It can be difficult to create a brand that is unique from the start.
These questions will help you to think about how you can connect what you sell to who you want to reach. Refer to our guide to learn more about starting a company.
These are some tips to help create a strong brand identity and vision for your business.
What’s a brand?
A brand is much more than a name or logo. It is something that distinguishes you in a competitive marketplace.
Your brand is how people perceive you and your business. This includes both the impressions you can control and the impressions you cannot.
People have their branding. These traits give us different impressions.
Businesses use names, logos, and colors to represent who they are.
Without consistency, it is difficult to create a brand that works. This consistency must be maintained throughout your business.
How to create a brand
Seven steps go into creating a new brand.
- Learn more about your target audience, and other competitors.
- You choose your focus and personality.
- Please enter your business name.
- Make your slogan.
- Choose the brand’s look (colors and fonts).
- Make your brand logo.
- Your branding should be used throughout your business.
While you might revisit some steps as you build or pivot your brand, it’s important to think about all aspects of your brand identity when creating it.
Let’s start by laying the groundwork for building our business brand.
How do you create a successful brand?
This video will demonstrate the six steps to creating a memorable brand that is a success in online business.
1. Do research on your target audience and your competitors
It is crucial to know your market before you can make decisions about how to build a brand. This includes understanding your current market and who your competitors are.
The step of creating a brand is possible in many ways:
- Search for your product/service and view the direct and indirect competitors.
- Follow them on Twitter to find subreddits that are relevant to your customers and listen in on their product ideas and conversations.
- Talk to your target market about their brands and the places they shop in your region.
- Look at the social media accounts and pages that your target audience uses.
- Shop online and offline to see how customers may shop and buy products.
Keep the following notes in mind as you conduct your research:
- These customers are easy to sell to.
- These are the top-of-mind brands. – The established brands on the market.
- What customers say about – their interests and the language they use.
This is crucial because it will help to decide on the focus of your brand and how you position yourself against other brands.
No cost Competitive Analysis Template
Start planning how your company will differ by studying the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. Download our free competitive analysis template and get an advantage over your competition.
2. You choose your focus and personality
It’s impossible to make your brand all-encompassing, especially at the beginning.
It’s important to define your core focus so that it can guide all aspects of the brand’s development.
These questions will help you to think about the tone, focus, and style of your brand.
What’s your positioning statement?
A few lines that describe your market position. This is meant to answer questions about your brand, and help you create your brand’s tagline.
Your positioning statement should look like this…
We offer [PRODUCT/SERVICE] starting at [TARGETMARKET] and ending at [VALUE PROPOSITION].
We [KEY DIFFERENTIATOR] don’t look like [THE ALTERNATIVE].
Water bottles for hikers that are hydrating and carbon-neutral.
Your distinctive value proposition is your competitive advantage.
If your company is involved in a cause, such as starting a Social Enterprise, you can create a mission statement. This will give customers and the world a clear promise.
With what words would you associate your brand?
Your brand is like a person. This is one way you can think about how to build your brand.
This will influence the tone of your social media posts.
This is a great way to create a brand. To help you get started, you can use three to five adjectives as a description of the brand.
What metaphors and concepts best describe your brand?
Your brand identity can be thought of as a metaphor or personifying it. This will allow you to identify the qualities you desire for your brand.
This can be used to identify a brand or celebrity, vehicle, or another item.
The raccoon is a great choice if you’re looking to create a brand that targets entrepreneurs. They are resilient and will do anything to succeed.
Which animal would your brand identity look like if it were a real animal? It is similar to this animal.
3. Select your business name
“A rose called another name would still smell as sweet.” If Nike were called something else, it would be only found on fewer feet.
Shakespeare (sorta).
What’s in a name? Depending on the type of business you want to start, your name may be irrelevant.
A brand can be more than a name. The key to distinguishing your brand in the marketplace is your brand identity.
Small business owners must make a significant commitment to their company name. This will have a major impact on your logo, domain, and trademark registration. It is more difficult to trademark generic names that accurately describe the products you sell.
A store name should be unique and hard to duplicate. If you want to expand the product lines you offer, you may want to keep the business name broad.
You can use the business name generator to generate names. You can also try any (or all) these methods:
- Create a new word like Pepsi.
- Reframe an unrelated term, such as Apple for computers.
- Use a metaphor or a suggestion word like a buffer.
- Describe the concept literally (caution: easy imitation), similar to The Shoe Company
- You can add or remove letters from a sentence, or use Latin endings such as Activia and Tumblr.
- Used to abbreviate a longer name such as HBO (Home Box Office
- Combining two terms: Pinterest (snappy) or Snapple (apple)
Your brand name can have an impact on the URL of your website’s URL. It is therefore important to search around before you decide on a domain name. You can also search for domain names using our domain registration tool.
Focus groups of people close to you can also run your name to make sure it doesn’t have an unintended or too closely related meaning.
4. Create a slogan
A catchy slogan is a powerful asset. This is a short, simple slogan that you can use as a tagline for your website, social media bios and custom cards, or any other place you want to make an impression.
Your slogan can be modified as new marketing opportunities emerge. Over the past few decades, Pepsi used more than 30 slogans.
A memorable slogan should be concise and catchy. It will increase brand awareness.
