While it might be easy to assume that your branding is simply a nice logo and a specific colour palette, in fact your branding is so much more. Your brand is defined by a number of factors, from your logo and colour scheme to your reputation and interaction, meaning that while your logo, company name and motto are essential, the additional elements also play a huge role in the branding of your company.
Creating your brand from scratch can be difficult and while it’s very likely you’ll need professional advice along the way, we’ve outlined the five key ingredients necessary when it comes to cooking up a unique and successful brand:
Identify Your Audience
Before you can start thinking about fancy logos and company colours it’s a good idea to know exactly who you’re trying to appeal to, researching your target market and understanding what it is they’re looking for from a company and their branding. By learning their key values and interests, as well as how they behave online, you can gain fresh insights into what your target audience are expecting, letting your business create a brand that appeals directly to this expectation.
With tools such as Google Analytics, in-built social media analytics tools and through monitoring your social media, there are a number of opportunities for businesses to gain a view of how your customers think and letting you fully understand the buying patterns of this target audience.
By gaining a full view of your target market, looking at factors such as age, job title, interests, life goals and even how your brand can help them, you can work to narrow down who it is exactly you’re looking to appeal to. Through doing this you can look to create a persona your business around this audience, one that can be used to reach out to your audience, letting you get to know them and vice versa through the tone of your brand persona.
Know Your Niche
The ecommerce market is continuing to grow at an alarmingly fast rate, meaning that competition is becoming even more fierce. With an industry oversaturated with thousands of similar businesses and industries, it’s more crucial than ever that your brand can outshine the competition and gain a great spot in the marketplace. By identifying what exactly your niche is, what you sell and what makes your brand so unique you can not only expand your business message but also look to obtain a place ahead of your competition.
Your niche should aim to be extremely specific to your message, what your business offers and should also relate to your target demographic. There’s no point trying to make your business appeal to everyone, instead focus on a smaller, more targeted audience, one who are guaranteed to love your product rather than a large audience who might like what you offer.
With an understanding of your unique selling points and special qualities of your business, you can create your own niche, showing off the qualities that your brand can bring to the table that other brands cannot, encouraging your audience to choose your brand over your competitors and experience how unique both your business and your products really are.
Use Visuals
Once you know your niche and have identified your target audience, you need to start reaching out and standing out with unique images and graphics that can help define your brand and keep your business compelling, yes, it’s finally time for the logo! However it’s not only the logo you should be concentrating on, you also need to think about your website, product photos and even your social media and email graphics, all of which can play a huge role in the appearance of your company and of your brand as a whole.
Your logo is the most important visual element of your brand and is likely to be used on a number of different platforms including your website, business cards, social media, email signatures and even potentially on your uniform. As one of the most identifiable aspects of your business, your logo should be more than a cool design, it needs to embody your brand, incorporating your message and values into one slick logo.
It’s also a good idea to think of your website as an extension of your logo, acting as a place to show off your message, your products, your team and even the news about your business. With a website that features your logo, your own colour scheme and your own photos or graphics, you can establish your own unique style that can be tied to your brand and use universally on other platforms.
Branding is one of the biggest and most valuable elements of your business, whether you’re a new brand looking to establish a brand or even an established company looking to branch out with a new look, branding can benefit everyone, helping your business not only look more professional but also giving your business the edge over your competition.
Remember branding is more than just a logo and pretty colours, it’s about your company reputation and how your company looks.
If you’re still looking for more advice about how branding can help your business why not speak to a member of our team today?
