Branding 101: 5 Steps to Developing a Robust Brand – Part 3

Are you unsure how to go about branding your business? This is very common. Branding can be confusing; it’s much more than a pretty logo and clever tagline. It’s the very heart of who your company is and what it’s all about, what it stands for, and what customers can expect from it. Your business is all about the promises you make and keep to customers, and you must clearly define what that promise is and the core values behind it, always remember your promise, and keep it at the forefront of all you do in the marketplace.

And because most buying choices are based on peoples’ emotional responses to your offerings, and the perceptions, and values attributed to them, your brand promise is like the DNA of your business. A strong brand will connect your customers with your products and services on a deep level that is based on trust and loyalty. In this article, we’ll help you develop your brand by going through these 5 essential steps.

Step 1: Define the Brand

Take a moment to think about why you started your company. Profits aside, what initially motivated you, excited you, and inspired you to take on such a venture? Consider your core values and your beliefs. Brands that matter stand for something—and that something is beyond their products or services.

In this step, we’re discovering the fundamental principles of your brand, why you do what you do and how this sets you apart. And then we want to identify how you want to sound: what is your point of view and what kind of tone that entails. This is your brand voice. We also want to get a feeling for what your brand looks like, what images, colors, and styles best represent your brand. This will be reflected in your brand visuals.

The Four Vs: Vision, Values, Voice and Visuals

We’ve now evoked the four Vs: Vision, Values, Voice and Visuals. Using these techniques will help you build a strong brand that ultimately communicates a clear, consistent, intentional message, attracts your ideal target audience, and motivates them to purchase from you.

Vision: What your business aspires to achieve beyond your bottom line. You should be proud enough to share this with everyone (shareholders, employees, and consumers)

E.g. Vision: To promote public health awareness around fitness

Values: What are the core beliefs of your company culture?

E.g. health, fitness, sustainable clothing and fabrics

Voice: This is your brand’s personality (every brand has a personality). If it doesn’t have a personality then it’s not a brand, it’s just a logo. Think about what human characteristics and different traits your brand holds.

Visuals: Refers directly to your branding, such as your logo, typography or font, colors, packaging and visual branded content.

Sharpening your branding in this way will tell a compelling story about your offerings, so when consumers come in contact with your company at any touchpoint, they’ll recognize your brand and resonate with it.

For you, it will elicit excitement and make marketing that much easier. You’ll feel proud to share your company with everyone, including shareholders, employees, and consumers alike. And when building out any creative campaign, whether it’s your website, advertising, or your social profiles, you can reference the four Vs to stay consistent with your color palette, content, font, style, and imagery, tying it all back to your brand vision and values. You can feel confident that you’re always remaining on brand.

Defining Brand Drivers

Another part of defining your brand is discovering your brand drivers. What is your company known for in the marketplace? For instance, Ford Motors is known for their affordable vehicles, Apple is known for great design, Tesla is known for its innovative approach, and Bulletproof Coffee is known for having a distinctive taste of coffee.

More than just a brand promise, your brand drivers should align with what you tell consumers—it is all about what you actually do. What your company says and does should always be the same. And it should make your company stand out against the crowd.

McDonalds does this very well. Every location looks the same and has the same menu, so consumers know what to expect and McDonalds delivers it consistently. Apple also exhibits their brand drivers reliably. The shared feature of all iPhones, iPads, iPods, and iMacs is the beautiful minimal design.

As you start to discover your brand drivers, look at the different brand attributes of your business, the functional and emotional benefits your brand delivers, and what customers feel when they consume your products or services.  Will your offering help people work more effectively? Save them money? Simplify their life? These are types of functional benefits to identify. Or will your offering make people feel happier? In control? Connected? These are emotional benefits. How do consumers feel when they are using your product or service? These benefits should match what consumers want with what your brand does better than your competitors. 

Step 2: Position Your Brand

Brand positioning is described as how you want consumers to think about your brand. Positioning your brand in an effective way will sway consumers’ perception of your brand and make it stand out in a competitive marketplace. Key goals of brand positioning include credibility, relevance, and differentiation.

