When you’re setting up a company, one of the first things you need to do is develop a brand. A brand isn’t just a name and a logo – it’s also how people perceive you and whether they want to interact with your business.
Developing a brand requires a strategy and a lot of effort. In this article, I’ll provide you with eight steps to help you create your brand.
Let’s get started.
1. Research the Market
Before you start developing your company’s brand, you first need to understand the current market condition by conducting market research.
From market research, you’ll be able to find out about:
- Audience – learn who they are and what they expect from a business in your industry.
- Mission – figure out what your business should offer.
- Value Proposition and Competition – find out what makes your business unique and the main difference between you and your competitors.
- Personality – decide what tone of voice and image represents your business best.
- SWOT analysis – understand your strengths and weaknesses as well as outside threats and opportunities.
2. Create Your Brand Strategy
Your brand strategy is a detailed plan of what you want to achieve and how you’re going to achieve it. It consists of:
- Brand Identity – Logo, typography, color, and other visual elements.
- Brand Heart – Purpose, values, missions, and vision.
- Brand Messaging – Brand voice, value proposition, personality, tagline, and brand messaging pillars.
Once you’ve figured that out, this is how you can begin implementing your brand strategy effectively:
- Create content that’s aligned with your brand’s image.
- Convey your unique brand story through that content.
- Maximize your content reach.
3. Choose the Right Business Name
The next step is to find your domain name. A domain name is your website’s address, which will help determine how easily users will find your website.
This is one of the most critical steps because a domain name will also give the first impression of your website, so you must make it brandable.
Make sure it’s catchy, sounds trustworthy, and is memorable so that users can quickly relate the word to your website.
4. Avoid Copying Competitors
Developing your company’s brand is all about differentiating yourself from the competition and making your brand visible, unique, and relevant. Without a proper understanding of your competitors, that will be hard to achieve. The last thing you want to do is be mistakenly identified as your competitor.
By conducting a thorough competitor analysis, you can find various insights. One example is that a study found that many businesses in the industry tend to gravitate towards the same colors. This is apparent in video streaming services like Youtube and Netflix.
This reveals a great opportunity to differentiate. Twitch, for example, uses all-purple color for their branding instead of using the color red. The purple is instantly recognizable and now correlates with their brand name.
5. Create a Logo
As part of the brand strategy, you need to create a brand identity that consists of a logo and other visual elements.
This is a vital part because your logo will appear on everything that represents your business. So you should invest a lot of time to develop a distinctive visual identity.
While you can always hire a professional designer to create your logo, you might not have a lot of spare budget for it. So I’ve provided a simple style guide to follow:
- Logo size and placement. Make sure your logo isn’t too big on the page. Ideally, it should be placed on the right corner of your website, so nothing covers it up.
- Color palette. Make sure you know what the colors you choose mean. You can always check this color theory guide.
- Typography and fonts. Your fonts should be easy to read and not as large as your logo.
Some website builders will also have a logo maker that you can try.
6. Find Your Unique Brand Voice
A brand voice is how you communicate with your customers. It mostly depends on your company’s mission statement, the industry you’re in, and the audience you’re targeting.
A brand voice can be:
- Friendly.
- Professional.
- Promotional.
- Conversational.
- Service-oriented.
- Informative.
When you have the correct brand voice, you’ll have the most substantial chance of connecting with your customers.
For example, if you’re a toy company targeting children as your customer, you’d want to have a friendly brand voice. On the other hand, if you’re an insurance company, you should go for a more professional and corporate brand voice.
7. Stay True to Your Branding
You should apply your branding across all aspects of your business. This will give it a brand story, represent what kind of business it is and what it stands for.
Research found that buyers who shop online would often look at a business’s mission statement and brand story to see whether they share the same values. Then they’ll go on to view the products or services to make sure that they indeed follow the same kind of branding.
8. Connect with the Audience
Once you’ve developed a compelling brand identity strategy, it should be implemented across all points of interaction with your customers. This includes public relations, advertising, and after-sales services.
One great way to connect with your audience is to make sure your employees are on board. They can become the greatest brand advocates for your business. To make them brand advocates, you should create an internal branding model to help them understand the brand story and know how to represent the business themselves.
Conclusion
Now you know the eight steps to developing your company’s brand. All that’s left to do is to start applying these steps to your branding strategy.
Remember that a brand strategy is more than just a brand identity – it also includes brand messaging and a mission statement. This means it’s not just about the name and logo but also about how your business interacts with your customers through its voice and tone.
Good luck!