Let’s be honest, building a successful business means building a success brand. Sure, you could potentially be successful without branding your business, but when you’re just getting started and going up against other established competitors you need all the help you can get. Branding your business can be the thing that sets you apart from the rest and gives you a leg up in your climb to the top. It can be what makes you appeal to your potential clients, what allows them to know and trust you and what eventually drives them to choose to do business with you. But, knowing you want to build a brand for your business and then actually doing it, are two different stories.

When you break it down, creating a brand isn’t as hard or complicated as you might think. While there are a lot of components to consider, all of them are really centered around YOU and what matters to your business; you can leave the rest up to your brand designer. There are, however, some helpful tips and tricks to learning how to create a powerful brand and we are eager to share them with you. Keep reading to learn 5 steps to building a successful brand!

What is a brand?

The million-dollar question -- what even is a brand? Your brand is your business’ first impression. It’s the face, voice and personality of your business and shapes the way your target audience perceives your business. Think of your brand as your business’ reputation; the same way we want to present ourselves well and have an overall positive reputation in our world, you want the same for your business. When creating a brand for your business, you want to consider what’s important to you, how you will help your clients in their business and how you will communicate that to your target audience.

Things that are encompassed in your branding include…

Brand mission and values
Voice and messaging
Logo design
Brand color scheme
Brand fonts
Website design
Print or packaging design
Marketing content

Your brand, when done well, can truly sell your ideal client on your business. It can be what levels you up from just another option, to the BEST option. While building a brand can be a somewhat lengthy process and an investment, it is one of the most worthwhile ones you can make. The return on investment with branding packs a big punch and will carry your business through building and maintaining client relationships. Branding your business requires a thoughtful and intentional strategy. To learn more about that and how we can help you specifically, click here.

Components of a strong brand

There are three components in branding your business; brand strategy, brand identity and brand implementation. If you don’t know what those three things mean or how to go about establishing them, you’re in the right place.

Brand Strategy

The very first step in developing a brand, way before the actual design part, is creating a brand strategy. You can think of this as the outline or foundation for your brand. It’s important to start here and build the fundamental components of your business’ brand before moving forward to design and marketing. Why? Because without the direction and plan of a clear strategy, your brand will not be as impactful or successful. It will likely be scattered, inconsistent, unclear and won’t communicate your value to clients and build your business in the way it’s intended to. Here’s the deal though: without a brand designer, this part can stop you dead in your tracks. So, do your research and find a brand designer to help strategize the best brand possible.

Within your brand strategy, you will focus on establishing THESE key things:

Brand voice
Target audience/ideal client persona
Brand purpose and mission
Brand message development

Your brand strategy will help you determine what sets you apart from your competitors, what exactly you have to offer, what makes you the most appealing, trustworthy and reliable option for your potential clients. It’s when you get to choose what your brand will say when it speaks for you.

Brand DESIGN

Your brand identity is how you communicate your brand strategy in a visual way. With your brand identity, you take all of the components you identified in your strategy and weave them into every area of your brand’s visual design. Your brand identity is who you are as a business, what matters most to you, your personality AND the value you bring to your clients. All of this is communicated visually through your brand’s color palette, logo, typography, and more. The way you wrap all of those things up into one brand design package will determine how successful your business really will be.

Brand IMPLEMENTATION

This is the way you get your brand out there for a world to see. Your brand should be implemented into every touchpoint for your business. It’s not enough to simply use a consistent logo and call it a day. Your brand identity should influence every decision you make about the way your business looks, communicates, and interacts with clients. The only way to maintain the strength of your brand is consistency. The way you implement your brand can make arguably the biggest difference in how impactful it is. After all, what’s a good brand if no one sees it.

Some of the most common ways to implement your brand include:

Website design, accessibility & user experience
Social media marketing (Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn)
Content creation and SEO
Email marketing and subscriber lists
Packaging or print design
Interior design

Utilizing these implementation tools is crucial to building brand awareness. If you don’t know where to start with your marketing strategy, we are happy to help you!

How to Build a Successful Brand

Building a powerful brand for your business is one of the most important ways to help your business grow. It will help you attract your target audience, land your perfect clients, build relationships with them AND help them stick around and keep coming back for more. Branding may not feel necessary, but trust us, it is. Knowing you need to brand your business is one thing but knowing HOW is another. We want to give you a little nudge in the right direction.