First, define your brand promise and how it’s currently positioned in the marketplace. Do they align? Does your company promise one thang and deliver something else? Make sure you have your brand promise dialed in, because it directly effects how customers think about your brand. If you cannot credibly supply the offering, your customer will be left with an empty promise, which negatively impacts your company.

Next, you want to find your point of difference within your market and articulate exactly what that is to your target audience. Think about the problem your brand is solving and how you can do so in a different way. Differentiation is critical to your success in positioning your brand—you must stand out against competitors in a unique way. From here, you can develop your Unique Value Proposition (UVP): A single, clear and compelling message that tells consumers why you’re different and why they should buy from you.

Finally, find out who your customers are and what factors are important to them. What are their pain points? What motivates them? This will help you create relevance in your brand positioning since consumers must find your brand attractive. If your offering does not speak to them, it won’t matter how differentiated or credible it is.

If you’ve identified these elements efficiently and you position your brand well, you connect your product or service directly to your company’s value proposition and the brand promise.

Step 3: Express Your Brand

To properly express your brand, imagine that it is a person. What does your brand look like? How does he speak? Act? Building a solid brand personality resonate with people. They are easier to remember and identify. Customers feel they can trust a brand with a clear personality. Brand personalities also teach consumers how they should be using your products and how your product or service offering should fit into their lifestyle.

Choosing a brand character is a great method to use as a vehicle to express your brand personality. This also helps expedite your brand storytelling process and marketing. Successful brand personalities can be used extensively in your communications, social media, and any platform where an interaction between your brand and consumers are going on.

Step 4: Communicate Your Brand

Now that you’ve figured out how to define, position, and express your brand, it’s time to build awareness and put the brand to work for you. For your target market, the entire experience they have with your business, from the first time they engage up to the point of sale, needs to have a streamlined communication strategy. Certifying that you convey your brand promise every time in a continual, consistent manner will promote success. Otherwise, you’re weakening your message or even negating it.

It’s also important to communicate both internally to your own organization as well as externally to the market. Why? Your employees and distributors play a critical role in creating and delivering the brand promise. However, employees must understand your brand, and this doesn’t mean they can recite your mission statement. Help employees comprehend and appreciate your company’s values and vision and how they are essential to the customer experience.

Take this even further by getting your employees invested in your brand. To truly communicate your brand effectively, you must get employees excited about it by making a personal connection. Similarly, with how you engage with your ideal market, involve your employees in an authentic way that motivates them. Doing so will empower them, give them a sense of ownership, and establish the fact that they play an essential role in your brand communication.

Step 5: Measure Your Brand

Brand equity is calculated by the value of your customer’s experience. It’s shown by how well consumers recognize your brand, how much they engage with and prefer your offerings over a competitor’s, and the bottom-line profits you generate. Your company’s value is built by emotion and influences customer behavior. Learning how to measure this brand equity will help you prove the value of your business.

A primary needle to gauge consumer recognition of your company is analyzing how many times your brand is talked about every day. You can also measure brand awareness by analyzing your website traffic, search volume on Google and Bing for your products or services, and the amount of mentions your brand receives on social platforms and the reviews it gets.

How often shoppers prefer your brand over another is also a powerful factor in evaluating value. Do your customers travel further and spend more money to buy your products or services? If so, this points to a favorable brand equity in comparison to a competitor’s offerings that may be cheaper or more accessible. 

Financial data that proves brand equity is straightforwardly connected to sales performance. But these can also include market share, growth rate, cost to acquire and retain customers, and marketing investments. If these indicators are increasing, your business is growing, bringing in net profits, and adding to the organization’s bottom line, your revenue is likely to be moving in the same direction. 

To Sum Up

In conclusion, having a strong brand for your company can be the difference between winning and losing in the marketplace. It is what holds shoppers’ interest long enough to not only engage with your business, but also to purchase form you and further on, become a repeat customer.

Read the next post to learn how to build a powerful brand strategy.

Business Consulting Services: If you’re a small business owner looking to start or improve an online business then let me show you how to benefit from my experience. I have helped several online resellers grow their businesses by developing an online strategy to sell on Amazon, eBay or any other marketplace. Call me at 310-574-2541 or email me at Pez@Pezlogic.com for a complimentary business review.