Building a Successful Brand
Marketing a business online has become one of the most popular ways for entrepreneurs to reach their target audience. Gone are the days when a good billboard and a couple of well-designed posters were enough. If you don't establish your brand's online presence, it can easily become forgotten or overshadowed by competitors. Less than 25% of consumers actually trust advertisements they see online. Many have suffered financial loss from unscrupulous marketers. Yet building a recognizable, trusted brand is within reach if you learn to play your cards right. This guide covers the complete process: defining your brand, creating a unique identity, producing relevant content, leveraging industry leaders, designing a social media strategy, and optimizing your website for maximum impact.
Chapter 1: Carefully Define Your Brand and All That It Represents
Your brand represents a unique promise you make to every customer and potential customer. The consistency and quality of delivering this promise encourages loyalty. For your promise to be effective, it must be distinct and clearly distinguishable from the many other promises your audience encounters.
Ask yourself: What kind of promise is your brand making? Who is it making this promise to? Why is it different from everyone else's? Why should anyone believe it?
The golden arches of McDonald's and the Nike swoosh didn't become iconic overnight. They are products of careful research, distinctly defined boundaries, and comprehensive marketing strategy. No one walks into McDonald's expecting pizza. No one drives to Nike for high heels. That clarity is the result of brands being so carefully defined that customers know exactly what to expect.
The first step is documenting what your business is good at. Use SWOT analysis to outline strengths and weaknesses. Your brand should represent your core strengths. Avoid the trap of trying to be good at everything or making a universal product with no specific target audience. Trying to target everybody forces you to spread resources too thin. The easiest way to get nothing done is to try to do everything simultaneously.
After assessing strengths, find three simple words that represent what your business does well—the words you would want clients to use if your brand were a person. This requires carefully defining your mission and vision statements. Then figure out how to communicate these attributes with the utmost simplicity. A complicated commercial or website is a major turnoff. Keep your message simple to make your brand memorable and profitable. As Tolstoy said, "There is no greatness where there is not simplicity."
Defining your brand requires much more than a fancy logo. It must instantly bring to mind what your business does and represents. Focus on quality and convenience. Make clients think of your product as the best quality, easiest to use, most affordable, or most durable. Selling hype won't get you far. The ultimate aim is getting the voice of your brand off the page and into the mind of your audience, making such a deep impression that purchasing your product seems like the only sensible choice.
Chapter 2: Create Your Own Identity
Some entrepreneurs try to build brand identity by imitating well-established players. This strategy proves futile. Customer loyalty comes from building a unique identity.
If you're already running a struggling brand, turn to your existing customers. Conduct a brand audit. Find out what customers currently think about your brand and how they think it fares against competitors. Your business might be too close to your heart for objective critique. Use online surveys or in-house questionnaires. The key is asking the right questions—clear, simple questions that get straight to the point. As Thomas Berger said, "The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge."
Identify common themes in responses. Some feedback may be aimed at improving product quality. Build on complaints and lack of enthusiasm. Use that information to guide your brand identity strategy, directing creative resources toward removing roadblocks from customers' minds. Reinforce the positive aspects they identified.
Three Simple Strategies for Establishing Brand Identity
1. Develop a Logo and Consistent Creative Elements. Your logo begins your brand's visual vocabulary. Create a specific look and feel that remains consistent across all platforms. Every successful brand is associated with a specific blend of colors, fonts, and slogans. Consistency matters: your website, social media pages, and business cards should feature the same creative elements. Choose colors deliberately—specific colors evoke specific emotions. Yellow is associated with happiness; red with anger or romance. Keep your target market in mind. Test your logo with a focus group before launching. Some logos can be misinterpreted or confused with similar brands.
2. Amplify Your Social Media Presence. What good is a distinct brand no one has heard of? Social media allows you to reach the right people with the right message affordably. All successful modern brands have invested heavily in creating a robust social media presence.
3. Optimize Your Company Website. Your website should be loaded with useful content, easy to navigate, and aesthetically pleasing. Nothing turns visitors away faster than a slow-loading or non-mobile-friendly website. This is one of the few touchpoints you fully control—use it to your advantage.
Chapter 3: Use Relevant Content to Emphasize One Key Message
Posting relevant content is one of the hardest aspects of building a brand. Relevance comes from keeping up with market trends and producing content your audience finds either amusing or useful.
Develop a Buyer Persona
Buyer personas are generalized examples of who your ideal customer would be. They force you to remember that your products affect real people. Start by asking the right questions. The insights gathered from your clients will prove useful. Figure out who has believed your brand's promise in the past and will likely continue doing so. Every sensible survey begins with demographic questions—age, gender, occupation. If you have frontline staff or a sales team, their customer interactions provide invaluable information. Solicit input from both good and bad customers.
Don't Be Too Forward
Once you know who you're trying to reach, reach them with relevant content—but don't barge through the front door. Being subtle is an excellent way to be bold. Get your audience talking about you without realizing it. Post thought-provoking questions about current events. Share useful how-to videos about hobbies relevant to your buyer persona. Run exciting giveaways featuring clients sharing photos. Post memes your audience will find hilarious. Share content from other companies they'll find useful. Participate in trending challenges.
Understand User Intent
If posting SEO content to attract new business, understand user intent. Creating keyword lists is important, but shouldn't be the focus. Understand what your audience intends to do with the information they seek. Users generally search to find a location, understand a topic, or learn how to do something. Content created with user intent in mind will be more relevant and more likely shared. Your audience benefits by learning something useful; you benefit as they unintentionally draw attention to your brand.
