Every year, a colossal 100 million businesses open up around the world.
This means millions of businesses are trying to make a name for themselves, and the only thing that will separate yours from theirs is branding. Company branding is so crucial in this day and age because you need to separate your business from the rest and stand out majestically enough for your target market to notice, recognize, and remember.
The most important step of developing your company brand is understanding what your brand is about. The thing is, there is so much more to it than just naming your business and plastering it all over the place. Brand identity consists of not just your name and logo, but what your company values, how you communicate, and how you want consumers to feel about you.
Jeff Bezos puts it simply that branding is what people say about you when you’re not in the room, which is true. Your products will leave an impression with your customers even after you’ve made the sale, and that impression will be your brand identity. So how do you get your name out there and create a lasting company brand?
Research Your Target Market and Competition
Company branding needs to start with complete market research and analysis. Some of the things you need to understand and classify include your target audience, value proposition, mission, SWOT analysis, and personality.
Target Audience
As a business, you most certainly have the group of consumers you target depending on what products or services you’re offering.
You wouldn’t, for instance, advertise baby clothes to the senior demographic. You need to understand who your products are meant for and go the extra mile to research what they want or need from you. If you give consumers something valuable, you will be halfway through creating a brand that they will love.
Value Proposition
Your value proposition is all about what makes your company unique from the competition. What is it that you’re offering your target market the competitors are not? It’s vital for you to know the difference between you and your business competitors if you’re going to create a successful brand.
Understanding your competition means knowing what branding marketing techniques will work well for your company.
Mission and Personality
You also need to understand your mission and business purpose because it will help you shape your company personality. When it comes to business personality, it involves a lot, like the brand design you choose in terms of colors and imagery that represent your company brand.
Take Nike, for instance, it’s sassy and confident, while a brand like Givenchy is ritzy and professional. You need to have a personality your consumers associate your brand with, and the emotion it evokes in them every time they come across your brand.
SWOT Analysis
Beyond all this, it’s advisable to complete a SWOT analysis to find the characteristics that you want to represent your company brand. SWOT stands for strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, all of which you need to analyze completely.
Design Your Company Logo
The next order of company branding involves bringing your brand to life by creating a memorable logo and a template for it. We can’t emphasize enough how important the logo you choose for your business is, because this is what your customers will relate to. Think about Apple, Nike, or Coca-Cola, and how iconic their logos are that most people would recognize them from anywhere.
This is the kind of impression you want to create. Your brand design will be the silent ambassador for your business. The logo plays a huge role in your brand identity. It will go on everything you create, from products to adverts on billboards, business cards, brochures, and stamps.
To strengthen your brand identity further, you need to have an interesting form. The products, packaging, and the way you present your services will play a significant role as well. The visual representation of your company brand should be consistent in everything you create.
It will help your customers familiarize themselves with it. The color palette of your brand will enhance it, and it needs to be unique enough to stand out. The type of logo you choose needs deep consideration, though simplicity is the forte of logos.
Now, given that your log will go on everything, including newspaper ads and documents. You need to test it for black and white applications and make sure it’s consistent in both print and digital use. Be consistent, but remain flexible.
Leverage on Marketing
After establishing and developing your brand, you need to integrate with the community. One of the essential parts of achieving this goal is providing quality content. Whether it’s from your marketing department, salespeople, or story, any content you push out there will reflect on your brand.
The language you use needs to match your brand personality. If your brand has a laid back personality, you will do well with conversational language. If you’re high-end, you may want to use professional language. Use stories that move your consumers and connect with them emotionally, so they are inclined to take action.
Even better, advertise as much as your business allows. You can write a press release to get word out, then move on to online and offline ads because it’s the best way to get your business out there. Beyond that, leverage on social media because it offers limitless digital estate for brand identity establishment.
Monitor Your Brand
To maintain your brand identity, you need to monitor all aspects of brand marketing and advertising to know what you’re doing right and what to change. Tracking key performance metrics is an essential part of company branding. Use everything from social media conversations to Google Analytics, surveys etcetera.
Company Branding: Everything That Goes Into It
Company branding may seem daunting at first because there is a lot of work that goes into it. However, once you establish your brand, the benefits you’ll reap will be well worth all that hard work.
Now that you know you need brand marketing and advertising, please check out our blog for more incredible, informative, and valuable posts about it.
