First of all, the brand you build for your company is your voice in the world. After all, it’s how you identify yourself, attract customers, and stand out from the competition. Remember, it’s as personal as a fingerprint and just as important.
And yet… some companies don’t put the enough effort into building a memorable brand. More importantly, the problem with a haphazard approach is that you may end up losing control of your brand. Perhaps some people may form opinions of your company that directly contradict your brand’s values.
So, for that reason, you must put care and attention into building the brand you want. Understandably, a brand that represents your company, your employees, and your core values.
Here, we’ll share the top five ways to build your brand.
#1: Give Your Brand a Personality
First of all, you need to do is give your brand a personality. Even if a brand might not be a person, but it must have a personality. This is because, people have a tendency to assign personality traits and characteristics to their favorite brands. Therefore, you want to project those traits instead of leaving them up to chance.
Build Your Brand Values
The first thing to consider is your brand’s values. For example, what does your company believe in? For many companies, the values they project are two-fold. Firstly, they represent the company’s culture and governing philosophy as well as its relationship with consumers.
For example, you might want to convey values like community service and compassion. Furthermore, you can use a combination of introspection and customer research to determine the best values to project.
Personal Brand Attributes
Let’s consider the second component of brand personality, which is the personal attributes you project. After all, a company like Pixar project personal attributes of kindness, fun, and creativity. By contrast, Red Bull focuses on risk-taking and playfulness as its primary attributes.
If your brand were a person, what would it be like? Listen, that’s a good question to ask as you figure out the personal attributes that you attribute to your brand and that you want others to attribute to it.
#2: Give Your Brand a Visual Identity
More importantly, the next thing you can do to build your brand is to give it a strong visual identity. After all, from the moment a potential customer sees something associated with your brand, they begin to form an impression of who you are. Therefore, the visual representations you use – your logo, colors, icons, and typography – should all communicate the essentials of your brand.
A Logo is crucial when you create your own brand identity
Most importantly, the first part of visual branding is your logo. Designing and choosing the right logo is important because your logo appears almost everywhere your brand does: on your business cards, stationery, company vehicles, store front, website, and social media profiles.
Above all, your logo must adhere to the standards of your industry while still being unique. Often, companies in the same industry use similar images in their logos. However, you don’t need to avoid them, but you do need to find a way to make your logo stand out from your competitors’ logos. Most of all, it is always best to work with a professional logo designer.
Create your own brand identity with colors and icons
Furthermore, the colors and icons you choose to represent your brand, both in your logo and on your website and products, say a lot about who you are. For example, blue is a color that’s associated with conservatism and trust, and it is by far the most popular color in logo design. Red conveys excitement and passion, and yellow is optimistic but may also signal caution.
Sometimes, colors may be functional as well. Take, for examples, green, which is commonly used to signify nature and is a popular choice for agricultural and environmental companies. When you choose colors, try to find colors that look good together and produce the emotions and associations that you want them to.
Typography and building your brand
Finally, think about the typography and fonts you use to represent your brand. Understandably, a font can say a lot about who you are.
Many companies today choose Sans Serif fonts for their clean, modern lines. However, a creative company might choose a playful or bold font, and luxury companies sometimes use script or ornate fonts to represent their brands.
Remember, however that the font you choose must work with your icons and colors to form a cohesive visual representation of your brand.
#3: Give Your Brand a Voice
As we know, visual representation is important, but so are the words and tone you use to speak to current and potential customers. Determining which voice to use for your brand breaks down into two steps.
Target Audience
Ask yourself, who is your target audience? When you know who they are, then it’s easy to come up with the right tone to speak to them. Just think of your brand’s personal attributes and values and let them guide you to the proper voice.
For instance, a company that markets to wealthy retirees wouldn’t use the same voice as one that markets to parents of young children. You should always be thinking of your audience and the language that will appeal to them.
Branding Language and Tone
Once you know who your target audience is, you can come up with the proper language and tone to use to reach them. For example, a toy company might use short words and a playful tone to appeal to children. By contrast, a company that markets software to engineering firms might use a formal or even dry tone combined with industry jargon.
A good example of a company that has a distinct and effective tone that’s perfectly tailored to its target audience is the skincare company Dove. Their audience is almost exclusively female, and they use a warm, feminine, and empowering tone on their website and in their social media posts.
Above all, remember to think of your audience as a friend. You know who they are – how will you speak to them?
#4: Give Your Brand a Purpose
The next element of branding to consider is y our company’s purpose. It is increasingly important for companies to have core values that they represent – and to have a mission they hope to accomplish. Millennials, who already make up a significant percentage of the workforce, prefer to work for companies whose purpose they support.
Mission
What is your company’s mission? For example, a mission statement is a popular way of expressing a mission. Ask yourself, what do you hope to accomplish? Most importantly, a mission statement is a big-picture view of how you see your company.
Here it may help to look at an example. This mission statement is from beverage company Honest Tea:
Honest Tea seeks to create and promote great-tasting, healthier, organic beverages. Striving to grow our business with the same honesty and integrity we use to craft our products, with sustainability and great taste for all. Incredibly, honest tea has been discontinued due to low sales figures.
Furthermore, what you can see from that statement is that it reflects a desire to create honest products in an honest way. That’s what makes it a mission statement – it speaks to the company’s core values.
#5: Give Your Brand a Goal
The next part of creating a purpose is having a goal. The goal you select should be hinted at in your mission statement but the goal is what you actually intend to pursue.