Creating a brand is one of the most important parts of starting a business. Your brand is what tells customers everything they need to know about your business. If your business has a clear and cohesive brand, customers will know what your business stands for and whether or not they can trust your business. And these days reputation and branding matter more than ever before. Consumers have lots of choices for now for every product or service that they buy. But they will continue to support brands that they trust.

The Basics of Branding

Creating a brand is something that you should do from the start when you are getting your business off the ground. Business branding needs to be present in every aspect of your business. From the way that your business card looks to how your website is designed and how you and your employees interact with customers on social media, it’s all branding and will impact how customers perceive your business. Therefore, when you are creating a brand for your business it is important to think carefully about how you want your business to be perceived.

Is your company a trailblazer in the industry? Or is dependability and great service what is more to you than innovation? You need to create a cohesive outline of what your company stands for and how you want it to be perceived so that you can start to build a brand around that profile. Branding basics like defining your company values should be done before you even think about how you will market your business. Build the brand, then develop the marketing plan.

Branding Basics: Elements of a Brand

Your company brand needs to be something that is consistent across the entire company. There’s no element of your company that doesn’t need to carry that branding. Branding is the most successful when the company name becomes synonymous with a certain logo, or a certain product, or a certain customer service ethic. So in order to create the most successful brand for your company you need to decide what attribute you want your company to be known for. Innovation? Great service? The best prices? Whatever it is that you choose that needs to be reflected in every element of your business including:

• Your logo;
• Your website;
• Your social media accounts and social media graphics;
• Your business card;
• Uniforms for your employees;
• Packaging;
• Even your offices should reflect that attribute in some way.

Digital Branding

It used to be that the stationary and other hard copy elements would have a large impact on the perception of your brand. These days it’s your website and your digital footprint that will help to define your brand to customers. Having a great website that is optimized for phones and tablets is a big part of creating your digital brand. It pays to hire a professional to design your website who can bring your brand to life for customers by the way it’s depicted on screen.

How your social media team interacts with customers online will also directly reflect on your brand. And it’s very important to get that social media interaction right. Companies have crashed and burned all based on the poor perception of the business in the public arena caused by social media. So make sure that your social media team is aware of your company brand and effectively knows how to convey that brand to customers online.

Social Media Matters

A great social media team can be what really makes your company and your brand stand out from the others. As an example look at the fast-food chain Wendy’s official Twitter account. The account is known for very witty topical tweets that involve other companies, celebrities, and customers. Clever use of social media has improved customer relations and really honed the Wendy’s brand and created a relationship with customers. That’s what you want your brand to do for your business, and social media a big part of that branding process.

How to Create a Brand

As you can see branding strategy plays a huge role in the success or failure of a business. So one of the first things that you need to do is establish a brand. It’s easier to establish a brand if you start early and draw inspiration directly from your corporate mission statement. That way you are choosing a brand identity that relates back to your corporate ideals. The essential parts of branding that you need to know in order to create your brand include:

Purpose and Positioning

Your brand’s purpose and positioning refer to the reason that you started the company and what you hope that the company will achieve. An easy way to visualize purpose is to draw two overlapping circles. One circle is your consumer base and the people that will benefit from your product or service. The other is your company when it’s operating the way that you want it to. Where those two circles overlap is your purpose. Your purpose is providing a solution for consumers and having a company that operates ethically and follows best practices.

The positioning means putting your company in the perfect spot to start growing and building your brand identity. When you position your company you create a consumer avatar that represents your ideal customer. Then you build your brand around that ideal customer and that customer wants and needs while taking into account your own goals for the company. Market research can help you through the positioning process.

Market Research

Once you think you know what your ideal consumer looks like it’s time to do some market research to find out if your product or service really can provide some kind of solution for that customer. But it’s very important to conduct some market research to make sure that your product or service is going to connect with that niche consumer that you want your brand to appeal to. Investing in some market research early on can prevent you from having to revamp and retool your brand later on and save you a lot of time and money in the end.

Brand Personality Profile

The next part of establishing your brand is creating a brand personality profile for your business. The brand personality profile is an overview of what characteristics you want your brand to be known for. Maybe you want your brand to be known for quality and dependability. Or maybe you want your brand to be known as a cutting-edge innovator. Think about your brand as if your company was a person and make a list of the characteristics that you want your company person to have. Then look at your niche market and ask yourself if the customers in that niche will connect with the characteristics that your brand identity has.

For example, if your target niche is seniors then you might to develop a brand personality that is more suited to the tastes and concerns of an older crowd. If your niche is young urban professionals then you would want to create a brand identity that focused on cutting-edge technology and other lifestyle elements that are common to that niche of the consumer.

Unique Logo

Next, it’s time to create a unique logo for your business. The logo that you design will be used to represent your business everywhere so getting the design right is extremely important. The logo should have a pleasing color palette and not be too detailed or intricate. It should be something that will look good on a variety of different products because that logo is going to represent your business on everything from paper to your website to uniforms and other products.

Your logo should relate in some way to your company so that consumers can tell just by looking at the logo what the company stands for. Your logo should blend different elements like graphics and typography as well as color so that the logo is really unique. The more unique the logo is the more likely it is that people will remember the logo and support your business. If you don’t have a design background you should hire a professional to design your logo. This one piece of art is going to define your business image and brand so it’s worth paying a branding agency to create the ideal logo for your business.