A strong brand is one of the most valuable assets your business can have. Whether you’re a startup or an established company looking to strengthen or redefine your image, a well-crafted brand strategy could be the key to your company’s success.
This article will guide you through the essentials of brand development, starting with definitions of key terms like “brand” and “brand identity” and exploring the importance of branding, before outlining some key steps to help you build your brand effectively.
Brand vs branding vs brand identity: what’s the difference?
“Brand”, “branding”, and “brand identity” are often used interchangeably, but there are some important differences between them. Here’s a quick overview of what they mean:
What is a brand?
A "brand" is the distinct identity of a product, service, or business, which sets it apart from competitors in the minds of customers. A brand is more than the product or service you provide; it represents the emotional relationship that customers have with your company.
In other words, it’s who they perceive you to be, including their expectations around the experience they’ll have when interacting with your business. The word “brand" is often used synonymously with "business" because many people associate a company directly with its brand.
What is branding?
Branding is the process of actively creating, managing, and shaping a brand. It refers to the strategies and actions you implement to build a unique identity and communicate this to your target audience. Your brand is how people perceive you, and through effective branding, you can influence these perceptions and develop positive associations with your business in the minds of your target audience.
What is brand identity?
Brand identity consists of the visual and verbal elements of your brand that help to convey its values, personality, and mission to the world. It’s the outward expression of your brand's essence and is critical in shaping how customers feel about your business.
It includes everything that represents your brand, from name and logo, colours, and typography, to tone of voice and vocabulary.
5 benefits of strong branding
There’s a common misconception that brand development is only relevant for large multinational companies. However, in reality, creating a strong brand can have powerful benefits for businesses of all sizes. Here are five reasons why branding is so important:
Recognition and differentiation
In a crowded marketplace, strong and consistent branding will help your business to get noticed and set you apart from the competition. If you have a distinct brand, people will start to recognise and remember your business more easily, and because of this familiarity, they’re more likely to buy your product or service over your competitors’.
Customer loyalty
A well-developed brand strategy will help you build the emotional connection customers have with your business, fostering trust and keeping them coming back to you time and time again. Due to the value they attach to your brand, loyal customers will often prefer to pay more to stay with your business rather than switch to a competitor.
Brand advocacy
Loyal customers may also become brand advocates who actively recommend your business to others, for example through word of mouth, online reviews, or user-generated social media content.
Easier product launches
When you have a strong brand and loyal following, it can be easier to test or launch a new product, as you have an existing audience who are likely to want to try it out and promote it. Customers will recognise and associate your new product with the established values, quality, and reputation of your business.
Employee recruitment and retention
A strong, well-regarded brand can help you recruit top talent, as potential employees will view your company as a desirable place to work. Retaining talent should be easier too, as a strong brand with a clear mission and values can create a sense of pride and belonging among your employees, increasing your employee retention rate.
7 steps to build your brand
The benefits of effective branding are clear, but how exactly do you go about doing this? As we’ve mentioned, a brand is more than a logo, name, or slogan. Building your brand will require you to take a strategic view and have a deep understanding of your business and target market. Below are some essential steps to help you start cultivating your brand:
1. Know your customers and competition
Understanding your target customers is critical so that your brand resonates with the right people. Conducting market research, such as surveys, focus groups, interviews, and desktop research, will give you valuable insights into your customers’ needs and behaviours and how you can best speak to these through your branding.
Researching your competitors is also a key part of formulating your brand strategy. Carrying out a competitive analysis will reveal the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, the strategies and tactics they’re using, and how they’re trying to position themselves in the market. This information will be extremely useful in helping you to create a unique value proposition for your brand (which we’ll cover in more detail below).
2. Determine your vision, mission, and values
Your business’s vision, mission, and values form the core of your brand. Writing statements for each will help you define why your business exists and what it stands for. Here’s what each of these three elements means:
Vision statement: this should set out what your business aspires to be in the long term. Often intended solely or mainly for internal use, a vision statement is a fairly broad and inspirational written declaration of your organisation’s ultimate goal.
