rafting a brand from inception to completion is a formidable undertaking. Whether you're establishing a new brand for a startup, developing a fresh identity post-merger, or rebranding an established entity, it demands time, financial resources, and extensive research.
Nevertheless,a robust brand identity represents the most effective means of shaping the desired perception among your audience. While brand building entails significant effort, it need not be overly complex.
Creating a brand involves the following 10 steps:
- Understanding your target audience
- Conducting competitor research
- Establishing your brand's purpose and positioning
- Crafting a personality and brand voice
- Crafting your brand narrative
- Selecting a brand name
- Crafting a slogan
- Designing your brand's visual identity and logo
- Incorporating your brand into all aspects of your business
- Being open to rebranding if necessary
We’ll also cover:
- What is a brand?
- What does brand building involve?
- How to build a brand
What is a brand?
A brand encompasses a spectrum of visual elements, stylistic decisions, and other assets that amalgamate to craft a unified identity. It transcends mere symbols like logos or slogans, extending to encompass elements such as communication tone and employee attire, all of which contribute to shaping your company's reputation. Essentially, your brand is the collective perception held by the public.
A robust brand image serves to distinguish your business amidst competition. By fostering a positive impression among your audience, you facilitate the attraction of leads and the retention of existing clientele over time. This often culminates in organic marketing, as satisfied customers feel compelled to champion your brand voluntarily.
What does brand building involve?
Branding tactics typically fall into one of three categories — brand strategy, brand identity, and brand marketing. While these overlap, there are also important distinctions between them. All three are needed to develop a powerful brand image.
Brand strategy
Brand strategy delineates the overarching visual and conceptual direction of your brand, prioritising objectives and strategising accordingly. Consistency forms the bedrock of a robust brand, underscoring the significance of crafting a coherent plan before delving into foundational elements.
Contemplate whether your brand should exude a professional and authoritative demeanour or adopt a casual, conversational tone. Identify the demographics you intend to target. Clarifying these parameters aids in laying the groundwork for your brand's evolution.
Brand identity
Creating a brand identity involves developing a cohesive and recognizable image that encapsulates the essence and values of a business. This process starts with defining the brand's mission, vision, and target audience. A key element is the logo, which should be distinctive, versatile, and reflective of the brand's personality. Alongside the logo, a consistent color palette, typography, and visual style should be established to ensure uniformity across all platforms and materials. Effective brand identity also includes crafting a tone of voice for written and verbal communication, ensuring it aligns with the overall brand image. This comprehensive approach helps build a strong, memorable presence that can foster customer loyalty and differentiate the brand in a crowded marketplace.
Brand marketing
Brand marketing revolves around leveraging your strategy and identity to achieve optimal outcomes for your business. It entails deliberations on which social media platforms to prioritise and how to allocate advertising budgets effectively. Such tasks are best handled by marketers adept at crafting compelling messaging and orchestrating impactful campaigns.
How to build a brand
Ten steps to building a brand probably sounds like a lot, but it’s a manageable process if you break it down. Let’s take a look at what brand building looks like in practice.
1. Identify your audience
Before delving into brand development, it's crucial to pinpoint your target audience. While this step may seem simple, it's often overlooked. Yet, different individuals resonate with distinct tones, aesthetics,and brand personas. By initially understanding your audience's preferences and needs, you'll find it easier to craft a brand that resonates and fosters a connection with them.
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Creating buyer personas is a straightforward method to pinpoint your audience. A buyer persona represents a general profile of your ideal customer, encompassing basic demographics such as age, location, and income, as well as deeper insights like political affiliations, product usage scenarios, and preferred brands. Your understanding of your audience may evolve as your brand develops and sales increase, establishing initial buyer personas provides a valuable foundation for targeted marketing efforts.
2. Research your competitors
Perform thorough competitor research to gain insights into carving out a distinctive niche. Identify ways to leverage competitors' strengths while capitalising on their weaknesses, such as targeting market inefficiencies or underserved segments.
Analyse various aspects of rival brands, including their websites, pricing strategies, and brand voice. Implementing robust SEO techniques can drive consistent web traffic through organic search, and examining competing sites can help identify topics to prioritise. Additionally, utilise keyword research tools to uncover topics that competitors may not be targeting yet.
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A competitor research spreadsheet, as illustrated above, aids in organising and prioritising your findings. It provides a comprehensive view of your company's position compared to others in the industry, making it easier to identify effective strategies for differentiating your brand from competitors.
3. Define your brand’s purpose and position
Consider your brand's position within your industry. Begin by crafting a singular purpose or mission statement that effectively conveys what you aim to achieve with your brand. This statement should guide all other branding initiatives, aligning with your business plan and core values.
If you encounter difficulty in formulating a mission statement, consider addressing fundamental questions about your business.
For example:
Why does your company exist?
What problem can your product or service solve?
Why should customers buy from you instead of a competitor?
