In order to remain competitive in the industry, companies must have a strong brand. Retailers and service providers need more than a great flash sale and decent products. Buyers demand more from the companies they purchase from – and there’s no better way to communicate a company’s mission, vision, and values than through building a new brand.
Building A Brand Takes Work But The Reward Is Worth It
Requiring extensive and invasive research, brainstorming, design, testing, iteration, and a brand’s final launch is only the beginning of a connection with and securing customer loyalty. However, building a new brand could result in the largest return on investment (ROI) a firm will realize when done well.
But first…
What Is Brand Building?
Building a brand from scratch means building trust, credibility, and a great product or service experience with customers. It allows new client loyalty to drive premium prices, make selective purchases, and offer word-of-mouth advertising. When the magical combination of those consumer actions unfolds, the company can rest assured that they have built a solid brand.
It may take time for companies to build up their brand and go through all the necessary steps and phases to do so. It should create an emotional connection with the target audience based on the company’s value to the world.
A brand is not just a pretty logo with some strong bold font and corresponding colors from a 5th-grade art class color wheel but is the combination of well-conducted research, implementation of that research into the company’s objectives, design of the logo, image, identity, voice, and messaging, and frequent iterations until the brand provides the desired outcome.
What’s The Difference Between Generic And Branded Products?
As the world’s cost of living increases, decreases and increases again, many consumers are becoming more budget-conscious when shopping – on everything from cookies at the grocery store to laptops for back-to-school.
If you’ve ever bought a generic brand of laundry detergent, cereal, or construction tools after having consumed the branded product, for example, you understand that the generic version consistently lacks in quality comparison.
Generic products are also less costly than branded ones. Great branding can alleviate buyer decision-making at the point of sale and urge them to purchase your branded products based on previous client experiences, shared vision, and mission alignment.
How To Build A Brand From Scratch
There are three primary phases to building a new brand from scratch and in-house teams find success when they place effort and focus on all three. Marketing teams may feel pressure to jump to the phase that is known to increase revenue but without the pre-work to develop a brand strategy and identity, the brand marketing phase often falls flat.
Brand Strategy
Brand strategy is a company’s framework for how they are credible, trustworthy, and memorable among their target market. It portrays the company’s promise, purpose, and problem-solving focus for its customers. A brand strategy is essentially the blueprint for your global image and the customer perception you’d like to have for your business.
Commonly, the brand strategy phase includes comprehensive research into target market demographics or firmographics and psychographics as well as an extensive investigation of industry competitors. At this stage, companies define their overall purpose, brand voice, personality, message, and backstory.
Brand Identity
Reflecting the company’s portrayed image, brand identity creates an emotional connection with the target audience and encompasses how it will be presented.
Aligned with the company’s purpose, story, personality, and voice from the brand strategy phase, the brand identity phase creates impact from those developments.
This stage of the branding process includes creating a powerful, recognizable, and memorable logo with strategic colors, fonts, and patterns.
Website, product packaging, content, advertising details, and messaging presentation are part of brand identity as well. Each facet of this phase should remain consistent across all platforms and graphics.
Brand Marketing
Following that brand strategy roadmap and using the brand identity graphics and messaging within this final stage, brand marketing works to increase positive brand awareness and loyalty.
It creates (and maintains) a favorable reputation among the key demographic – not to mention increasing sales margins.
There are a growing number of platforms and methods to share your brand including email marketing, a company website, pay-per-click advertising, social media sites, and creating SEO-focused content to rank on search engines.
Strategy plays well in brand marketing when marketing teams focus on the presentation of brand messaging, voice, and evoking customer emotion.
You can also opt for traditional marketing methods like printed advertisements, or combine both digital and printed material in order to boost your brand’s visibility.
For example, you can send postcards, which allow businesses to engage with potential customers in a unique and personal way by reaching them in their homes.
Specific elements such as crafting a compelling headline, using high-quality images, and proper use of white space are all ways to make your postcard stand out.
Additionally, you need to create an attention-grabbing call to action to get your customers to respond to your offers. Include your contact information or another specific way for the reader to act. QR codes can be very useful here.
Make sure you add your company logo and colors to impress your business brand into prospective customers or clients.
Strong Brand Success Stories
Building a strong brand takes time, devotion, and attention to detail, and when completed strategically (and with authenticity), the company result is something to be proud of. Owners attract customers with whom they share goals, morals, ethics, and passions which equate to brand awareness, devotion, and an undeniable emotional connection.
When company owners or marketing executives rush through the building of a new brand, they lose the opportunity to gain increasing amounts of clientele and revenue.
Wondering how to build a successful brand? There are countless companies that you may have purchased from – consider whether you connected with them because of their branding!
Tesla
The brand speaks luxury and innovation to consumers through its development of high-end electric vehicles and has a charming uniqueness that comes through in its messaging.
HubSpot
A growing platform for free marketing content, HubSpot’s brand proves its ease of comprehension for beginners to the field but its bread and butter is its user-friendly CRM and marketing automation tools that help those getting started.
Trader Joe’s
Your friendly neighborhood supermarket, Trader Joe’s takes the overwhelming load of shopping and connects with customers by making food shopping fun and carefree with an unmatched value and affordable pricing structure.
Not Sure Where To Begin?
Many new entrepreneurs understand that they need to build a brand from scratch in order for their company to flourish but have a bit of trouble executing the three key stages of branding.
Consider hiring an award-winning agency with expert teams of highly creative designers who can work to integrate their deep commercial understanding and intense research analytics into profit.