Mission statement: unlike the vision statement, which focuses on a future state you hope to achieve, the mission statement outlines what your business is doing right now. It describes the purpose of your organisation in a nutshell, its objectives, and how you intend to reach those objectives.
Values statement: this sets out the core principles and ideals that inform your company’s culture and decision-making. It serves as a moral foundation to guide your employees and to show customers and stakeholders what your business stands for.
3. Create a value proposition
Once you’ve detailed your mission, vision, and values, you can then craft your value proposition. Creating a value proposition is an important step in building your brand as it highlights what makes your business unique and will act as a guiding force for all your branding efforts.
Essentially, a value proposition is a clear, simple statement explaining why potential customers should buy from you rather than your competitors. It summarises how your product or service will solve their problems and the benefits you offer them.
A model that can help you develop a strong value proposition is Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle model. At the centre of the circle is “Why”, which is the core purpose of your business. The next layer of the circle, “How”, focuses on the specific actions you take to achieve your “Why”. Finally, “What” refers to the products or services you offer.
4. Define your brand personality
A brand personality is a set of human characteristics and traits attributed to a brand. It’s how your brand would look, act, and speak if it were a person, and provides the foundation for your brand identity.
To define your brand personality, choose some adjectives that best represent your brand’s mission and values and align with your target audience. For example, a brand might be friendly, adventurous, sophisticated, or reliable. Also consider how your brand should speak. Is it formal or casual? Playful or serious?
By giving your brand a distinctive personality, you can humanise it and shape how your target customers perceive and connect with it, making it more relatable and memorable.
5. Create brand assets
Now you’ve determined your brand’s mission, value proposition, and personality, you can start creating and choosing your brand assets.
Brand assets are the tangible elements that make up your brand identity. They can be both physical and digital, including:
- Logo
- Typography
- Colour palette
- Tagline
- Packaging
Together they should build a cohesive and easily recognisable identity that expresses your brand personality.
6. Produce brand guidelines
Brand guidelines are a set of rules and standards that define how your brand should be presented. They help to ensure consistency and quality across all platforms and materials. While they differ from business to business, brand guidelines typically include the following aspects:
- Logo usage: Instructions on how to use your logo in different contexts, including size, placement, and colour variations.
- Colour palette: The specific colours that represent your brand, including RGB and HEX codes.
- Typography: Guidelines for the fonts used in your brand communications, including primary and secondary fonts.
- Imagery style: The types of images that align with your brand, including photography style, illustration types, and visual themes.
- Tone of voice: Guidelines for how your brand communicates, including grammar rules, word choice, and messaging style. It may help to have a more in-depth style guide that sets these out in more detail.
Once you’ve developed your brand guidelines, make sure they’re shared and understood throughout your business. If everyone in the organisation sees the brand guidelines as a go-to resource, you’ll have more control over your brand and greater assurance that your team are presenting its image and values in a positive, professional, and cohesive way.
7. Apply branding across your business
When it comes to developing and maintaining a strong brand, consistency is crucial. Every touchpoint with your customer should reinforce your brand values and personality – whether that’s the customer service you deliver, the packaging of any physical products, or how you communicate on social media.
Take Mallows Beauty as an example – a vegan beauty brand we supported with a six-figure funding package to help fund product development and export growth. Laura Mallows, founder of the business, said: “I founded Mallows Beauty in 2020 because, after battling with self-image, acne, and anxiety my whole life, it became clear that the industry needed a brand based on real babes, real skin and real bodies. The industry has historically contributed to damaging our body image, which is why I wanted a different approach. For us, promoting self-love and body positivity is not just a marketing tactic, it's at the core of everything we do - from our product designs to our social media posts.
"We make sure that our messaging is inclusive and reflective of diverse body types. Every campaign and product is created with the intention of promoting body positivity and self-care. We're on a mission to change the world one body scrub at a time.”
If you need finance to help with building your brand or to cover any other costs involved in growing or starting your business, get in touch with us to find out more.