1. Define the purpose of your brand.

Your purpose is the reason behind it all. It’s not what you do, it’s why you do it. It’s the what, how AND why. In order to discover the true purpose of your business, you have to distinguish what it is exactly that you offer to the world. Hone in on what service or product you offer; which may be the easiest step of all. The next area of focus is how; how you can offer your services and how you are different from your competitors. How can you offer your clients the very best in the business? The last, and arguably most important of all the questions, is WHY. The core of your business and the foundation on which it’s all built, comes down to the why. Why did you start your business? Why do you care about it and feel passionate about it? Why are you here, doing what you’re doing? Once you get to the bottom of it all and your true why, you can build your brand from there.

2. Identify your target audience.

As you start your business and focus on trying to build it, it may seem like the best idea to cast a wide net, say yes to everything and hope for the most traffic. The more people you reach the better, right? Well, in many cases that may be the truth, but when building clientele, that might not be working in your favor. It is a waste of your precious time and resources to target the wrong people, because really, they aren’t all interested. Your service, no matter what it is, is not for everyone. There is probably a specific demographic of people that your service or product is hand-crafted for – and those are the ones you want to focus your attention on.

The important thing to keep in mind when identifying your target audience, is to be more specific than you think is necessary. Hint: you can never be TOO specific.

Here are tips to narrowing down who your ideal client really is:

Build their persona (who, what, where, when and why)
Identify their pain point (what they NEED)
Decide how you can best help them specifically
Find out where your marketing would be most impactful

When you figure out who your target audience really is and target them more specifically, you can make your mission, voice and marketing tailored to them.

3. Establish your voice.

Here’s the deal; every business has a voice. They have a personality and a heart and soul that sets them apart and speaks to their values and mission. The voice of your brand is important, because it communicates what matters most to you and what you have to offer the working relationship. In the end, a client is going to choose to work with the brand that most aligns with their values; the brand that makes them feel most seen, heard and the one that they relate to the most. So, the clearer and more authentic your voice is, the more likely you are to have a real connection with your clients. And that translates directly to brand trust and brand loyalty.

In order to establish your voice, focus on these things:

What do you value most?
What qualities does your business most embody?
What are the top 3 words you would use to describe your brand?
What feeling do you want your clients to feel after interacting with you?

4. Find what sets you apart.

As crazy as it sounds, study your competition. Learn what the other businesses are doing AND what they aren’t doing. Of course, you don’t want to imitate exactly what your competitors are doing. The goal is actually to differentiate from what’s out there and break the “norm” just enough to be seen in the crowd. Look at the most successful brands in your competition and identify the ways they worked in order to get to the top. On the flip-side, analyze the businesses who aren’t as successful and identify the ways they could be improving. You want to have a pulse on what is out there, what other businesses your audience is being exposed to and what you can do to set yourself apart. Beyond that, you need to know what’s trending. While you don’t want to base your brand strategy completely on what’s currently popular, it is important to know what’s relevant and what totally isn’t.

5. Implement your brand in every area of your business.

So, you’ve gone through all the steps, checked all the boxes and built a powerhouse brand with a strong strategy, identity and marketing plan. Now what? The last step to building a successful brand is implementing it in all aspects of your business. That means that your brand should be visible to your target audience with every interaction they have with any part of your business. Everything from your social media presence, to stepping into your office should represent your voice, your values and your mission. Your social media pages and any other content creation should have the same authentic, fluid look and feel consistent throughout. Of all the marketing platforms to utilize with your brand, your website creation is the most important – you want your website to show your personality, your brand aesthetic and the heart and soul of who you are.

Outsource, outsource, outsource!

At this point it’s no secret that building a successful brand is a crucial part of building your business. In reality, without a brand, you are just a business. And if you want to truly make it, you have to be more than that. Our secret? Outsource a brand designer to help you with this whole process. We are your design partners from the moment you consider branding your business, to the moment you are ready to implement it. It can be a big process with a lot of moving parts - we get that. Just like everything else, when you bring someone on your team who knows the ins and outs, we will catch all the things you miss. If you’re ready to take the leap or have some more questions about branding, book a call with one of our designers today!

5 Steps to Building a Successful Brand

What is a brand?

Things that are encompassed in your branding include…