Building Your Brand

What is Branding?

Building your brand is so important, yet so many people don’t understand the difference between branding and your logo.

There are many elements to a brand. It is a name, term, design, colours, symbol, fonts or other feature that distinguishes one seller’s product from those of other sellers. But more than that, its the feeling your company give off. Branding is not just about logos, the slogans or tagline, company name or website design. It’s about how customers perceive your company’s products and services. Your logo is only one aspect of your brand, but people make it too important.

In the modern world brands are as important as they have ever been. Brands are what make us stand out in a crowded marketplace and give customers an idea of who we are and what we offer. Building your brand has to be intentional.

A brand should be able to convey a message to its audience without using words. A good brand will make you think of something specific when you see it, whether it be the feeling you get when using the product or service, or the quality that makes it different from others on the market.

“A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.” – Seth Godin

What are Important Factors when Building Your Brand?

A strong brand is one that has a clear identity and an emotional connection with the consumers. It has to be memorable, authentic and consistent. Your brand can inspire or be nostalgic or bring great feelings of happiness. It also reflects the purpose and characteristics of your business.

A strong brand is one that has a clear identity and an emotional connection with the consumers. It has to be memorable, authentic and consistent. A strong brand needs to have a clear message for its customers, which can be communicated in various ways. This message should reflect the company’s values, culture and personality in order to resonate with its customers. This personality is what will help you stand out from your competitors and everyone else in your space.

Know what you want your customers to feel when they think of your brand. Remember, your brand is not just your logo or brand colours. Millions of businesses are competing with you as they try to rise above the noise. Strong brands stand out, which is another reason creating a brand is crucial for your business.

Brand Guidelines

Brand guidelines are a set of instructions for how to behave in a particular situation. They are also used to provide guidelines to develop a brands visual identity.

Brand guidelines help with consistency across different social media platforms, various advertising channels and produce an overall unified experience for the customer. They are also helpful when it comes to dealing with sensitive topics that need to be handled in a certain way.

Often, brand guidelines can be found on a company’s website or in their marketing materials such as their social media channels, product packaging, and advertisements.

It is essential to remain consistent with your personality and ideas as you develop your brand guidelines. Defining your voice and sticking to that tone will strengthen your brand identity. It will also help others stick to brand guidelines that you set out.

It also assists with the goals and initiatives of you advertisement campaign. Creating terms for your brand’s marketing is important as often that is the first impression of your brand people see.

How to Create a Unique Brand Voice

Be you. It’s that simple. No-one can be you, no-one sees the world through your eyes and share all your perspectives. Whether you are developing a brand identity for a company or building a personal brand, an easy way to differentiate your brand is through personality. This will evolve as you build on your brand guidelines.

For example, when I established Purple Bean Media, I made a decision that my brand was going to be fun and stress-free for my clients (actually what I want for my life too lol). Marketing made easy essentially. So the content I post, the vibe I give, my office decor, everything I do is through that lens.

How to Establish Your Brand in the Market?

The key to establishing your brand in the market is by being creative and following a clear marketing strategy. It is important to create a strong identity for your brand, so that it can be easily recognized. You should also make sure that you are using the best marketing channels for your business. Research your niche and industry, do a deep dive into your target market. Build your brand based on the research you get from your target market.

In order to be successful in branding, there are some steps that you need to take:

– Create a strong identity for your brand

– Choose the best marketing channels for your business

– Be creative and follow a clear marketing strategy

– Develop guidelines for social media marketing and other types of digital marketing

Building Your Brand Using Social Media

Step 1: Define Your Audience

As mentioned earlier, it is important to define your brand persona. Once that is done, you need to figure out who you are and what your target audience is. This will help you create content that resonates with them and also helps you decide which social media platforms you should be on.

Step 2: Create a Social Media Strategy

The second step in creating a personal brand on social media is having a strategy for all of the different social media platforms, such as Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok, Youtube and Twitter. It also includes posting frequency, type of content, hashtags, etc. It’s important to keep this strategy updated as your needs change or new platforms emerge that may better suit your needs.

