7 Tips For Building A Brand That Everyone Loves
People want the product, but they stay for the brand. Your brand is what people buy more than anything else. When building a brand, you have the potential to develop your company. Good branding boosts sales and creates repeat customers who will stay with you for years.
But everyone wants to create the perfect brand, and everyone is competing for those customers. So how do you create a brand everyone loves and wants to remain loyal to? There isn’t just one right way. A lot of branding will depend on your product, your company, and your client base, as well as your staff and resources. However, these seven tips will help you start a step ahead when building branding people love.
- Start Simple
You may have many branding ideas starting out and feel the urge to try all of them. Sometimes simple is best. You don’t want to overwhelm your customers. You want to create a recognizable brand, logo, and color scheme that people can associate with your brand. If you’re trying a lot of different looks, people won’t get to know who you are as a company.
Try distilling your brand into one word. One style. One sentence. See how much you can translate to audiences with a simple approach. What are the main principles you represent? What do you want your brand to mean to other people? These are vital questions you can ask while forming your brand. And once your brand identity is finalized, you should be able to answer these quickly and easily.
While you want to build a brand, everyone loves, trying to cater to all different people won’t help you. Remaining authentic to your brand is the best way to be noticed and gain a wider audience.
- Build A Connection
People crave genuine and authentic interactions, and that’s hard to come by with companies. Do you have a story about your brand that can connect others? Are there personal aspects you could share in your branding that would allow your company to shine through all the other marketing noise? Real people build a brand, and consumers want to see that.
Your audience wants to know who you are and what your brand is about. You don’t need a false narrative to sell your wares or some distant persona that customers can’t connect with. They want to know who they are supporting when they buy, so show them. Allow your brand to express personality and connect more with your consumers.
- Stay Consistent
When you land on some branding you love, keep it around. Don’t change your style entirely halfway through your marketing plans. Keeping consistent styles and logos can help build brand recognition. While you may be tempted to change it up immediately if something doesn’t seem to be working, you need to check what other steps you’re taking. If the new color scheme doesn’t seem to register with new customers, make sure you’ve already tried reaching them in different ways before blaming it on your look.
You can make tweaks and changes to some branding, of course. And you should try new things to bring in different audiences. But you don’t want to alienate your loyal customers. Try branching out in subtle ways that still connect back with your main branding ideas, and let people know it’s still the same company.
Consistency helps people feel like they have time to get to know and associate with the brand. You can build more loyalty and consistent customers by showing continued quality in the things they like. And loyal customers bring in more people from their own lives. So let people help you by keeping your quality up and your branding on point.
- Engage and Converse
While the phrase “all press is good press” isn’t necessarily accurate, you do want people talking about your brand. And this means you need to engage with your audience. Start conversations and ask questions. Initiate new lanes of thought around what your brand does and what consumers want.
Are you starting conversations with customers on social media? Do people know they can reach a representative if they need to? Part of conversations is to get people more engaged, so they’re more invested and spend more time on your pages. But you also want to assure customers that you’re available to help and answer questions. No one wants to work with or shop at a company where they can’t find a human being on the other end.
This does take extra time and energy, but individual comments and responses can go a long way. And it will help loyal customers love you even more. Good engagement builds a reputation of a company consumers can rely on.
- Make It Easy
How easily can a customer engage with your company or product? How easy is it to purchase what you’re selling? One of the best things you can do when building a brand is to ensure it maintains ease for clients and customers. Just like how simplicity can help with sales, it also helps when your branding isn’t cluttered and overly complicated. You want a simple message and an easy platform to navigate.
Make sure that your websites and social media pages are clear and compelling. The first impression your website makes on a visitor is formed within 0.05 seconds. Leaving customers confused about what you do or sell is the worst possible option when working on branding. People should be able to interact with ease.
Ease has a few meanings. And with this tip, you don’t only want to make things easy for your customers, but you want to ease everyone into the new branding. If your company already exists and you are changing your branding, make sure your staff can handle the transition and provide plenty of time for all necessary adjustments. You also want to give your customers time to adjust. Don’t completely flip your branding and change your style overnight. Adjust gradually and allow people to easily associate your company with the new branding before you toss out the old.
- Service First
When building a brand, you want to ensure service is at the forefront. What are you offering to customers and clients? How can you improve customer service and show that you care about your customers?
Building a brand isn’t just about what logo to use and how to make more people see it. You also want to develop a reputation associated with that brand. And treating people well is one of the most important ways to show you are a reputable and respected brand. Flashy marketing can get attention, but good service makes people stick around. A loyal customer base will carry you through all kinds of economic challenges, so don’t dismiss the importance of service.
Your reputation can attract new customers or deter them, so be aware of what your brand stands for and how people view it. Associations are powerful, so consider what your brand might mean to others.
- Remember the Basics
When building your brand and coming up with slogans and taglines, make a note of the key aspects. What are the pillars of your company? Think of those few words that define your brand and return to them. Remember those key aspects to link back to when experimenting with new marketing tools.
This will help with simplicity, consistency, and recognizability. Your brand should mean something to customers. Embrace those meanings and make them stick. Don’t dismiss how your brand is viewed. And if you want to shape it specifically, you must be consistent with your messaging and style. Keeping in mind those main defining terms will allow you to build a brand with many facets that are all still connected. It will also help you avoid being stagnant because you know you can experiment without straying from the main message.
Building Better
When you’re building your brand, the sky is the limit. But that can feel overwhelming and lead you to overcomplicate things. Start by distilling your brand and think about how you want people to see it. What you want their associations to be. When someone sees your logo, what should they think? What should they feel?
Work your way up from the basics, and you’ll build a strong brand that can last. Make sure you are always considering the customer and that they know that real people run your company. If you use these tips when working on branding, you’ll be sure to create something unique that people will want to see more of.
Often a good brand reputation starts from within. Working on your company culture can help your brand thrive. Check out how to build positive company culture and how it can impact your brand in the best possible ways.