For most people, a brand is a name, logo, or any other feature that distinguishes a business from others in the market. And while this is correct, the concept of a brand is a tad bit deeper as it encompasses people’s perception when they interact with a business. Take popular brands such as Apple and Coca Cola for example. People associate Apple’s products with unique design and top-notch quality while Coca-Cola is associated with relaxation, happiness, and family.
Building a brand from scratch isn’t a walk in the park. First, a brand identity will have to be created and the identity must be consistent and applied to every part of the business. And the brand’s identity largely determines how the target audience resonates or perceives the brand. Logos, colors, fonts, and the products itself are all part of a brand’s identity. You are most likely familiar with logos of popular brands like Apple, Amazon, Louis Vuitton, and so on.
Below are tips that will come in handy when starting a business from scratch.
1. Research your competitors and target customers
The first thing to do when starting a building a brand from scratch is to carry out extensive research on your competitors and target audience. The purpose of this research is to identify the established brands in the market and how customers perceive them. And this will allow you to identify what separates you from your competition which is a key process in brand building.
Customer research will reveal their interest, product recommendations, and the language they express themselves in. All these will prove invaluable in the brand building process as it allows you to build a brand that your target customers can relate with.
2. Choose your business name
Your business name will have an effect on your logo, website name, marketing, and basically all other things associated with your brand identity. This makes choosing a business name tricky. The best brand names are those that are simple, easy to remember, difficult to imitate, and unique when compared to existing brands on the market.
When you finally decide on a brand name, consider enlisting the services of a domain brokerage to buy a domain for your business. This is especially helpful if you’re finding it difficult to come up with a business name, the services of this domain brokerage can become invaluable as they also help work business naming and domain brand protection.
3. Create a brand logo
A brand logo is the face of your brand. It doesn’t sell products or services but instead identifies them. A look at the logos of successful brands clearly shows that brand logs are supposed to be simple, distinctive, and practical. It’s also important that logos can be printed at all sizes (scalable), an important feature often overlooked by businesses.
All the places where a brand’s logo is likely to appear should be considered in the choice and type of logo selected. Ideally, a brand’s logo should be easily identifiable on all social media platforms and ‘favicons’ in the browser’s tab.
4. Choose the look of your brand
After choosing a name and logo for your brand, the next step is to choose the look of the brand which translates to colors and fonts on your website. As regards color, it’s important to choose colors that aren’t similar to those of your competitors. Building a brand is about being unique and choosing colors similar to what your competitors won’t do. Also, you will be confusing your customers. Color psychology should also be considered here as visitors will respond to the colors you use.
Fonts should also be kept simple and no more than two different types of fonts should be used for your brand. And it’s important that the two fonts go together to create a pleasing visual effect.
5. Be consistent with branding
Branding consistency is important to both the short term and long term success of any brand. The simplest approach to maintaining branding consistency is to see your brand as a person. And since people have specific traits or characteristics, you’ll have to define those of your brand. Doing this will help you come up with a brand voice that will be used when communicating with the target audience.
Content shared on social media should have the same time tone and carry the same message. The way you respond to reviews or comments should also be consistent. Doing all these will ultimately lead to brand consistency. And customers can easily recognize ads and other content from the brand even without seeing the logo.
