So what to do?
First, you need to understand what building a brand is. Ask yourself, what expectations you feed on the realization of this idea? Much depends on the answers to these questions. Therefore, it’s important to accurately formulate questions and be able to answer them as clearly as possible.
Being able to clearly answer these questions will be one of your extra advantages. This skill will help you build a business that can work for many years and make a profit.
But how does a brand begin? What should be done to form it? What conditions must be met? All of this will become clear after reading this article.
The purpose of this article is to guide entrepreneurs from an abstract idea to creating a brand that is prepared to function.
And if you are ready to make this journey, then we start!
Basic steps to create a brand
Now we will examine each of the fundamental steps towards our goal. Here we will see the pros and cons. We will learn the sequence of these steps. And we will get the very knowledge that is necessary to build a brand.
Step 1. Ask something your target audience
The first question you should ask yourself sounds this way: what is my target audience?
You need to know a clear answer to this question because it will help you to choose the right development direction of your company.
Before you offer your product or services to potential customers you should figure out who they are, what are their preferences and how to meet their expectations.
Except for that, you need to know some basic information about your target audience. Try to define their age, sex, average income, level of education, location, etc. This knowledge will help you a lot in the near future.
But to use information about your target audience more effective you should also know their goals, motivation, pain points, brand affinities, etc.
Only when you dive into such details, you will know how to handle with an inability to create a brand strategy.
Step 2. A competitor is your friend
Learn what strategies have your competitors. It’ll help you to realize your place in the market. And this step is very important for your business. It’s important because before you will start to promote your product or service you should understand how does it work at all. That is why you need to look at other strategies and only then create yours.
This approach will avoid the mistakes of others. It’s always better to learn from the mistakes of others than from your own.
However, it’s better not to make mistakes at all. Of course, it is impossible. But you can minimize the number of potential mistakes.
And this article will help you with it.
Step 3. Basic that contains words
Don’t rush in building a brand. Before you start working on a slogan, think about what words your brand can associate with. To do this, you need to think about the qualities that can be expressed in your brand.
These qualities can be confidence, serenity, joy, and reliability, etc. But whatever quality you choose, you need to be able to express it correctly in your brand strategy. Therefore, you need to start with the selection and definition of keywords.
Choose about 5-6 words. These must be adjectives. This will be a great start for developing a brand strategy.
The main thing is not to forget that we need words in order to know exactly what qualities should be displayed in the company’s image.
Words are the basis; the image is the goal. In the end, we need to achieve the effect that the customer will trust your brand even before he enters the store or spends more than a couple of minutes on your site.
Nothing is impossible. And all the tensions are solved with the help of brand strategy. Our experts have dealt with a variety of problem situations. Feel free to contact us, if you need professional advice.
Step 4. Do you know any gods with amazing names?
When words are chosen, it’s about time to think about metaphorical images. Perhaps your brand is associated with a beast, with one of the Olympic gods or a natural phenomenon. Any comparisons can be advantageously used when building a brand.
For example, the company Nike borrowed its name from the god of victory. And this is a great loan! Nike makes clothes for sports, and in this case, the god of victory is more than appropriate.
It isn’t necessary to use the names of the gods. And if you use them, it isn’t necessary to choose only from the gods of Olympus. You can pay attention to the mythological beasts or historical figures. You can even choose the names of popular celebrities. But remember, celebrities appear and become forgotten very quickly, unlike the gods.
Step 5. Choosing a brand name
Choosing a name for your brand may or may not be an easy task. It depends on many factors, but to a greater extent, it depends on the scope of your business. In some areas, the name means very little, while in others it’s one of the most important factors.
But time passes and everything changes. You never know what you will be doing in 10 years. Maybe your brand will grow and you will expand its range.
There are several ways to choose a name for a brand.
But first of all, you need to look at how others have already done this and to identify patterns. It’s simple.
Let’s figure it out right now!
- Reframe word as it did Apple company;
- Use abbreviations as it did HBO (this abbreviation stands for Home Box Office);
- Use common word but with a removed or added letter as it did Tumblr;
- Combine a few words as it did Facebook (face and book);
- Just be creative and you will do it!
