Building a business brand from scratch is never an easy task. It takes years of hard work, resolution, and professionalism. But at the end of the day, it really pays to have a recognizable and selling brand. As a business owner, you are competing against big companies that have been in existence for years, so it is up to you to find ways of making your business stand out through an effective brand building process. Note that branding is not just about a cool graphically presented logo or an advertisement. It takes much more than that. Whether you want to create a perfect business brand from scratch or want to build your existing business brand, we will explore some simple steps you can implement to achieve that.

What is a brand?

Your brand is how people perceive your business. It is merely what other people and specifically customers say about your business in your absence.  As such, it can take several years to build the perfect business brand or reputation. Come to think of it; people can be brands too. Everyone has a face, style, and a way of communicating that builds or breaks their reputation. That is why you see companies using notable figures as brand ambassadors to represent them because they have a good reputation among the population.  So how do you maneuver the process of building your business brand?

First, find your purpose.

Why do you push your business every day or sell your products/services? That is the question you should start with. Ask yourself what kind of solution you provide or want to deliver to your customers and differentiate it from other businesses. That is how you create your business story, slogan, mission, or tagline. For instance, your customers should buy your products also because of how you serve them.

Identify your target audience and your competitors.

Ask yourself, who is your target audience, and who are you competing with? There are many ways of identifying that. You can google your product/service category and examine the direct and indirect results that come up. You can also physically explore your business location and analyze your competitors. Or, you can go shopping online or offline and find out what people think about the products or services, how they access them, and why they prefer a particular brand. 

Then, find out who your target customers are, what they talk about, what they love about the products or services, etc. That helps you identify what area you will focus on and how to position your brand to suit that audience. Since you are looking to make your brand stand out, you should not imitate your competitors but find out where they are lacking and work on that in your brand or improve on what they are already doing.

Choose your business name.

If you are starting out, choose a unique business name. Ideally, you should choose a business name that describes your brand, is hard to imitate and not easy to confuse with the existing brands in the market. If you have plans to expand your business in the future, choose a broad business name that is easier to adjust instead of sticking to a name based on a particular product/service category. You can use the Wix brand name generator to brainstorm some business names, you can use metaphors, acronyms, combine two words, among other techniques.

Choose a unique value proposition.

A value proposition is the tag line of your brand- one or two lines that support your claim in the market. When creating a value proposition for your brand, find out what adjectives best describe your brand. Or, ask yourself, is your brand was a person, how would you describe them? Personifying your brand is the ultimate way to describe it. 

Also, be specific. For instance, if your target audience is tech professionals, you can refer to tech-savvy instead of techy people. The famous brand Nike, has a tagline ‘just do it,’ but it is specific in its mission, which states ‘to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.’ It is better to start small when branding your audience by focusing on your niche audience first.

Design your logo

Your business or company logo is the face of your brand. Focus on creating something unique, appealing, creative, and scalable. Your logo will exist in all the right places from your website, social media profiles, business cards, posters, packaging, etc. Choose colors that differentiate you from your competitors and convey the feeling you would like your brand to communicate. Unless you have your design, you will want to hire a professional to design your logo.

Grow your brand

Having a business name and a logo is not enough. You need to push your brand for it to grow. Expose your brand to more customers, be consistent, improve the customer experience, and market it more. You need to offer your customers the best experiences so that they can perceive your brand positively.

Final words

Be consistent and maintain your brand’s reputation.