The “brand” is not just a name but a crown that can make you look different from the crowd. We as people, hold different names, styles, personalities, and stuff. Similarly, businesses have logos, names, voices, tones, colors, reputations, and more.
Will people like my brand? How will people approach my brand? What does it take to get my brand popular? Do you think about everything in detail? But what people miss is a good start to building the brand in the right way. Here in the article, we listed out a 7-step checklist that enables you to build your brand successfully.
1. Identify the brand purpose
What is the purpose of your life? Not an easy question to answer isn’t it? But the purpose of your company shouldn’t be left unanswered. Only knowing the business purpose can decide its journey and how your business will turn out. If you didn’t know it before starting a brand it can cost you big. Don’t know how to find the purpose, no worries here’s how you can do it.
- Why does the brand exist?
- What sets your brand from other brands in the market?
- Does your brand solve any problems?
- Why do people need to take the brand seriously?
Answering these questions can get you ideas about your brand. You can also use these as a part of your story, tagline, marketing, and more. However, the main concept behind these tips is to know:
- What do you provide the customers?
- How is your uniqueness in the market?
- Why does your brand exist?
2. Identify Your Audience
In terms of brand building, it is vital to understand in whom you are investing. Think about what types of products you are selling and who you are serving. Make sure to be specific with the consumer choices. For example, rather than targeting “pet lovers,” a pet accessories brand could focus on certain kinds of pet owners. As I go deep, I choose a kind of pet breed. Benefits of secreting a certain niche help in facing the heat of less competition.
Defining the consumers enables you to pick a brand design, voice, and the right marketing strategy. That connects you with potential buyers. Here are the things you can do to create audience knowledge:
- Do you have existing buyers and do you know anything about them? For example, what’s their age, location, and liking towards your business?
- What customer types are your customers targeting?
- Do you think there are any underserved quantities that you like to serve?
- Think about who your ideal customer is by creating a profile based on gender, age, likes, demographics, dislikes & behaviors.
You can always have new opportunities to know more about the audience. Hire a Shopify plus agency or install analytics tools that introduce you to accurate customer personas.
3. Know Your Competitors
Competitor research is another important step to developing the brand and establishing yourself as an industry leader.
Every brand has competitors. Rather than getting jealous, just conduct good competitor research. That builds the brand in a relevant way. You can find those gaps that need to be filled by seeing other brands. Also, you can have those things your competitors are missing.
Here are the ways to find competitors and do research about them:
- A Google search about your industry or products
- Search over social media and find the brands that are mentioned the most for your industry-related products
- Do a hashtag search over social media.
After finding similar brands, conduct a competitor analysis. To get an insight about branding which works that inspires you to build the brand. Here are the factors that need your eye on the competitors:
- Logo, colours, don’t and voice of the brand.
- Marketing strategy
- Content across digital platforms such as websites, social media, etc
- Their online reviews
Use tools such as SEMrush to see the competitors’ traffic, backlinks, ranking pages, and keywords. If you are a beginner, then invest money in the Shopify agency.
4. Get a Business Name
The brand name is one of the most vital defining features that can develop the brand to another level. The right brand name can distill your consumer needs in a single word.
Do you have a clothing business? Then getting a brand name such as ” Designer wardrobe” or something funny like” Krazy clothes” can make people understand what you have to offer. Ensure to choose memorable words that express the right idea and emotions to the audience. Let’s brainstorm different brand categories to get a brand name:
Other kinds of names include:
- Choose a brand name that defines what you sell such as “Deserts World”
- Name your brand along with an emotional word, such as “Freederm”.
- Choose a name after the one who found the brand as “Ford.” or “Martha Stewart”
- A brand name that combines phrases, such as “Facebook”
- Choose a title in an acronym that is simple to remember as “BMW.”
Make sure the brand determines the domain of the online store. Research to view what is available before thinking about the name.
5. Develop the Brand’s Look
Develop the brand’s look by deciding how you want people to know your company and what type of packaging you like to use for the products. What do you want them to see on your website? Here are the things that need to be overlooked while designing the brand look:
Brand colours: Make sure to have a handful of shades for emails, websites, and product packaging. Know about colour psychology to find the colour you want.
Fonts: Fonts make a good impact on how people see you. Sans-serif fonts are known to be friendly & modern.
Visuals: What types of illustrations, images, and pictures would you like to utilise for the ads or website? Also, set visual guidelines to inform the designers whom you work with.
Have a look at Headspace which is a meditation app. Its website and social media platforms feature cheerful and cherry colour palettes to bring joy. A mix of inspirational quotes and characters, offers a cohesive experience.
6. Build Brand Voice And Story
The market is full of brands, to stand out from them, develop your brand with a unique voice and story. Brand voice is the identity that you created for the business. And tone expresses the brand in many situations. Voice and tone not just make the brand personal but provide a great customer experience with meaningful messages. For example, have you looked at Nike’s social media accounts? Most of their posts feature motivational quotes, provoke unity and lift the spirits of people.
Similarly, brands such as McDonald’s or Zomato publish funny posts that make them stand out from the crowd.
Consumers love stories, so marketers have a good story to tell them. Storytelling turned out to be the most effective tactic. Where your story needs a narrative that is concerning and exciting. Brands such as IKEA, and Nike share storylines to influence the audience.
Have a look at how Tom Shoes used its story of building brands to empower and connect with people emotionally. Whether you own a small or huge enterprise or a software company, use stories to communicate a brand’s message.
7. Optimize website & social media platforms
Website
You can find several website builders to make a website. Get a website hosting plan & domain. Here are things that should be included in the personal website:
- About you
- Past experiences & relevant achievements
- Links to the social platform
- Professional logo and photos of products
- Calls-to-action
- Testimonials
LinkedIn is more than just a resume builder in 2022. With its new updates, LinkedIn turned on the “creator” mode for the influencers.
- Fill in the profile. That involves us, experience, headline, that defines the skills and impact of your brand along with a professional headshot.
- Leave insightful comments on the influencers’ posts. Find the influencers that are related to your niche.
- Try to make one or two meaningful connections daily.
- Post once daily.
- Use LinkedIn techniques to break into the Twitter environment.
- Follow people in your desired niche.
- Comment on their posts, and you can retweet them.
- Tweet insightful thoughts and jump in relevant hashtags
With Instagram’s new Reel features you can quickly become a good influencer and take your brand into many hands. You might have heard the stories of overnight successful brands that got thousands of followers with a post. Just focus on niche and use relevant hashtags, to be consistent all the time. Reels are trend-based, follow trends and create entertaining content.
Reach out to a Shopify agency to know more about buildings successful brand.