Also choosing a business name should be aware of the key rules. Forget about them will be a mistake. But if you listen to them, then it’ll well influence the choice of a name for a brand.
And here is a list of these rules:
- Keep it short but notable;
- Make a few variants to choose from;
- Ask yourself: is this business name easy to spell?
- Ask your surroundings for feedback;
- Try to say it aloud;
- Then say it loud;
- Check is the domain name free?
- Check social networks and trademark;
- Imagine brand logo during the process of creating a brand name;
- Ask yourself the main question: are you happy with this brand name?
Don’t think about your business name as if it something insignificant. A business name is your new identity. But some entrepreneurs may not accept it at the beginning of their way.
All in all, most entrepreneurs make such a conclusion. That is why your brand name is really important. You should like your business name.
Remember, if you don’t like your business name, how can you expect others to like it?
Step 6. What is your favorite color?
The selection of colors is a very important task. Each color has its own meaning, which causes certain feelings and associations among consumers. They may even not guess that there is a pattern between the colors of the brands and the sensations that they want to cause. But it doesn’t matter. Because much more important for this plan to work in principle.
By this stage, you should know clearly what you want to convey to the buyer.
Maybe your goal is to show him that your brand can be trusted?
Or do you want to give a potential buyer a sense of joy?
You need to know this to complete the following steps. You will get a few examples of the values of the primary colors and you will see who and how you used them.
All examples will be based only on a successful experience. So, let’s dive into it!
Blue
The blue color stands for trust, strength, dependable. You should use this color if you want to show your potential buyers that they can trust your brand. It is pretty important because if customers don’t trust you, it means you are going to lose them.
Technology companies, financial companies, companies that produce expensive goods, usually choose blue for their logo. You could see this color as a brand color companies such as WordPress, DELL, HP, Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo, Walmart, etc.
Green
This color usually means peaceful, health, and love of nature. That is why you probably saw this color as the main color of eco-activist websites.
Use this color if you want to help your customers to relax, because of green associated with tranquility, power, and, of course, nature. This color often used for promoting environmental issues.
Also, you can find green color as the main color of companies such as Spotify, Animal Planet, Whole Foods, HESS, Android, Starbucks, etc.
Yellow
Choose this color to convey the feeling of happiness and optimism. This color associated with clarity and warmth, mostly because of the sun.
Also, yellow is the brightest color of the visible spectrum. That is why this color is most noticeable for the human eye. Use this information for your own benefits.
Sharing kind thoughts, you can sell more goods than companies with a strict and serious design, complemented by dark colors and shades.
Nikon has chosen yellow as the main color of their brand. Such companies as McDonald’s, CAT, IKEA, DHL, Hertz, Ferrari use this color. Analyze how do they do it. It will help you to build your own brand.
Orange
This color stands for cheerful, confidence, and vitality. It is also symbolized energy. Orange and yellow are the best way to promote optimism.
This color is used by companies like Amazon, Nickelodeon, Fanta, Gulf, BlogSpot, Payless, etc.
You can read about other meanings of colors in the article we have already written on this topic. So now quickly go through the meanings of other colors, without delving into them.
White personifies calm. It is beneficial to use as a background. Also white is the favorite color of fashion websites.
Red is a meaningful color. It can mean both joy and negative traits. But it depends on what background it becomes.
For this reason, it is important to approach the choice of brand color wisely. Because not only color itself matters, but also can change it depending on the content around it.
Step 7. Have you chosen your fonts?
Actually, you need only three types of fonts.
The first one for a logo (if your logo includes text). Second for headlines. Third font your need for body text.
Fonts should fit together. Don’t add too many fonts to your site, it looks bad.
It’s important that everything was in moderation. You need your website to look stylish and modern. So, just keep in mind modern websites adhere to the rules: less is more.
Step 8. Find your voice
What is the brand voice?
It is the way you communicate with your customers. It depends on such things as the goal of your company, industry, age, and sex of your target audience, etc.
Find your brand voice isn’t difficult. To do this, you only need to correctly identify the target audience and ask yourself some clear questions. But first, let’s find out what a brand voice is like.
So, it could be friendly or authoritative, informative or conversational, technical, promotional, etc. Only you can define which one should your company use. Because nobody knows the company better than its owner.
