Every business has a brand. The brand is simply the kind of reputation, association, and anything else that helps distinguish a business from another. The more your business works and develops a connection with clients, the more your brand will grow. However, if you want it to have the best possible impact, you need to consider how you can grow it mindfully on your own. Here, we will look at how to turn a nebulous brand into a strong marketing and sales tool for your business.
Think about who you’re targeting
The first step towards solidifying your brand is to stop thinking about it in abstract associations and put it into more concrete definitions. There should always be flexibility, but a strong base to start from will help. One of the best ways to do that is to center it around the relationship with your customer. Think about who your ideal customer is. Get an idea of their demographic, professional status, needs, lifestyle, and how your business plays a role. With that ideal customer profile in mind, ensuring that your marketing messages are directed towards someone specific rather than casting just the widest (and thus most ineffective) net becomes much easier.
Solidifying your visual identity
Your brand isn’t just about the mental associations you and your target market have with your business. It’s also the very real elements that make up its marketing identity. There are other aspects to think of, but the one that will make the most immediate impact is the visuals of your business. Take the time to find the visual style that works best for your business, and then work with partners like an online print shop to create flyers, posters, and business cards that stay consistent with this theme. Consistency and quality in visuals are among the best ways to make an immediate first impression and develop a sense of trust and reliability in the brand.
Finding your voice
Visuals play a huge role in opening the door and starting communications with your audience but after that, you have to have something to say as well. This is when you develop your brand’s voice and story. Think about the kind of language that you use to appeal to your clients. Are professionals requiring a more formal and informative way of writing and speaking? Or could you better build a sense of personal connection by being a little more casual and loose with them? The brand voice will help you determine what tone you aim to take with them going forward, which is crucial in developing an ongoing relationship with customers.
Position yourself within your market
You are not developing a brand in a vacuum. You have competition, whether local or far-flung, active or just a looming threat. As such, thinking about your market positioning is crucial. If you’re the biggest and longest-standing business in your field, speaking to experience and quality might be your best bet. If you’re a smaller fish in a bigger pond, you want to find your niche and focus on it. This might be a specific target market you’re trying to focus on, a product or service your competitors don’t offer. You also want to make sure you’re directly copying your competition while learning from what they do right and where they miss the mark.
Put real investment into it
Once you’ve developed the brand that helps your business stand out and you’ve started putting in the necessary resources to turn it into a marketing campaign, you must keep those efforts ongoing. You should never cut this corner of your business, which typically means taking the time to work with marketing agencies. You want to work with those who are best able to understand your brand, which might mean those with experience in your industry, and to learn from their methods so that you’re better able to integrate more internal marketing as time passes.
A well-crafted brand will help carry your business far into the future, and hopefully, the tips above make it a little easier to do that. Just remember, this effort is sustained and ongoing. It’s not something you pay to do and forget about. Your brand is your business.
