If you’re in the process of planning out your new business branding — or perhaps looking for a rebrand — the following guide can help.
What Does it Mean to Have a Brand?
A brand isn’t just the recognizable name and design of your business. It’s so much more than that. A brand easily becomes a reputation, a set of associations and everything your business stands for, as well as the image it chooses to represent. When it comes to branding, it’s everything a consumer thinks and feels when they see your name or logo.
Think of some of the biggest brands you know and the initial reaction you have simply by seeing their name and logo. Do you initially feel the ultimate trust? Do you think about their worldwide reputation? Or maybe the brand has different connotations for you.
All of this is what is conveyed in a well-marketed brand.
That’s why getting your branding right is essential for business success and for conveying the right message to your target consumers.
Key Branding Methods
1. Decide on Your Message First
Your business needs to have a clear message. Deciding this first is crucial, so that you can then implement it into everything you do when it comes to branding. Does your business want to push a certain business style, such as eco-friendly habits? Which target market is it tailoring for? Key messages need to be displayed in your branding.
2. Exclusive Products
New and exciting products which are exclusive to your brand can really help to establish the tone and service of your business. Exclusive products can be very exciting for consumers, as well as ensuring that you have products which are completely in line with your own personal brand, with nothing else like it on the market.
Methods like flash sales can be great for unveiling new and exclusive products and generating excitement about them, as well as generating profit.
3. Develop a Tagline
Taglines are great branding tools and can be as effective as logos and design. Taglines which are succinct and memorable can easily become part of your brand and what consumers think of when they’re presented with your product or service. Be sure to take the time to think of a memorable tagline which correctly conveys your business message, and what you do.
4. Be Consistent
Branding becomes powerful when it’s consistent. The only way your design and brand will be trusted and remembered is if it stays the same. Designs or branding which are constantly altered or changed will not provide the consistency which consumers need.
Key Points to Remember
- A lot of power from branding comes from design and aesthetics. Even if your business message is up to scratch, if the design is off-putting, it won’t matter what your business message is.
- Be consistent in everything you do: logo, color scheme, website design and wording of tagline, for example.
- Choose a voice. Your brand needs to have a tone of voice which suits your business, too.
