Just started up a business? Got a great idea for a product or want to sell your services? Following your business plan and financial forecast, the next most important thing to consider is the necessary step towards building your brand.
A business without a brand is like a circle with no centre. Brand helps you target your audience more easily and, crucially, start to build a lasting rapport with loyal consumers. You will not be able to engender emotional loyalty from customers without a clear identity outlining who you are, what you stand for and why you exist.
Your brand encompasses all these identities and messages in one fell swoop.
What is “brand”?
A very broad and kind of slippery concept, “brand” can seem a daunting task with faced with building it from scratch.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines brand as “a type of product manufactured by a particular company under a particular name.”
This definition does not go deep enough. Realistically, it only defines the manufacturing side of what “brand” is. It fails to take into account the emotional connections felt by consumers, uniform message and overall sense of identity contained within a company’s brand.
Identity
What does your company stand for? This is your company’s message – your brand. Who is your brand aimed at? Presumably when you set up your business you did so with the clear image in your mind as to who this product or service was for. Who it is designed to help, and with whom you need to create a lasting impression of understanding and “being like them.”
Your identity should be unique. You need to stand out from the crowd. Particularly in the world of small business, which sees most business-owners flocking to social media to spread the word, you need to be able to stand out from the crowd.
If your brand fails to identify with any of your target audience in any real way, this is likely because you do not have a strong identity.
Build your identity on social media. Create content and share what others have to say. Be sure to talk about stuff that your audience will care about and take an interest in. Identify these topics by asking yourself: what is your product or service? Who will use it? What do these people care about? How can you identify with them and make them care about you?
Image
Aesthetics are important. To help pull your brand’s identity together in a coherent and instantly recognizable way, you need to think about what image you are projecting.
This could range from the mechanics of logo design to considerations such as colour scheme, font type and size or your email signature. Establishing these practices from the beginning is an important and necessary step when constructing your brand from scratch.
If there is more than one of you working at your company, you need to ensure you are all familiar with these guidelines and sending out uniform documents and emails. It will look unprofessional and messy if your team is uncoordinated.
Your brand’s image is also intrinsically linked to your brand’s identity. Aside from mechanical considerations of font size and so on, you need to think about the language you use, the types of content you are posting on social media and even the way you dress.
Your customers will make assumptions about your brand from the image you project. They will consider this before they purchase anything from you. Make sure you do not lose business before you have even started by appearing sloppy and disconnected with customer expectations.
More than just a company.
You are a brand. You have a message and a purpose. People can relate to you because they identify with these messages. When people relate to you and like you, you build loyalty. It is your loyal customers that will help contribute to your brand’s identity over time as you learn what they like and what more they want from you.
Your company will evolve as your following grows. Take care to start small though. Marketing to everyone is impossible and you will probably fail to gain much traction in your industry. Pick a target audience and stick with them. See where they take you.
This article is written by Sue Ratcliffe, Head of Client Services at alldayPA, a leading provider of telephone answering services. Tweet us or post on our Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ pages and share your thoughts! We’d love to hear from you.
