How to Develop a Successful Brand

Branding is a lot more than just a colorful logo or a catchy name for a business. There’s so much more that goes into it than just that. Whether you’re wanting your business to be online or focus in-person, you’ll need to start with forming a solid foundation if you want to build up a successful business. The brand itself is the start to forming this solid foundation. Brand building is what will help your growing business receive recognition, this is what will help people remember who you are, thus, will lead to generating loads of new customers. Developing your branding will also help out with developing relationships with customers as well. While brand development is a lot of time and effort, in the end, it’s going to be well worth it to have that successful business that you dreamt about. 

What exactly is branding?

Branding isn’t just the logo of a business, name, colors, or slogan. Branding goes much deeper than the physical appearance of the business. Branding is how people both the general public and the niche you’re in perceives your business. Impressions are important, so these impressions from potential customers are also what make up your branding.

Building a brand isn’t some one-size-fits-all. For each business, there’s going to be a different way to formulate the branding. You’ll need to keep in mind what niche you’re in, your industry, who's your ideal client or customer is, your location, and what exactly your business is about. To avoid the pitfalls, you’ll have to study up on this so you can be sure your branding will be successful.

Who’s your target audience?

Right when you’re thinking of starting a small business, you’ll need to figure out who your target audience is. What demographic are you trying to target with your product or service? It’s important to understand that you cannot target everyone. If you try to go general, you’ll end up reaching very little. Begin by thinking up a small number of key demographics that you want to reach. Once you successfully reach that group you can then begin to slowly focus on another group while retaining the attention of the previous group.

Ask yourself what your target audience or ideal client’s likes are, who they are, and what they want. Afterward, figure out who will be your low-hanging fruit customers and who's going to be your high valued ones.

Who are your competitors?

When you’re in the process of creating a strong company image, you’ll need to research who your competitors may be. Getting a look at how they do their marketing, layout their business, and their branding can give you ideas on how to do yours. What do their logos look like? How about the colors? How do your competitors differ from one another? Look into your direct competitors who will be selling the same or similar products and services as you. Also, research your indirect competitors as well. Some great ways to research these competitors would be:

• Purchasing the product or service, so you can figure out how you can differ

• Do market research and talk to your target demographic

• Read on forums for peoples opinions on your competitors, you may be able to find weaknesses this way

• Go to social media and their websites to look at how they create their content

Be unique

Once you’ve completed your market research, you’ll have to figure out a way to stand out from all of your competitors. Your brand must be unique but you can take in some small elements from your competitors such as aesthetics if it means it can help reach your target. In general, it’s best to stand out from the crowd because that will be the best way to get noticed. This helps customers to easily differentiate you from the rest of the competition.

The appearance of your brand

The appearance of your brand takes so much into account. This is the aesthetics, logo, mascot (if there is one), colors, brand missions, slogan, and the face of the small business owner too. This can be a lot to take in at once, but every one of these can be slowly developed as this is a part of the foundation for a successful business. Many businesses have brand missions nowadays as this is something that consumers expect. This can be the vision for your business, encompassing a purpose, or even just a goal to help people. TOM’s shoes is a great example as their focus was to help give shoes to the needy.

Choosing a name is very important too as this should fit your brand. While there’s so much more to a business than just a name, this is going to be how your business gets recognized. This name will identify you and your business. The name will also impact your website, trademark, logo, and in general how you and your business get perceived by the general public. It’s important to do a heavy brainstorming process for your name.

Properly applying the brand to your business

This can go in many ways such as how you plan to show off your brand-like marketing. Having an “About Us” is a very easy way to achieve this application of your branding but there are other ways to do this too. Creating content regularly through social media and having blog posts or other forms of content on your website are excellent ways to apply your brand. This has the potential to bring inspiration and valuable insight to potential customers. While this can depend on what your product or service is, it’s always possible to bring value. For example, if you sell handmade products such as candles, you can create beautiful and aesthetically pleasing photos and videos for social media. This can also go as far as creating a blog post on how to decorate a space with candles.

Let your brand change

It’s natural for brands to change as they evolve. This is something you should embrace! Allowing your brand to grow and change is the natural price for a brand-building strategy.

Gather feedback

Don’t assume that you know everything there is to know about your brand. It’s critical to get feedback from your clients and ask them what they think. Some will just be grumpy people and always give you negative feedback, but others will just provide you with their honest opinion. If you notice a pattern, it means that you need to make a change.

For instance, if you own a décor business, offer an interior design client questionnaire. This way, you can find out precisely what your customers want and how to meet their needs.

Likewise, if you run a marketing agency, constantly appeal to your clients for reviews. The more you gather, the more “social proof” you can offer your prospects that you offer an amazing service.