Nibletz Staff
In business, there are a few areas that matter more than most. Think of them as your bones, or your bread and butter, if you will. When you’re creating a business, not only are you going to want to ensure that you can make money, but you’re also going to want to make sure that you can sell your product and service, and market your business too. Across each of these areas, there is one area of business that joins everything up, often, it can even make or break your business, and that would be your brand.
Branding is big. Not only does a color, a sound, a sentence, or an image have the power to bring your business to mind, but it can also facilitate the success of a company or even the failure. Whether you choose to work with Branding Agencies or give it a go yourself, it’s crucial that your business has a brand. When it comes to working on that brand yourself or creating one from scratch, here’s how to do it.
Think About Who You Are As A Person
Now, if you’re new to branding, or if you’ve got some experience but your current brand isn’t doing all that well, you’re going to want to start at the very beginning. In short, branding is all about personality and image. It allows a business or a company to be thought of as a person. One way that you can work on building up a brand is to break down yours. Think of your personal traits – what are they? When you can identify what makes you-you, you can get to know your brand. Then, you’ll start to understand exactly how branding works.
What Does Your Business Do
Now that you’ve dissected your own brand, it’s time to do the same with your company. If you’re going to create a killer brand, you need to work on getting to know it better. Understanding your business can be a lot harder than you think. Often, you can have an image in mind of what you want it to be, rather than how it is seen by the outside world. So, it’s time to break down exactly what it is your business does.
Do You Have An Image?
Breaking down your business can be a great first step. Not only will you uncover issues that you may not have known about, but you will also start to see your business as others see it. When you get to this stage, you can see exactly what image your business has. If you’ve yet to get started, you won’t have one, but if you’ve been operating for some time, your image could be positive, negative, or even irrelevant.
How Do You Want To Be Seen
Despite your current image, you need to figure out exactly what you want it to be. Sometimes, you’ll find that your brand image needs a complete makeover. And that’s okay, that’s what relaunches are for. The important part is that you can see where you are now and where you should be. At this point, you have to work out what your business should be saying so that you can figure out how to get there.
Research
With an idea in mind of what you want your image to be, you can then start to conduct research. It is tempted just to start with the idea that you have, but without research, it could be weak. When you consider the market and look at what your competitors are doing, you can spot new opportunities or work on improving things that they have gotten wrong in the past. It can often be the pivot that turns your brand from something that’s okay, to something that shines.
Understand Your Message
Next, you’re going to work on your messaging. Whether you realize it, every time your company communicates, you’re sending a message to your customers. From heading to Twitter and Facebook, to sending out emails or even speaking to your customers on the telephone, every single word says something about who you are as a company. So, it’s important that you work on getting your messaging right.
Draw Up A Design
With your ducks in line, you now want to work on pulling everything together. Regardless of the company design you’ve had before, you need to use your desires and research to come up with something that works. Imagery is everything here, so it’s important that you portray the image that you want customers to see, not just something that you think looks nice. Focus on your basics here. Are you luxury or budget? Make sure your design follow suit.
Pick A Color
Alongside design, you’re also going to want to make sure that you’re using a color palette that sends the right message too. Colors are powerful. They can signify different things to different people, but most of the time, they all have the same meaning. So, if you want to give off an image that is ‘fresh’ or maybe even ‘elegant,’ you need to pick a color scheme that works.
Stay Unified
Then, as your brand image is being built and customers start to recognize you, you need to make sure that you stick with a unified front. When you have a set design on your website, you need to make sure that it matches your store (if you have one), or things like vehicles, business cards, uniforms and even your social media presence. When you integrate your brand, customers can recognize you, regardless of the avenue they take to find you.
Be Transparent
And finally, as you start to build up your brand more and more, you’re going to want to ensure that it has integrity. A brand can only have a good or positive image if it stays loyal to its customers, it’s honest, and it’s true. One way to do that is to be transparent. That way, you can connect with your clients and work on building relationships that last, rather than selling yourself out and falling at the first hurdle.
