Everyone can benefit from a strong brand identity. Whether you sell a product or service online or if it’s an outlet, you will find significant advantages if you develop a stong brand equity. Even if you don’t sell anything, you can become an individual brand that will add demonstrable benefits to your career.
But what exactly is a brand, and why should everyone, from small business owners to corporate executives, be interested in building it?
A brand can be defined as how a product or service makes you feel. It’s the cumulative effect of sensory, rational, and emotional appeals that a product, service, or individual can create in you.
Branding helps you become memorable and distinct. In a sea of sameness, the way to stand out is by building or becoming a brand.
The digital age has given everyone access to platforms and technologies. All you need is an idea and follow certain proven steps like the ones listed below.
5 steps to building a strong brand in the digital age
1. Define your audience
Step number one is to identify your target audience. These are the people who would be interested in your product or service. You should understand their demographics, such as gender, age, location, etc.
Be as specific as possible. Don’t define them as working women, for example. What’s their age group? What’s their educational qualification? Are they married or unmarried? The next step is to figure out their interests and behaviors. In the above example, are you looking to target working women who are interested in fitness or young adult fiction?
If it’s difficult to define your target group, look at your competitors’ audiences. Go to their social media channels and study their followers. What are they talking about? What are the phrases they usually use? What are their pain points? What do they love? What do they hate?
2. Find a unique positioning
This is the most important part of building a brand. Positioning is how you define your difference from your target audience. It’s how you position your brand as a distinct and credible alternative to your competitors. It’s also how you can create a whole new category, as Uber showed the world.
To arrive at your positioning, first, you have to analyze your competitors. What are they offering, and importantly, what are they missing? How is your product or service different from theirs even though you are in the same category?
After that, you have to understand your audience. What particular feature would they like? Here, it’s important not just to limit to existing problems. You can also position yourself with attributes your audience may not have considered.
Your positioning should answer this question: Why should a customer be interested in your product? What value are you offering that they can’t find anywhere else?
You get this right, and everything else will fall in place.
3. Find a distinct name
Your name should be unique, memorable, and easily referable.
If you already have a name for your business, you can offer a specialized product or service as a new brand. If you are a corporate executive, you certainly can’t come up with a new name for yourself. But you can start a blog under a new brand name.
You can use your name (Gucci, for example) or create a character like Hello Kitty. You can also tie it to your location or simply make up new words, like Twitter. When you do think of a name, check if it’s already taken or if the URL is available.
Remember that you will be investing a lot of money and time in the name you select. So, be imaginative, and when you have a shortlist, test it with your family, friends, and colleagues.
4. Develop a visual identity
This is where you develop your logo and tagline. Your logo will help customers visually identify your brand. This will go in all your advertising and promotional materials, collaterals, and social media channels.
The visual element in your logo should draw inspiration from your product or service, category, location, and, importantly, your positioning. It should also convey the right sensory appeal.
That’s why you should be extremely careful about your logo, its color palette, and its character, if any.
Remember that positioning is not your tagline. Your positioning captured in an inspiring and imaginative way is your tagline. “Just do it” is not Nike’s positioning. That is to celebrate athleticism. It’s a belief that to be a great athlete, all you need is a body.
Your tagline should summarize your positioning and should exhort audiences into taking an action. “Just do it” captures Nike’s entire belief system. “Finger lickin’ good” defines KFC’s offerings.
5. Create a content strategy
Your brand experience will happen episodically on digital platforms. The content you create and deliver are the blocks that will help you build a brand and attract and retain customers.
The content you create should be in sync with your positioning. But it shouldn’t be just about your product or service. It should be designed to interest and engage audiences. For that, you need to think from their point of view.
Go beyond product-related content and talk about customers who already use your product or service. Celebrate your employees who put in that extra effort. Share relevant news and analyses about the sector. Offer tips and tactics that will make your followers’ lives easier.
You can also share your weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and failures. All those will humanize your brand and make it relatable and, therefore, credible.
In short
Branding used to be the monopoly of large corporations. You needed to have hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars of marketing budget to do it. You also would have approached leading advertising and public relations agencies to help build a brand. But digitalization has changed that. Now anyone, with imagination and consistent effort, can build a brand.