6 Strategic Ways to Build Your Brand

When the majority of people consider branding, they immediately think of logos, colour palettes, and document templates. However, branding encompasses all of the factors that influence how a business is perceived. Not only by customers, but by coworkers, competitors, and suppliers as well. Establishing a strong brand early on will benefit all subsequent marketing efforts, especially for growing businesses. Here are six strategies for strategically growing your brand.

BRAND AND COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
Begin by examining how you currently conduct your branding activities. Your audience should be able to grasp the company's values, mission, and personality after only a few interactions. This may take the form of a social media post, an advertisement, or, even better, a website visit. Developing a strong brand will help you stand out from the crowd, or more precisely, your competitors. It is just as critical to understand how your competitors are perceived and the messages they send out as it is to understand your own. Ascertain that your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is clear and that you highlight areas where you excel and competitors do not. Consider factors such as perceived quality, ethical and sustainability concerns, and price.

IDENTIFY YOUR MISSION, VISION, VALUES AND VOICE
These factors contribute to your audience developing an emotional connection with your brand, increasing their likelihood of converting and returning in the future. Additionally, your brand voice contributes to the development of your brand's personality. You must ensure that it is both audience- and industry-appropriate; a good tip is to conduct research on your target audience's language. When your intended audience reads your content, they are significantly more likely to relate to and connect with it if you write in their language and style. 

CONDUCT A BRAND AUDIT
Conduct a thorough brand audit using the data gleaned from your brand and competitor analyses. Brand audits assist businesses in identifying their strengths and weaknesses, identifying areas for improvement, and highlighting new strategies for remaining relevant. Additionally, it helps to determine how to refine your image in order to differentiate yourself from your competitors.

CREATE BRAND GUIDELINES
Your brand guidelines act as a manual for how to use your brand effectively, most notably in the content and communication you create. Maintaining brand consistency across all marketing channels and touch points ensures that your brand is easily identifiable. This results in a unified brand identity and experience for both existing and prospective customers. To develop lifelong customers, businesses must establish trust through brand consistency. The more consistent your brand is, the more easily identifiable it becomes to consumers, instilling a sense of trust. Thus, developing brand guidelines will provide sufficient direction for any designer, internal or external, to create work that strengthens rather than weakens the brand.

SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM SELECTION
Don’t make assumptions about where your audience spends their time online. Understanding which platforms your target demographic uses will give you a competitive advantage. There is no point in focusing exclusively on Facebook if your target audience is exclusively on Instagram; however, choosing your platforms does not have to be an all-or-nothing approach; you can use a variety of social platforms to reach different audiences or accomplish different business goals.

IMPLEMENT AND EVALUATE
Implement your strategy by determining which platforms and types of content you will use to gain traction. Once your strategy is implemented, conduct regular A/B tests and solicit feedback from customers and employees to determine whether perceptions of your brand are shifting. However, branding is a marathon, not a sprint, and should be a continuous effort. Expect results to take time.

“Hopefully, these tips will assist you in strategically developing your brand!”