Remember,a mission statement primarily serves internal alignment, not external marketing campaigns. Focus on clarity over flashiness. Nike's slogan, "Just Do It," is catchy, but their mission statement, "To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete," guides their business holistically, from product design to marketing strategies.
4. Develop a personality and brand voice
Your brand's personality is crucial for defining its uniqueness and attracting your desired customer base. Consistency in your brand voice across all platforms, including website content, social media updates, emails, and product descriptions, is essential. Every interaction should embody the distinctive personality of your brand. The choice of voice should align with your audience, mission statement, and industry. For instance, if your target audience is Gen Z, incorporating slang into your brand voice could enhance connections and increase engagement.
Explore the personality traits that resonate with your target audience in your industry for inspiration. Consider reviewing the five fundamental brand personalities to assist you in conceptualising, defining, and developing your distinctive brand personality.
Excitement, Sincerity, Ruggedness, Competence, Sophistication
Once you grasp your brand's personality craft an editorial style guide, visualise your brand as a real individual, and communicate in a manner that aligns with their personality. Determine the level of formality or informality you wish to maintain, including specific word choices and the use of contractions.
As an illustration, Harley-Davidson adopts a rugged, adventurous tone that resonates with its customers and has become synonymous with the brand.
5. Create your brand story
Utilising stories in your marketing endeavours is an effective method for establishing personal connections with customers.
Donald Miller's book, Building a StoryBrand, outlines the essential components of crafting a compelling brand narrative. It begins with a character, representing your customer, encountering a problem. The character then meets a guide who provides a plan and a call to action to prevent future challenges. This straightforward framework can be adapted by positioning your brand as the guide and showcasing your unique value proposition as the solution.
Hero: Personify your customers to foster relatability with your brand. This was initiated when you created buyer personas in the initial step.
Conflict: Like any compelling narrative, there should be high stakes. Identify what your customers desire or require. Address their practical needs while also appealing to their emotions.
Guide: Demonstrate why your brand is the ultimate solution to their challenges. Utilise client testimonials to underscore the distinctions between your brand and competitors.
Climax: Illuminate the potential negative consequences of not selecting your solution. Subsequently, present your call to action.
Resolution: Outline several assurances your customers can depend on by choosing your brand. Illustrate how their decision will lead to success.
Storytelling complements your mission statement, elucidating the raison d'être of your brand and its values. Once your story is established, integrate it into advertisements and landing pages.
Burt’s Bees strategically showcases their narrative directly on the search results page. The messaging assumes that the customer is concerned about skincare but is also wary of the potential harm caused by harsh chemicals. In response, the brand presents the ideal solution: natural products.
6. Pick a brand name
Naming your brand is one of the most important decisions you’ll make. Most top brand names are either abbreviations or one to two words — memorable and easy to remember.
You can use some simple techniques when creating a name for your brand.
- Made-up words like Adidas
- Inspirational figures like Nike — the winged goddess of victory in Greek mythology
- Relevant words or phrases like Mastercard for a brand of credit or debit card
- Word combinations like Facebook
- Altered words like Tumblr
Before finalising a name, conduct a thorough Google search for the name and its variations to ensure minimal competition. Opting for a name resembling that of a competitor might divert traffic away from your brand and towards theirs.
7. Write a slogan
A powerful slogan is priceless. It must be concise yet descriptive to seamlessly fit into various spaces like your social media bio, website header, email signature, and more. Your slogan should be succinct, memorable, and align with your overall branding strategy. Even the catchiest slogan can confuse customers if it contradicts your brand's identity.
When crafting a slogan, aside from being concise and impactful, there are no strict rules. However, here are some approaches to consider:
Use a metaphor: Skittles' "Taste the Rainbow" metaphorically conveys the array of flavours and colours in their candy.
Capture an attitude: Toyota's "Let's Go Places" embodies the adventurous spirit of their customers who explore the outdoors with their vehicles.
Describe what you do: Home Depot's "How doers get more done" succinctly articulates their goal of providing tools for DIYers and contractors to complete projects.
Highlight your benefits: Rothy's "Reduce your carbon footprint in style" targets eco-conscious consumers and emphasises both style and environmental impact.
Create a catchy rhyme or saying: Bounty's "The quicker picker upper" rhymes and underscores its superior absorbency compared to other paper towels.
Unlike a brand name, your slogan can evolve. As you interact with your target audience, observe which approach resonates best with them and adjust your slogan accordingly. Wendy’s, for example, has modified their slogan multiple times throughout their decades in business. They began with "Where’s the Beef?" in 1984, which was highly successful. Subsequently, they experimented with "Give a little nibble," which proved unsuccessful, prompting a shift to emphasise their use of "never-frozen" patties.
8. Design your brand look and logo
One of the first impressions people will have of your brand is the logo. It’s the face of your brand, so you need to design a good one.
A logo often incorporates a variety of visuals, so there are several points to consider. Your colour palette, choice of typography, and imagery, are three effective design elements involved with logo creation.