- Claim your claim. Death Wish Coffee – “The World’s Strongest Coffee.” “
- It’s just a Metaphor. Redbull: Redbull gives wings
- Your customers will be your inspiration. “
- Leverage labels. Cards Against Humanity. “A party game for terrible people. “
- Make a rhyme. Folgers coffee is “The best thing about waking in the morning” “
- It’s important to describe it clearly. “
You can use our Slogan Maker to get some ideas or create one-liners about your business using your positioning statement.
More Information: Fashion photography 101: How to Take Beautiful Apparel Product Photos
5 Choose the brand’s look (colors and fonts).
Once you have chosen a name, it is time to plan how your brand design will look. You will need to consider your colors and typography when creating your website.
Choosing your colors
You should choose colors that are distinct from those of your competitors to avoid confusion.
While color psychology is not a science, it can be a useful tool to help you make informed decisions, especially regarding the color of your logo.
This infographic provides a great overview of the emotions and associations colors can create.
Think about how legible white and black text will look against your color palette. Take the hex codes with you and look through the various shades to find the right one.
Choose your fonts
You might also want to look at fonts for your website.
Simple fonts will help you build your brand. This excludes any fonts that may be used in your logo.
You can browse fonts that are compatible by using Font Pair
For inspiration, use Style. me to see your favorite websites’ visual styles.
6. Create your brand logo
A brand logo design is the most important thing you can do for your business.
Your logo should be distinctive, easily identifiable, and adaptable to any size. This is often forgotten.
Consider all the places where your logo should be visible: your website, Facebook profile picture, YouTube channel banner, and even your browser tab “favicons”.
A text logo is almost impossible to read. Create a square version of your Instagram avatar with an icon element that can be easily recognized at all sizes.
The Walmart logo contains both the wordmark as well as the “sparks” icon.
Invest your money in a logo that’s easily accessible online and in print. Source: History of Walmart logo design and brand development. Turbologo
These are just some of the many styles available for logo design. Keep in mind the colors and fonts you use when designing your logo.
Abstract Google Chrome
While an abstract logo might have some meaning, it’s just a collection of colors and shapes that cannot be easily compared with any real-world object.
An abstract logo has no meaning. It is possible to create it yourself and make it tangible for your customers.
Mascot: Wendy’s
Mascot logos often include a face of a character. They are not suitable for all situations, however (e.g. If you are going retro ).
Emblem from Starbucks
Emblem logos are bold and regal and can be used to create a brand identity.
Lettermark: IBM
These logos are great for businesses with more than three words.
Image: Twitter
A logo that represents your brand visually is called an icon logo. It conveys something about the product. For example, the Twitter bird is a metaphor for the short tweets which are often posted on the platform.
Avoid an icon logo if you’re brand new and trying to increase brand awareness. A combination of an icon logo with a wordmark is a good choice.
Wordmark for Facebook
Wordmark logos turn your brand name and colors into a visual identity. They can also lose their legibility when reduced to a square format.
However, you can fix this problem by simply getting an accompanying icon logo or turning the first letter of the wordmark into a separate-but-connected logo, like what Facebook does with its F.
Combination: McDonald’s
A combination of multiple styles can be used to create a logo
Combination logos allow you to combine both icons and wordmarks to make a logo that’s appealing to small businesses. McDonald’s, for example, can use its iconic golden arches in places where it’s not possible to use its full wordmark.
You can delegate the design work to Fiverr or enter a contest on 99Designs.
To get more ideas, seek a logo or our Watchful Template to get started brainstorming.
Learn more: Behind the scenes Look at Jewelry Photography with Expert Sarah Pflug
7. You should use your branding throughout your business
You can use your branding across your business to create a consistent brand story. Customers will have a consistent experience with your brand online and in-store.
Kobe Digital’s research into what makes customers and buyers trust online stores found that shoppers often search for the mission and purpose of a business to determine if it is legitimate.
Your positioning statement is a great starting point for building a brand. But, you should also ask yourself some questions to help you tell your brand story.
- What inspired me to start my own business?
- Why is the company there?
- What can we do to make the world a better place?
- What should the customer know about my business?
Every business is not mission-driven. Take a look at TOMS and Coca-Cola. The first two are mission-driven brands.
TOMS, a footwear company, and the accessory manufacturer is “in business for improving lives.” TOMS’s first charity program, One for One (where it donates shoes to children in desperate need), was launched in 2010. More recently, TOMS has made donations to the COVID-19 Global Giving Fund.
Coca-Cola is a well-known soft drink company that doesn’t have a strong social or environmental purpose. However, it appeals to its customers through branding that emphasizes the joy of sharing Coca-Cola products with friends.
Business owners looking to build a brand can learn a lot from Coca-Cola. This is a great example of brand marketing using timeless designs, images, and immediately recognizable fonts.
It doesn’t matter if you focus on a mission or not, but it is important to give your customers a story about your brand.
Grow your brand
Building your brand does not end with creating a slogan or logo. You need to be consistent in everything you do, from the design you use on your website to the marketing materials that you create to the packaging and shipping of your products.
As you continue to develop and refine your brand identity and design, more customers will see it. You’ll also learn more about your customers and what they want.
You can’t control how others perceive your brand identity.
While you can pull customers in the right direction and make a good first impression, it is impossible to control individual perceptions. For example, if someone had a negative experience with customer service.
You can only put your best foot forward and try to connect with your core audience.
