Are you opening a new business? Is your existing company simply not meeting your expectations and you believe it is time for a rebrand?
No matter the reason, it’s vital to have an interesting brand identity that will appeal to the audience and help your business thrive. Take a look below for some tips.
9 Steps To Develop A Unique Brand Identity
1. Understand Your Audience
The first step in creating a unique brand identity is knowing who your audience is. Seeing as how it is simply not cost-effective to cater to everyone, you have to properly define your target market.
Targeting anyone who’s interested, homeowners or millennials is simply too broad and you need to be a bit more specific. There are various ways how you can find out more about people who might be interested in your company.
For instance, look up certain hashtags and phrases on social media to see who is talking about your line of work the most and if there is anything they are missing. Then, you can look into the demographics of these users, such as their age, location, income level, occupation and marital status.
Once you know who your main audience is, it will be much easier to create a brand identity that corresponds to their values. Moreover, remember that targeting a specific group doesn’t mean you are excluding all other individuals that don’t fit certain criteria. You are simply focusing on a group that is more likely to purchase your products or use your services.
2. Research Your Competition
Just like you should put some effort into researching your audience, you need to do the same with your competitors. By learning more about the market you are thinking of joining, you will be able to see what is expected of you, how fierce the competition is and whether there is a gap that you can fill.
By stepping into the market with an innovative service or product, you might be able to gain the audience’s attention and turn prospective buyers into paying ones.
However, it is important to remember that you should not simply copy the approach of a successful rival. You should see in which ways you can improve it or make it more personalized to reflect your brand.
3. Define Your Brand Identity
Once you know who you are trying to attract and the current market conditions, you can start defining your brand identity. To have a strong identity, your company first needs a vision, a mission and a set of values. So, why does your company exist? What is your company’s mission? What will you be doing?
Finally, what are the beliefs that guide you and your company’s actions? Write it all down. With these answers in mind, you can craft an identity that will be appealing to your audience and give some personality to the company.
4. Come Up With A Visual Identity
Regardless of whether you’re starting a new company or trying to rebrand an existing one, you need a memorable logo. While it might be tempting to do this on your own, it’s best to hire a professional designer that will provide you with several options.
You can even have multiple versions of the logo that you will use for different situations. Then, you want to rethink your business uniforms, your storefront, your website and even the way you package your products.
These all need to be aligned to further enhance the strength of your identity. Staying consistent when it comes to color and font is essential to be easily recognized.
5. Establish Your Voice
In addition to your visual identity, you need a voice that you will use on all social media, in advertisements and during communication with customers. For instance, if your company is known to be laidback, you can be casual in your posts and chats.
On the other hand, if you are a high-end brand, you want to use professional language. When designing ads for your business, you want to keep this voice in order to appeal to your target audience, no matter if they are digital or offline.
Something that works in most cases in creating an emotional connection to your customers, so find a way to move them through your stories. Plus, you can also think about coming up with a slogan that people will associate with you.
6. Develop A Company Culture
Besides making sure your company looks good from the outside, it is also vital that you create a quality company culture that will ensure your employees are satisfied.
First of all, it’s important that you hire people that share your vision and values. If they don’t align with your beliefs, you could have some problems down the line so vet people before you bring them on board. However, once you hire them, you should train, reward and empower your staff members in various ways.
For example, you can create a break room equipped with personalised bean bags, TVs and a mini kitchen where they can go to relax and recharge their batteries. You can also introduce flexible work hours and accommodate them in any way you can.
Happy employees are glad to spread the good word about your business and much more likely to treat customers better, meaning that your audience will also be satisfied and willing to recommend you to friends and family.
7. Rely on Marketing To Boost Your Brand
To spread the word about your brand, you have a wide variety of marketing approaches at your disposal. From social media marketing and email marketing all the way to posting billboards around town and handing out flyers, options truly abound.
What is more, you can even attend trade shows to meet companies you can partner up with or organize local events that will help you bond with your audience even further.
8. Keep An Eye Out For Brand Mentions
Although some marketing tactics can be difficult to track, various digital ones are not a problem. From surveys, comments and discussions to Google Analytics, there are many ways how you can find out what your audience thinks of you.
Once you see that something isn’t working, you can take certain steps that will amend the method in question. If people start tagging you in posts, it’s imperative that you answer, no matter if they are happy or disappointed.
Responding to negative comments by saying that you are thankful they brought that particular issue to your attention and that you will work on improving shows that you truly care about your customers.
9. Look into Trademarking Your Company
As the number of small businesses is constantly on the rise, you should consider trademarking your brand. You surely had to go through a lot to come up with your name, logo and slogan, so why risk someone else stealing your thunder.
Look for the requirements and file a trademark application that will protect you in case other people try using your original ideas and assets. What is more, you might be infringing on someone else’s rights, which is why you should run a search before you register your company under a certain name.
Keep in mind that there are trademark disputes that sometimes end up in court. Once you get a trademark, don’t go overboard with your use of the ™ symbol, as people see it as overkill.
Staying unique in this day and age is often a challenge. However, by using the aforementioned strategies, you should be able to attract an audience and run a successful business.
Read Also:
- A Guide To Increasing The Brand Visibility
- Top 10 Tips For Branding an eCommerce Business in 2021
- Top 5 Most Inexpensive Branding Ideas For Your Startup
Author: Emma Williams