Colour
Consider the message conveyed by the colours you use in your branding. Be aware of the psychological impact of colour when crafting your logo and brand identity. Delve into colour theory to better understand what emotions and associations different colours evoke and how they can align with your brand's message and desired perception.
Font
Choose a font that represents your brand voice and personality well. Fonts communicate tone and brand identity as much as colour and images. A bold, wide font implies strength. A serif font is often associated with authority. A script font can let audiences know your brand is more playful.
If you decide to include text in your logo, bear in mind that it needs to be easy to read even when the platform or material forces it to be very small or in simple black and white.
Imagery
There are a few general types of images generally used for logos. Choose something that aligns with your business and marketing goals.
Mascots are usually the faces of a person or personified animals. This type of logo is used to humanise a business through familiarity. Think of the red-pigtailed, freckled girl that represents Wendy’s.
Emblems are often circular and combine text with imagery, like the Starbucks Siren.
Abstract logos focus on shape and colour rather than meaning — the latter comes to fruition after consumers associate the other elements with a brand. The Google logo is a great example of this type of logo.
Monograms, also known as lettermarks, create a symbol from one or more brand name letters. For example, luxury fashion brand Chanel turns the initials of founder Coco Chanel into two interlaced Cs.
Wordmarks only include the name of a brand — with no additional symbols or mascots. These types of logos, like Coca-Cola, focus on typography and colour.
Icons are a visual metaphor for a brand. The Twitter bird (formerly X) represents the tweet aspect of the social media platform. Another example is the Burger King icon where the words replace the meat in a burger between two buns.
Combination logos include multiple types like text with an image or icon. This is ideal for brands that feel like one logo type is just as essential to their identity as another. At one point, the Domino’s Pizza logo was a unique combination of wordmarks within the icon.
If you want your brand to be associated with something specific, draw inspiration from a familiar source and make something unique but easily identifiable. Consider the bold, red and golden yellow arches that most British shoppers associate with McDonalds.
9. Integrate your brand into your business
Once you've laid down the groundwork for your brand, it's essential to seamlessly integrate it across all aspects of your company.
Developing a style guide is crucial to maintaining a consistent voice and identity across various channels. This guide should articulate how you want your brand to be perceived in terms of tone, visual aesthetics, and overall experience, serving as a reference point. Your brand's personality should shine through every social media post, marketing initiative, and design element of your website.
Warby Parker has created a customer-centric brand focused on creating engaging experiences both online and in-store. The clean and sophisticated design spans all aspects of the company, from the home try-on boxes to how the products are organised on the shelves. The brand voice is straightforward and mission-driven, using plain language to approach the community and explain benefits. This consistent messaging ensures customers can expect similar experiences no matter what brand platform they’re interacting with.
10. Don’t be afraid to rebrand
While brand consistency is critical for long-term stability and engagement, you don’t need to continue with strategies that aren’t working. Sometimes, a rebrand is the most practical solution to continue appealing to your consumers while helping you attract a new audience.
A rebrand can refer to something as simple as a minor logo change to a complete transformation of colour scheme, tone of voice, and target demographic. Depending on the goal, something as simple as an adjusted logo font can have a significant impact on your public-facing image.
Rebrandsshould be carefully tested before being implemented. Start by gathering feedback directly from existing customers to understand how they currently view your brand. Your loyal customers should take priority over potential leads. You can still try to get responses from other groups that resemble the new target audience but avoid alienating your existing customers since they’re your most valuable audience.
One example of a successful rebrand is Dunkin’. After being known as Dunkin’ Donuts for nearly 70 years, the coffee company got its new name in 2019. This came after more than a decade of using the slogan “America runs on Dunkin’,” which gave the brand ample time to gauge how audiences would react to the shortened name.
After announcing the change in late 2018, Dunkin’ was privately sold at a valuation of $106.50 per share in 2020 — an increase of roughly 50%in just two years. This is just one case study that demonstrates how a seemingly minor branding change can introduce opportunities.
Writing result-oriented ad copy is difficult, as it must appeal to, entice, and convince consumers to take action. There is no magic formula to write perfect ad copy.
Get started with brand-building
Brand building involves strategically crafting your identity, messaging, and promotional efforts to influence how your audience views your business. It goes beyond mere naming, encompassing your goals, visual identity, tone, and marketing endeavours. Together, these components amplify visibility and empower your audience to interact with your brand in alignment with your vision.
Even before delving into brand-building initiatives, having access to diverse customer engagement tools proves beneficial. These tools aid in comprehending customer interactions across various channels, enabling you to refine your engagement strategies proactively.
Having various customer engagement tools available is a major advantage even before you start building your brand. Effective customer experience products can help you understand how to engage with customers across channels in advance.
VIRTRIO helps build compelling brands through impactful digital experiences. Take advantage of the comprehensive portfolio of customer experience products and services. Inspect customer interactions, understand current customer needs, and design and deliver digital experiences that build customer loyalty and drive brand success from beginning to end.
Learn more about VIRTRIO and find your solution to more meaningful B2C and B2B customer experiences to solidify your brand among competitors.
