
5. Integrate Your Brand Everywhere
It’s important to note that no matter how many points of contact you have, you should implement your brand in the same way. Remember when we said that consistency is key?
This is where it plays a huge part. In order for people to recognize your brand, they need to see it in all your contact points. That way it’ll be easier for customers to affiliate the colors or conversation tone with your brand.
Include your brand’s visuals, tone of speaking in all the outside communications – email, chats, propositions, etc
Branding is The Key Element
Branding your business will definitely help you sell more and spread awareness about your brand. But you can’t just slap a name and logo on it and call it a brand.
You have to build trust with your customers, up to the point when they’re loyal to you and connect to your brand. At this point, they’ll be reluctant to buy from a different brand and that’s what you’re aiming to do.
In the end, it’s all about consistency. The brand building never ends!
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