Whether you're a small business or a large organization, branding is the key to creating a strong presence in your industry. Every business owner wants their brand to be remembered, but building a strong foundation for your brand isn't easy. It takes time, effort and research—and it's well worth the investment! Here are four tips to help you get started on creating a strong brand foundation that will set your business up for success:
Develop a strong brand strategy.
The brand strategy is the foundation of your brand. It defines the mission, vision, goals, values and personality of your organization. A strong brand strategy helps you develop a consistent message that will resonate with your target audience.
When crafting your mission and vision statement, consider the values and purpose of your business, as well as the needs of your target audience. Make sure to keep it simple and easy to understand so that it resonates with your target audience. It also helps you define your target audience so that you can deliver value to them in ways that no one else does.
Define the brand voice.
Defining your brand voice is about more than just choosing a color scheme and font. It's about defining the tone of your brand and making sure that all communications are consistent with this defined personality. Your brand's voice should be engaging and able to capture the attention of your target audience. Consider how you want to communicate with them and how to maintain a consistent and unique tone across all of your communication channels. For example: "We're like Fashion Nova but for shoes!" vs "Our shoe line makes it easy for women who love shoes to find high quality but affordable footwear options."
Identify the target audience.
The first step in building a strong brand foundation is to identify your target audience. As with most things, this can be broken down into two steps: understanding their needs and wants, and then communicating those needs and wants back to them in a way that resonates with them.
Here are some questions you should ask yourself:
Who am I talking to?
How much do they know about my brand?
What are their interests? (e.g., sports; fashion; beauty)
What is their demographic (age range, gender)?
How do they use social media or email and how often do they use these channels?
Create an emotional connection
Creating an emotional connection with your audience is the most important part of building a brand foundation. Without it, you won't be able to build strong relationships with customers and they will not buy into your business.
How do you create this emotional connection?
It's not as hard as you may think! There are many ways that brands can build an emotional connection, but one way is by creating a story around your brand or product that resonates with people on an individual level. This could be anything from creating content that helps people solve problems in their lives (like the Snob Mobb does), or providing them with entertainment from celebrities (like Keke Palmer does with KeyTV).
When you have these 4 elements in place, your brand foundation will be strong. Remember, this is not a one-time process, but rather an ongoing journey that requires dedication and commitment from all involved parties. There will always be new challenges and opportunities for improvement, so keep your brand's goals in mind when making decisions about how best to move forward with its development over time.