4 Secrets to Building a Unique Brand
The vaccines are finally here, and the Covid-pandemic is slowly rolling away. What better time for serious entrepreneurs who’ve been nursing the idea of starting a business than right now. But starting a business isn’t the same as building a successful business.
Why? Because you must engage on different fronts if you must build a successful business. You’ll need a sound business plan, an awesome tech friendly product/service, solid cash flow, and a brilliant marketing strategy that focuses on your target audience.
But before building a brilliant marketing strategy, you’ll need to first build a unique brand. A careful look at what happened during the pandemic revealed that businesses with strong brand identities didn’t just have higher survival rates than weaker brands, they came out stronger.
In today’s world where the average American spends over 10 hours a day behind a screen, customers are definitely taking notice of strong brands, and new entrepreneurs must up their game if they must remain relevant in the market. We’re going to be revealing four secrets that’ll help you build a unique brand that stands out from your competitors, but first you must understand what branding is.
Business and Branding in 2023
Covid has changed how business works, and you must realize that your business must be about more than just your products and services. It must offer your audience an amazing blend of beliefs, dreams, and experiences through branding.
Branding has evolved from simply establishing a clear market presence to creating an identity with beliefs and ambitions that people can connect to. Your brand would give your business a face, a personality, and make it more compelling, likeable, and approachable.
Your brand is the soul of your business. It’s the message you send to the world about your company’s values and ideals.
How Great Branding Powers Success
Courtesy: Unsplash
When most of our lives went online after the lockdown, branding was the most important factor customers considered when they had to pick from two or three brands. Branding is so important to the success of any business that it affects every aspect of its growth. And that’s why you need a great brand that’ll power your business:
- Attract more customers
- Make your business more memorable
- Increase customer satisfaction
- Stand out from competition
- Unite your customers
- Make marketing a lot simpler
Customers are more attracted to well branded businesses and tend to ignore less branded ones. So make sure that besides having a product that solves a big problem for your customers, your business has a unique brand because branding is an effective tool to winning more customers.
That said, here are the secrets to building a unique brand in 2021.
4 Secrets to Building a Unique Brand in 2021
Your brand identity is the reputation of your business, and a lot goes into building a powerful brand’s reputation. So grab your writing materials as we jump right in.
1. Begin with In-Depth Research
Courtesy: Unsplash
The secret to building a great brand is deep research, so devote time and energy to collecting as much information as possible about your target audience, competitors, and the industry. This will help you quickly create a brand that’s the best fit for the market.
There are a lot of consumers in the business who want different products. You can’t market a commodity to a college student the same way you would to a working mom. To build a brand your audience would enjoy, you must first learn and understand what customers want from your business.
Start your research by using a customer survey to collect as much information as possible about your customers. Learn their preferences, what motivates them to buy a product, and how they respond to other products.
Also, pay attention to what sets your business apart from the competition. Consider what you can give your clients that no one else can. To create a strong brand, you must first analyze your competitors. This will show you which branding strategies succeed and which do not.
2. Define your Brand
Every business enters the market with a specific goal in mind. It’s this goal that motivates them to build a brand identity that’d help them achieve their objectives. But to come up with the perfect brand identity, you’d need a first-hand understanding of your business, and you can easily do that by categorizing what you’ve learned about your business into these categories:
- Big Ideas: What are the big ideas behind your company?
- Values: What are the principles and beliefs that guide your business?
- Stories: Is there a backstory to your company? Storytelling is an excellent way of establishing rapport with customers and investors.
- Benefits: What particular advantages do you offer your clients?
- Feelings: Which strong emotion(s) do you want your customers to feel?
- Value Proposition: Can you explain your brand in a sentence?
Having a clear picture of your brand’s elements would help you create a brand that best represents your business. It’ll also help you craft a great value proposition that connects with customers.
3. Get an Exciting Brand Name
Performing extensive research to understand your brand, customers, competitors, and the industry would be wasted if you don’t come up with an exciting brand name that perfectly represents your business.
Getting a short unique name customers found interesting is one powerful reason major brands like Tesla, Amazon, and Red Bull, continue to rise while their competitors bite the dust. Like these famous brands, your brand name can automatically imprint your business in the minds of your customers.
One of the best ways you can create short, catchy and exciting brand names is by using a great business name generator.
Courtesy: Unsplash
Consistently putting your business in front of people, whether they’re your customers or not, is an effective way of building your brand. Develop a capable online marketing strategy that’d help you efficiently promote your company on social media.
Use platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn to build an online community that educates your audience and builds trust. You can also promote your business with influencer marketing. This way you can leverage the influencer’s active user base to build your brand identity.
BRAND BUILDING FOR NONPROFIT PROGRAMS
Check out Brand Building for non profit programs here
Why Brands Fail
Most brands fail because they send confusing messages to their customers. So make sure your messages are straightforward and that you understand what you’re trying to say. For each message you send, use the right tone and voice.
Another thing that brings failure is copying your competitors. Even though their branding is impressive, don’t copy them. Respect their technique and add your own spin to make yourself stand out. Also, don’t forget to maintain continuity with the online and offline branding. Any piece of material you provide to a customer should have the same style, form, colors, and messages.
Still, regardless of what happens, keep going forward. Allowing your business to fail shouldn’t be an option because fortune favors the brave, so keep on till you succeed.
Grant Polachek is the Head of Branding at 3X Inc 5000 company Squadhelp, the world’s #1 naming platform, with 30,000+ customers from early-stage startups to enterprises such as Nestle, Philips, Hilton, Pepsi, and AutoNation. Try Squadhelp’s business name generator for custom name recommendations for your venture.
