There is a problem.
You have identified a problem or a need in the market. You have set your creativity and imagination to solve the problem. After tedious research, different business and financial plans, feedback, and numerous drafts, you have finally developed a product or service you’re proud of.
You’re a visionary!
Now it’s time for perhaps the most exciting challenge: building your brand from scratch.
A strong, memorable, and unique brand goes a long way. It has the magnetism to attract loyal customers, foster strong emotional connections, and deliver consistent value to your consumer’s lives.
But how do you develop a memorable, unique and strong brand?
Defining Your Brand Purpose and Vision
Behind every strong brand is a clearly defined purpose and vision guiding it.
For instance, Minimalist (BeMinimalist), a skincare brand in India, clearly highlights its purpose as providing honest, authentic, and affordable beauty products, in every aspect of their branding.
So, before building your business’ brand, ask yourself these three key questions:
- Why does my brand exist?
- What problem does it solve?
- What values does it stand for?
Visualise your brand with their answers at its foundation and consider what you see. Does it feel like a brand that authentically reflects you? If you answer yes, we can move on to the next step.
Identify Your Target Audience
Your brand must resonate with its target audience. After all, they make up the market you want to break into. To do so, you need to conduct thorough market research that includes their demography, interests, values, problems, and struggles, as well as how your brand can solve or ease their afflictions.
By tailoring your brand to your target consumer’s needs and desires, you have the opportunity to foster strong emotional connectedness that ensures brand loyalty and trust.
Find Your Differentiators
Research makes up the backbone of your branding journey. Before creating a unique brand, you must understand your competitors and the current market terrain.
You must then carve out your Unique Value Proposition. Unique Value Proposition (UVP) refers to the distinct benefits or advantages that set your brand or product apart from its competitors.
Let’s loop back to our example of Minimalist (BeMinimalist). After identifying a gap in the Indian market for clean and reasonably priced skincare, Minimalist successfully and profitably positioned themselves as a science-backed, no-nonsense, and affordable brand.
Craft a Memorable Brand Identity
Now comes the fun part! Your brand identity is the face of your business.
Visual elements such as your logo, the colour scheme your branding employs, packaging, typography, and even the tone of your messaging leave an impression. Therefore, it is necessary that these elements consistently reflect your brand’s values, missions and personality.
Minimalist’s eco-friendly packaging, clean and bold typography, minimalist colour palette and accessible yet scientific tone of messaging, clearly reflects its branding as a clean, straight-to-the-point skincare producer.
Develop a Brand Story
Storytelling is tantamount to branding. It is the force that humanises a business and ignites emotional connections with the consumer. Sharing the journey of your business from conception, the brand-building process, and the missions that drive your enterprise has the power to inspire and engage your audience.
For example, Minimalist’s branding strategy revolved around science-backed storytelling, transparency and digital communications.
Build an Online Presence
Today’s world lives both online and offline. It is, therefore, crucial that your brand has a strong online presence. You should focus on:
Website- Your website must be easily accessible and navigable while still being visually appealing and accurately telling your brand’s story.
Social media- Choose a platform where your target audience is most active and create a strong social media presence. After all, your social media is one of the first spaces potential customers investigate before fully engaging with your brand.
SEO and Content Marketing- Use blogs, vlogs, and user-generated content to establish your authority and authenticity in the industry and drive traffic to your website.
Foster Customer Relations
Another advantage of the digital age is hyper-connectivity. Your customers can now reach you through various channels, allowing you to emotionally connect and engage with them while making them feel seen and valued.
You can do so through interactions on social media, personalised emails, encouraging feedback, conducting surveys, and excellent customer service. Happy customers become advocates for your brand as well as strong word-of-mouth advertisers.
Be Consistent
Consistency across touchpoints highlights the care you’ve invested in your brand and gives it credibility and recognition. Consistency is essential for your audience to identify and trust your brand with ease. Therefore, ensure uniformity across channels and your brand’s visual and messaging elements.
Monitor, Adapt, Evolve
Brand building is a dynamic and constant process. Use all tools at your behest, such as data analytics, feedback and market trends, to constantly monitor, adapt and evolve your brand.
Developing a brand from scratch requires creativity, imagination, patience, strategy, and determination. A strong, unique, and memorable brand is valued currency in today’s market landscape. By defining a clear purpose, understanding your audience, and consistently delivering value, you can create a brand that builds lasting relationships and stands apart from the rest.
Well, these are the key steps and strategies that Dolphin Branding helps you plan and execute while being your partner in building your brand from the ground up.
Happy branding!
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