Don't Be Afraid to Share
Despite wanting to become a distinguished brand, sharing content from other brands can benefit you. Share relevant content from other businesses—breaking news, inspirational quotes, instructional videos. This gives your audience the impression you genuinely want what's best for them. Be cautious: don't share content from direct competitors. Your good intentions could be misinterpreted.
Emphasize One Key Message
Posting the same content across platforms may not send a consistent message—it appears lazy or pushy. Instead, focus on themes closely tied to your company's objectives. If your product aims to make customers healthier, post easy workout videos and healthy meal guides from other sources, then draw attention to your product's benefits. When you employ the subtle approach, you emphasize your brand's strengths without becoming repetitive. There's only so much you can say about a limited product array.
Chapter 4: Leverage the Voice of Existing Industry Leaders
A distinct brand voice does little good if no one listens. More than 80% of new brands fail. To be among the successes, tap into existing industry leaders who are already vocal. Their influence can be leveraged to increase your credibility, spread your message, and generate sales.
Industry leaders include bloggers, consultants, journalists, and authors—anyone regarded as an authority figure. These individuals already influence the minds of the people you're trying to reach. Identify them by examining the activity on their social media pages, not just follower counts. Look at how often posts get liked and whether comments are positive. Positive feedback indicates these followers will respond to a call to action.
Ensure the leader's brand represents compatible values. If you promote a wholesome family atmosphere, an alliance with a tattoo parlor or gothic clothing store won't help. Find leaders working toward similar goals. Choose companies that sell products complementing yours rather than competing directly. A photo-journalist would be an excellent ally for a wedding-focused business. Avoid anyone who constantly runs promotions—your audience will dismiss your call to action as another gimmick.
How to Leverage Industry Leaders
Simple Meet and Greet. Send a concise, non-pushy email presenting the alliance as a win-win situation. They've probably never heard of you. If they're popular, they've likely been approached before. Don't be discouraged by skepticism. Focus on what you bring to the table. Offering to share their content on your platforms is an excellent starting point.
Form a Syndicate. A group of marketers agree to promote each other's products across their respective platforms, giving you access to every member's network. Establish clear guidelines. Choose launch dates that don't conflict. Agree not to promote competing products. A syndicate can drastically boost sales and provides the added benefit of surrounding yourself with like-minded people who push you to improve.
Sponsored Ad Programs. Pay someone with a strong, loyal following to promote your product. This requires careful vetting of their social media pages before payment. One bad decision can scar your brand permanently.
Chapter 5: Design a Suitable Social Media Strategy
Social media is one of the most useful and affordable brand-building tools, but your objective shouldn't be posting random photos of brand representatives at local events. Aim to educate customers. Highlight attributes they already see and emphasize ones they don't. Use simple memes and creative videos tied to your brand's objectives. Keep up with the latest trends—but no one can predict which trend will dominate three months from now.
There is a hidden danger: social media makes it easy for clients to publicly call you out on any issue. Carefully monitor comments and prepare for damage control at any time. Anything offensive posted on your account can reach everywhere in seconds. Even if deleted, the damage is permanent before you're aware of it. Don't delegate posting and monitoring unless you've hired a proven, trusted professional.
Your social media account should be an extension of your brand strategy. Every image and post should tie to a specific objective. Focus on educating followers rather than merely entertaining them. If you can combine being entertaining and informative, you've already won.
Select a few platforms favored by your buyer personas rather than spreading yourself across too many. The frequency of your posts matters enormously—people want to be engaged constantly. But posting alone isn't enough. Engage your followers. Solicit their feedback and respond to comments. One-sided communication won't work. Followers become disgruntled when their opinions are ignored.
Social media allows you to become an expert in your niche. When you consistently post informative content, your audience looks to you to learn something new. This anticipation builds trust and leads to increased sales. Think globally—even if your brand is local, don't limit your content to location-specific material. Become a general expert in your field.
Proofread everything multiple times. Mistakes spread globally in seconds. Keep worded content short and sweet—save longer messages for your website. Use crisp, clear images. Always check ownership and usage rights. Avoid watermarks and competitor logos. Video content is excellent for demonstrating product use. Make it look easy. Encourage clients to showcase themselves using your product—everyone wants to be a star.
Chapter 6: Optimize Your Way to Success
Social media alone won't guarantee success. A well-designed website is crucial.
Brand Your Website. Feature your logo and creative elements consistently. Be careful with colors and fonts—some make content hard to read. A modern, minimalistic look pleases any crowd.
Easy Navigation. Complicated websites are obsolete. If information isn't readily available, visitors will find it elsewhere. Use accurate navigation titles. Include a search feature and sitemaps.
Mobile Friendly. Over 50% of consumers refuse to revisit websites that aren't mobile friendly. Adjust image widths, make page widths mobile-compatible, and fix any fixed CSS positioning. Test thoroughly before launching.
Regularly Update Content. Remove expired promotions and discontinued products. Irrelevant content signals you don't care about how your actions affect clients.
Solicit Feedback. Communication should be two-way. Make it easy for clients to contact you and thank them for their opinions. A brand that cares is a brand that sells.
Subscriptions. Encourage visitors to subscribe so you can reach them with new promotions and content. But don't email too frequently—this becomes irritating and counterproductive.
