Are you planning to start your business or have already started a company and looking for new strategies for its growth? Market conditions are changing due to ever increasing competition. In 2020, your startup will have to implement some marketing campaign to counter your business rivals.
Starting your own business, and being on your own can certainly be a dream come true. But taking your business effectively off-the-ground might not be. The New Year is going to be even more challenging. This is because the competition to win customers’ has only increased further.
One of the reasons why fast growth of businesses becomes difficult to achieve is that people do not take a brand seriously easily. There is a hard marketing work behind successful brands. They marketed their products or services in a special way before their potential customers.
To make people believe in your company’s products or services, it is essential that you pursue a sound branding strategy.
Ask yourself these questions
What Does Your Business Do?
What is the functionality of your business? You started with one thing, added more and switched later on. Strip it all back and ask yourself, “What does this business do?” Not used to do, or want to do, but actually do.
Write down a few bullet points on what your business does.
Why Do You Do It?
Why did you decide to setup it up? For quick money or to satisfy a thirst
Try and remember exactly what lit the fire in you in the first place and write it down. Think back to those first few days you started your business
Where Do You Want Your Business to Go?
Once you’ve identified what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, spend some time thinking about where you want your business to be five, ten, and even twenty years from now.
Where do you want your business to go? This question will set the bar for your brand moving into the future. You can relate everything you do back to this by asking, “Will this action help my brand achieve its end goal?”
When coming up with branding strategies for your branding business plan, keep it simple. Here are some business branding ideas to get you started
Find inspiration from other brands
Take the time to review what your competitors are doing. Notice what they are doing right, and what they might be doing wrong. Make notes about why you think something is working well for your competitor. Then, strategize on how your brand can do it BETTER. You may find that a competitor message is not very clear or straightforward. Leverage that gap when creating your own brand story. This makes it easier for customers to choose you over them when making a decision.
Look at a competitor closely in these areas:
- Brand identity
- Product or service offering
- Website user experience
- Content publishing
- Social media
- Advertising
Understand who your customer is
One of the more difficult things with business branding development is to commit to a target audience. It’s important to visualize what an ideal customer within your audience looks like.
We call this a buyer persona. It’s a fictional customer but based on real data about your existing consumers coupled with market research.
Your buyer persona will have a name. They’ll have a personality, lifestyle, motivations, and frustrations (this is where your brand can guide them!). Creating a complete picture ensures that you can develop business branding ideas to meet their exact needs.
Have a professional logo designed
No matter what size of business you have, it deserves a professional identity design. Make it exceptional!
As you look to hire someone for your logo design, ensure they provide these things at the very least:
- Logo in vector format (EPS)
- Color palette and fonts
- Brand style guide
Create a brand slogan or tagline
A slogan or tagline is a short phrase that exemplifies the essence of your brand, its personality, and positioning. It does not have to apply directly to your products.
For example, one of the most famous business branding slogans is Nike’s “Just Do It.” Those three words have nothing directly to do with shoes, but it is memorable and conveys the essence of the brand. It motivates!
When creating a brand slogan, keep these points in mind.
- Convey positivity
- Use it to differentiate
- Explain a key benefit
- Make it memorable
- When creating a brand slogan: be positive, differentiate, explain a benefit, and make it memorable.
Research current trends
When you are creating a new brand from scratch, you should do market research to see what is happening in your industry. And, what is appealing to your target market.
And actually, this is important to do even when you are an established business so that you can stay current with your branding.
Determine your brand “personality”
Your brand should have a personality or attitude, even a subtle one. Determine on which side of the personality spectrum your brand falls:
- Personable or corporate?
- High-energy or careful?
- Modern or traditional?
- Cutting-edge or established?
- Fun or serious?
- Accessible or exclusive?
Develop a unique business culture
A unique culture can become part of your overall business branding and brand personality. What we mean by “culture” consists of how you do business.
How you treat your employees and customers, does your company value teamwork and collaboration? Bringing your employees on board with your brand’s business culture and values can be the difference in having long-lasting success.
Trademark your brand
Coming up with a unique business name is getting harder every day, as there are more entrepreneurs and small businesses. You’ll want to protect your brand from copycats. A trademark protects a symbol, name, word, logo, or design used to represent the manufacturer of goods.
Once you have your brand name, logo, and slogan, you should get it officially trademarked. It will legally protect you if someone tries to steal or copy your original brand assets.
Use a Consistent Voice
Is your voice casual or professional?
With the brand voice that you determine fits your brand personality best, you’ll be able to develop a compelling brand story and associated messaging. These are the fundamental pieces of communication you’ll use across all channels, such as your website and social media.
Create Brand Videos
Remember, audiences are 10x more likely to engage with video content—embed, share, or comment—more than text-only blogs or related social posts. So try to use targeted videos to educate your buyers, help them recognize your brand, and make them purchase from you.
Evaluate Your Social Media Strategy
Social media presence is important for businesses, especially startups and small businesses. Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram offer startups a wide range of opportunities to tap into a large pool of potential customers.
Unlike traditional marketing, the created social media page helps you make connections and build community of users around your products and services. Social media allows startups to garner media mileage and build brand awareness with smaller budgets and grassroots campaigns.
Boost your brand
Once you have your brand name, logo, slogan and story, make you sure to promote it. Build a clean, user-friendly website that clearly explains what your business does for the consumer. Remember to include a call-to-action that points people in the right direction (Buy Now, Schedule a Call, Sign Up). Tell them exactly what to do.
Develop a marketing plan and implement it. Foundation elements of a digital brand strategy should include:
- Content marketing
- Social media marketing
- Email marketing
- Paid advertising
Pay Attention To Your Packaging
If you sell products, its packaging design must be attractive and memorable piece of graphic design work. Your potential customers’ attention is first drawn by the packaging, which is responsible for buying decision to some extent at least. If there is a mismatch in the packaging concept and the type of products you make, you will lose customers.
sources;
canny-creative.com
freshsparks.com
designhill.com
