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Home Business 5 Branding Tips To Build A Strong, Unique, And Differentiating Brand
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5 Branding Tips To Build A Strong, Unique, And Differentiating Brand

by Uma Rajagopal
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iStock 881845218

 

By Magdalena Sadowska, Community Manager at PhotoAiD

You should be interested in creating an effective brand message system for several reasons. A strong branding set by your company’s mission, slogan, and tone allows customers to understand who you actually are and what role you play in the customer’s life.

Did you know that a whole 75% of Millenials believe that companies should contribute to society’s improvement? That means you must have a strong message and a clear answer to the question: “Why does your company exist?”.

Good branding is the first step in making your customers remember you and keep coming back to you. If you do the job better, your customers will form an engaged community around you, and this strong message will help you stand out from impersonal companies. Your ads will become cheaper and more effective. Your fellow employees will share your mission and values, which will reflect in their commitment… And finally, you will be able to create a better company.

The following tips will help you understand what the process consists of and better prepare for branding your company. Read on!

  1. Set your goals in a SMART way.

You only have a real impact on what you can measure. And, in order to measure whether your goals are coming to life, you need a measurable goal – a SMART goal.

S.M.A.R.T – is an acronym for the words: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

  • Specific – your goal should be understandable to you and your team. Its wording should not raise different interpretations.
  • Measurable – you want to be able to say by how much percentage you have achieved the goal. To be measurable, it should specify, for example, the number of newsletter signups or the number of new customers.
  • Achievable – the goal should be a challenge, but it should be achievable. Otherwise, it will not be taken seriously, and motivation to achieve it will drop.
  • Relevant – your goal must have real value to you; it should really affect your business and life. It should also be relevant to the person/agency pursuing the goal.
  • Time-bound – it must be clear how much time there is to achieve the goal.

So, instead of planning to “increase the number of orders.”

Decompose your goal like this:

“We will increase the number of monthly orders by 30% in the 18-25 age group in the next 4 s.”

Don’t take this point too carelessly. Set the goals according to the above manner. This will set the horizon and set the framework for creating brand communications. Later on, it will also be useful for you to create marketing strategies or determine advertising budgets. Focusing on the S.M.A.R.T goal will make all your future forces begin to favor its realization.

  1. Analyze the current state.

We can use several tools to analyze the current state of the business. Some are more intuitive, and some a slightly less so. You don’t have to use all of them, but this is your weapon that allows us always hit the target. Therefore, when analyzing, aim to use as many of them as possible. These include:

  • Owners knowledge – this is the most important point. An in-depth interview about the business, product, and clientele, or more precisely, how YOU, the owner, perceive your business. Your needs and preferences can make a big difference in constructing your brand image. Modern marketing should be based on authenticity. Being someone other than you actually are doesn’t work in the long run. It’s hard to identify with someone who is inauthentic. 
  • External feedback – point 2 is almost as important as point 1 because you get to know the other side, i.e., the customers who are commenting on the business. It is important to listen to market feedback. Meaning what? Often it is a meticulous analysis of comments, and opinions on Social Media, dividing them into categories and sub-counting. This way, we can get interesting insights that could not be gleaned from simply reading comments. Read comments on Google, Facebook, and forums about your business. Extract what they praise you for and what they disapprove of. This will give you insight into your strengths and weaknesses.
  • Analytical tools – we meticulously analyze any data collected by Google Analytics, Search Console, Google Ads, or Facebook statistics. This way, we can find out what audience converts best. We can also see what the potential is for a given service (e.g., by analyzing the potential for impressions for a given query on Google). If you don’t have expertise in this area, it’s a wise idea to hand this field over to specialists.
  • Competitor analysis – the usage of paid tools such as majestic.com or SEMrush for competitive analysis. In this way, you are able to determine your market position and potential for growth. You can analyze the appearance of the website and the effectiveness of social media posts. If you don’t have such programs, you can simply analyze what your competitors like. Try to evaluate the areas they are better than you and what tactics they use to do so.

Finally, collect all the information into a SWOT table – which is a well-known tool for analyzing Advantages, Disadvantages, Opportunities, and Threats. It really helps to gather everything in one place and use the strengths and opportunities while, on the other hand, answering any threats or weaknesses. Draw two crossing lines on a piece of paper and write the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in 4 squares. Looking at the business from this perspective can bring out some interesting conclusions.

3. Establish a communication strategy.

Data analysis is one thing. It’s a completely separate matter to put it together and turn it into a message that appeals to the customer. At this stage, the focus is on stating the single essential point that will speak to the audience. This is not an easy thing to do, yet necessary.

You need one extra strong message that makes a difference in the first contact with the customer to prove to him the service or product is right for them.

4. Be consistent across all communication channels.

If you want to create a brand, it has to be… a brand, so it has to be the same name, graphic theme, and so on, no matter where it is. Therefore, you need to repeat all your branding features consistently across all communication channels so that the recipient knows that these are different communication channels of the same person.

This will make you much easier to find. According to studies, 93% of shoppers are likely or very likely to buy from a business they feel connected to over a competitor. It is very simple, very effective, and very important.

5. Be confident in your opinions.

As an owner, you should have the values you believe in – your skills, your vision of the world – be sure of it and defend it. Of course, it’s not about jumping on people who disagree with you. At the same time, it’s important to stand up for your opinion. Only people who know what direction they want to go will get anywhere.

Summary

Building a strong image for your company won’t be as easy as making a plain toast with cheese. It certainly will require a lot of hard work on your side. However, if you succeed, you will be happy to note that it was worth it, and you will keep experiencing the advantages in the future.

 

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