Your brand is more than just a logo. It’s a representation of who your business is, what is does and its values. In order to achieve great branding, you have to ensure that you take some steps into truly understanding your company and goals.
To make things a little easier, we’ve put together seven steps to create a brand you can really be proud of.
Understand your business
Before taking any action, you need to truly understand your business.
The best way to do this is by asking questions and bringing everything back to the basics.
Firstly, what does your business do?
Once you’ve answered this, you can start to question further. Understand everything there is to know about your business, including your goals, what your strengths are and what differentiates you from the competition.
The more you understand about your business, the better your branding will reflect your company.
Create your brand pillars
Once you’ve taken time to understand your business, help sum it up with your ‘brand pillars’. These are the most important attributes and principles that you want to communicate through your brand.
By defining these attributes, your brand will explain who you are, what you do and what you stand for; helping to capture the essence of your business.
By summarising your brand in this way, you ensure that you truly understand what makes your business unique. This can also be extremely useful when introducing the company to fresh leads.
Use your brand pillars to your advantage. Give clarity to your branding and help make your business unique among the competition.
Set your goals
Your brand should not only be a reflection of your present company, but also of its goals.
Ask yourself, where will your business be in a few years? What are your goals? What are your core values?
Similar to the second step, once you have these answers, condense them into a short mission statement. This statement will clearly outline your goals in a way that inspires support from your team and provides a consistent direction for your brand.
Research your audience
Who is your audience?
In order to be successful, your brand needs to appeal to your target audience. Before creating the design, make sure you know who your audience is and how to market yourself towards them.
A big mistake in marketing is trying to appeal to too broad markets. No matter how good your product is, ‘everyone’ is not an achievable target. Instead of aiming too broadly, take some time to consider who your customers actually are.
Create your design
At a glance, your design should tell your audience what they need to know about your business.
The design process can pose an endless stream of possibilities. There are so many visual elements to consider; font, shape, direction, size, texture, colour and so on…
Do you want a bright or subtle colour palette? A creative or simple font? A formal or informal tone?
Each one of these options will tell your audience something about the business. During this process, it’s important to ensure that all of your choices work together to best represent your company.
For example, take a look at the differences between Toys R Us and Addleshaw Goddard.
Toys R Us use varied and bright colours and a very bold informal font which is exaggerated through its use of a backwards R. These elements are done to imitate a child’s handwriting and spelling in a fun and informal way, perfectly reflecting the business.
Alternatively, Addleshaw Goddard’s logo uses a refined monochrome pallet with a simple, professional font. These choices reflect a professional and formal tone, perfect for the law firm.
Expose your brand
After researching and designing your initial branding, don’t let it go to waste. Make sure it gets the exposure it deserves.
Bring your branding to every part of your business and connect with others. Network with other businesses and leave a positive impression on everyone you meet, branding isn’t just about what you look like, but how you act.
Make use of a website and social media accounts that reflect your design and tone, build your online presence and expand your brand’s reach.
Be mindful of your target audience. Although social media has fantastic benefits, there’s no point joining every single platform. Find out where your audience is instead.
Evolve with time
Over time, businesses will naturally grow and evolve. Make sure your branding does the same. It’s important to regularly evaluate your brand to ensure you reflect the business at present, while maintaining the pillars that your brand is built on.
After growing into a full-service digital agency and bolstering our design team, Purpose Media has gone through a substantial company rebrand this year. From our messaging and tone to the design of our logo…
It all comes back to how you portray your business. It tells your customers what they can expect and what differentiates your offering from your competitors.
Ask yourself, does your brand fully reflect your company? If the answer is no, then its time for a change.
Conclusion
When creating your brand, it’s important not to underestimate the research stages. The better you understand your company, the better your brand will reflect you.
Ultimately, branding needs to be truthful and tailored to your company.
Need more information about getting the perfect brand? Get in touch with our experts today!
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