Listen to yourself and you will build a strong branding for years.
Step 9. Create a brand message
The brand message is a couple of sentences about your company that delivers the essence of what you do.
To create it, you just need to answer these questions:
- Who are you?
- What unique do you suggest?
- Why do your potential buyers need it?
You should try to answer these questions very honestly. These answers will become the basis for your brand message.
Step 10. Create the best offer you have ever seen
All that we talked about above is the shell of the brand. But what is under it? Of course, now we are talking about the offer. Let’s look at it closer.
Your offer must be unique. It must be at least competitive. But ideally, it should outperform the competition in both price and quality. However, this rarely happens.
More often, an entrepreneur has to choose what to emphasize: price or quality? If you are being offered both, you should take a closer look at this proposal, perhaps they want to deceive you.
The same thought customers have when you offer them something like that. To avoid this situation, you should create a marketing strategy for your brand.
After analyzing the target audience, you had to identify their needs and desires.
Also, you should be aware of the price category of the goods they buy. At this point, you should know exactly what place your product occupies in the market.
With this knowledge, you will find your marketing tools to help you interact with your customers. And the best thing you can do to get ready is to learn how to speak the language of your customers, otherwise, they just won’t notice you. The reason for this is simple. Today the competition is huge in almost every field.
Step 11. Make a significant slogan
Obviously, a good slogan is needed for every company that counts on success. The slogan is another way to communicate with the target audience. The slogan should be simple and straightforward. The slogan should be bright and memorable. The slogan is your verbal business card.
As in any other area, to create a good slogan, you first need to analyze the slogans of already well-known companies.
Try to remember a couple of slogans without using Google. These slogans have been resonated for some reason with you.
Try to understand why this happened? Then draw the same parallel between your product, company, branding and potential customers.
There are some key points in creating your significant slogan:
- It should be short;
- It should be simple;
- Try to think different;
- The slogan that can inspire is the best slogan;
- Focus on your values.
And, of course, your slogan should be catchy.
Step 12. It’s high time to get a logo
If you have already chosen who is your target audience and analyzed the activity of your competitors, it won’t be a big deal to create a logo. Of course, professionals should deal with such things. Therefore, the creation of the logo is better to entrust professional web designers.
You need to work on the list of requirements. You need not only to know how you would like your logo to look but also what customer pain points to press on.
A web designer is a tool that works in your hands. You must properly convey information to him. Everyone sees in different ways what a logo can be. Therefore, each team needs a leader.
The tasks of the leader should include the pursuit of one vision and the organization of work for its implementation.
Logos could be abstract, iconic, wordmark or emblem. But the most important thing is your logo should be unique. When people see it, they should have associated your logo only with your brand.
It should be unique because this style as your personality is yours and yours alone. But there are so many logos that have been already designed. It isn’t a reason to give up, but a stimulus to experiment.
It would be great if your logo has icon elements. They should stay recognizable in any size. It’ll help your brand logo a lot in the future. As an example, Twitter has an icon logo.
Nevertheless, the more unusual your logo will be, the more people notice it. It isn’t always important that people will like it. Sometimes enough if they just noticed it.
Of course, some people could think that a logo is an artwork, but it still has a practical purpose. And under this purpose, we mean the tool to help increase branding awareness.
Stay true, stay in demand
When there is so much competition around, honesty is what distinguishes your brand from the rest.
What we discussed in this article is just a shell. All the most important is based on human skills. If the buyer sees a live person behind the brand, then he will get confidence in him.
If the client trusts you, it means he will come back again and again. And this is the key to the success of any business.
Of course, this is only a small part of all the rules that must be followed when you build a brand. To describe all the rules, a whole book would be needed. Therefore, it is better to contact experts for help.
This article has helped you understand how the brand creation mechanism works. Now you can entrust this work to professionals, and thanks to this article you will be able to control the process of doing the work.
Building brand is a big and hard work. And if you decide to start it, you can already consider yourself a hero. The little hero of the business world.
Hardly anyone will notice your work. But that’s the point. The less noticeable your work will be for the consumer, the more confident you can be that you have done it right.
Each business has its logo, font, voice, reputation, marketing company, etc. But not each business became a brand.