Step 3: Update all Your Platforms

This is often one of the branding tips that get overlooked. Go over your website and social media accounts that you are planning to focus on with critical eyes. Make sure all of your information is accurate and speaking to your target audience. This will help you grow your audience and direct your traffic to the networks that will display your brand and your work.

Delete any accounts you no longer use, and as you go over your social platforms, remove questionable content from the past that might contradict your brand tone, and will have a potentially negative effect on your brand or professional image. Things like old accounts or old Tweets can pop up and mark your brand in a bad way. Going over your platforms with your brand guideline in place prevents this from happening.

Step 4: Be Consistent

Consistency isn’t just about staying consistent regarding your brand guidelines. It also includes how often you post, write or create content for your audience. Whatever platforms you choose to be present on, you must be consistent. Consistent quality, and consistent postings. Regularly post and engage with your audience. If you find you are unable to keep up with multiple platforms, then focus on the one that you most enjoy posting to, and figure out a pattern that works for you. There are many scheduling tools that can help relieve the burden. Facebook or Meta Business Suite is a great resource for Facebook and Instagram.

Step 5: Use Video

Video is essential to your marketing strategy, whether you have a Youtube channel or not (you should though!). It is a central element to your brand, outreach and building awareness. If you aren’t creating video, you are simply being left behind. The beautiful thing is that most videos can be simple, authentic, and raw, it doesn’t need to be over-produced! Jump on your phone video camera while you are waiting in your car or taking a walk. Authentic content resonates with people and matters to your audience.

The Benefits of Building Your Brand

A personal brand is a key factor in determining your success as a marketer. It’s what makes you stand out from the crowd and it’s what helps you to establish yourself as an expert in your field.

Your brand is what sets you apart from the competition. It could be the way that you speak, how you dress or how you act, but it will always be unique to you and represent who you are. A personal brand will help to increase your visibility and make it easier for people to recognise your name when they see it. It will also help with creating a consistent message that resonates with your target audience, which is vital for marketing campaigns.

There are many benefits associated with building a strong personal brand, including:

1. Increased visibility
2. Deeper connection with audience
3. Easier to maintain because it’s so you!

The Best Brands in the Business

When you think about branding, what companies or product come to mind?

Apple is one of the first companies that come to mind for me. Funnily enough, it’s not their slogan, but the idea behind Apple. The mission statement is  great, “ to bringing the best user experience to its customers through its innovative hardware, software, and services. ”

Another brand that kills it online is Amazon. When you think of Amazon, what feelings do you get. Convenience and customer satisfactions are the first words that comes to mind for me. You don’t have to walk into a store, everything gets delivered to your door from one click.

Of course, when you talk about a company that knows how to do branding, you have to include Disney! For Disney, their secret sauce is all about storytelling. They develop the story first, and then from the story comes every product and advertisement.

 

There are so many examples of amazing brand names that come to mind, like the ones mentioned above, like Adidas or Nike, or Old Navy, all with great strengths, all special for their own reasons. Don’t get discouraged when looking at monstrous, world-wide brands. Just focus on self branding and building as entrepreneurs a strong personal brand identity and it will happen.

Your Brand Will Evolve

Building a brand is more than a slogan, a logo, or a brand awareness launch. It’s how your customers feel about you, it’s the reputation you are building as you interact with your customers. Your brand will naturally evolve as more customers and clients interact with you, and you will learn to how to speak to them. Don’t be afraid to ask your target market questions to research how they perceive your brand.

As much as you can try to shape your brand identity, you can’t control how people perceive it. You can try to nudge customers in the right direction, you can make sure your brand is consistent across all your marketing channels, but at the end of the day, your brand identity is what your customer perceives it to be. Elon Musk says, “Brand is just perception, and perception will match reality over time.”

So when it comes to brand building, try to be excellent in whatever service or with every product you offer. Branding yourself or your business will come naturally over time!

If you want help creating a brand strategy or brand positioning, connect with me online.

Learn more about the author, Sherri Barna