Building a successful brand is something that every new company needs to consider as they enter new markets. The right personality and branding decisions can build trust with your target audience, create a lasting reputation for your firm, and symbolize the value that customers can expect.
You may have questions like, how do you get started building a successful brand? What are the benchmarks for reaching your goals? With our decades of experience building brands from scratch, AVINTIV has created a list of 8 steps to help any new venture create a brand that resonates with its audience and provides the foundation for its long-term success.
What is a Brand?
Many people incorrectly assume that a brand is as simple as a logo, a typeface, and some color choices. However, nailing down precisely what a brand is is much more complex.
There are a lot of definitions for the term “brand,” but one of the simplest ways to think about a brand is how people perceive your company. These perceptions can come from factors like customer service, product quality, and reputation in your industry. Additionally, they can also come from factors you have no control over, like personal tastes and biases.
Our definition of a successful brand is one that can be authentically themselves while providing superior service and value to their customers – without cutting corners.
This definition of a successful brand does not focus on profits – just because a company is performing well does not mean it has a brand that consumers trust. However, suppose a company can offer incredible value to its customers and cultivate a reputation of trust and authenticity. In that case, this brand will naturally serve as the foundation for long-term success and profitability.
Step 1: Perform Market Research
Market research is like having a compass when lost in the wilderness. Just like a compass helps you find your way, market research helps businesses navigate the crowded marketplace and create a brand that resonates with their target audience. By getting to know your customers intimately and understanding their preferences and pain points, you can create a brand that speaks to their needs.
You also need to conduct market research to understand the major players in your industry, what the “rules of engagement” are, and what solutions currently exist for your ideal customer. Through this research, you can discover what makes your brand unique, differentiate your firm from competitors, and build a strong brand identity that customers will remember and trust.
Comprehensive market research provides the specific insights you need to make data-driven decisions and build a brand that stands out.
Step 2: Decide on a Brand Name
As the foundation of your brand identity, choosing a brand name takes a lot of thought and research. There is a reason that step #1 in our process is to perform comprehensive research. Until that step is done, it’s impossible to focus on choosing a brand name, logo, or personality, without knowing who your ideal customers are and what is currently in the market.
Some of the factors to consider when choosing a brand name are:
- Memorable and Easy to Pronounce: If your name is long or has a complicated pronunciation, it will be harder for customers to remember.
- Unique: If you choose a brand name only one or two letters off from an existing brand, especially one in your industry, it could confuse your customers and make your brand seem inauthentic.
- Legally Available: The name of your brand has to be available for your use. Make sure to verify that there are no copyrights or trademarks currently in use that could lead to legal issues in the future.
- Globally Conscious: If you are considering entering the global market, do the due diligence to have the name translated and localized for any languages you wish to do business in. This will ensure that the name is not insensitive, derogatory, or possesses otherwise negative connotations.
- In-Line with your Personality: This will be explored further in the next step, but you want to ensure that your brand name matches your chosen personality. If your brand is playful and energetic, then you don’t want a name that sounds formal or rigid.
Step 3: Choose a Brand Personality
The days of rushing to slap together a logo to identify your business are gone. Today, there are so many options to infuse personality into your brand through animated logos, website functionality, content, copy, graphics, and visual art.
Before you explore how to infuse this personality, you need to decide what that personality should be. Should your brand be wise and trustworthy, like an older family member you turn to for advice? Or is your brand vibrant and innovative, always at the forefront of what’s new and cutting edge?
Like every step on this list, this decision should follow your market research. Some industries may have specific expectations that you need to consider. For example, a “casual and laidback” brand personality could be detrimental in the legal industry, where customers expect a level of professionalism. Otherwise, ask yourself: how can my brand personality help me connect to my ideal customer?
Step 4: Decide Who You Want to Be and Who You Don’t Want to Be
“Who you want to be” can be an extension of your brand personality combined with your mission and long-term goals. Is your goal to be the number one service provider in the United States? Or, is your goal to offer curated, unmatched, white-glove services in your local community? These goals will have very different impacts on how you position your brand.
One tip for deciding who you would like to be is to look at other brands within your industry and identify which aspects you would like to emulate in your brand. For example, are there others that exude the authenticity that you want for your brand? Are there others with sleek designs and personalities that you admire? How can you use this information to inform your own branding decisions?
Just as important as who you want to be, is who you don’t want to be. Answering this question can help you avoid making decisions that do not serve your mission and act as a guiding policy for further branding exercises.
Step 5: Decide on Products/Services
It may seem counterintuitive to decide on products and services at this point in the branding process. Still, many entrepreneurs would agree that it is impossible to decide on a product or service without first knowing what needs you are solving for your ideal customer.
Surveys, trade shows, industry publications, focus groups, and historical sales data can help brands better understand what customers are looking for and what solutions need to be improved. Then, you can determine which products best fit your key competencies and what gaps your firm can most readily fill.
If you already have your products and services chosen, in step 5, you can work on refining those products and services based on your market research and the due diligence you’ve done up to this point.
Step 6: Create a Logo
Designing a unique logo is crucial for any brand as it visually represents its identity and values. When you think of brands that have built reputations for their respective reliability, service, and trustworthiness, some of the first that come to mind are the Nike “swoosh,” the Starbucks mermaid, and Audi’s four rings.
When designing your logo, it should be simple and easy to recognize. With simplicity in mind, a logo is more memorable and recognizable, even when viewed from a distance or a small size. A logo that looks great on a website may not translate well to a business card or a billboard, so the logo should also be scalable and adaptable to different formats and sizes.
Most importantly, your logo should match your brand’s values and personality. Like the logos above, yours should convey your mission and brand personality and give customers an idea of what they can expect.
Step 7: Create a Style Guide, Color Scheme, and Typography
A style guide for a brand is a unified document that provides guidelines on how a brand presents itself to the world, including how it presents itself across different mediums like websites, social media, and print materials.
Here are some key elements that are typically included in a style guide:
- Brand Colors: The style guide should specify all the colors that represent the brand, including when and where you should use each when.
- Typography: Typography guidelines specify the font families and sizes that should be used for headlines, subheadings, and body copy.
- Logo Usage: The style guide should include guidelines on how the logo should be used, such as minimum size, clear space requirements, and approved color variations.
- Imagery: The style guide may include guidelines on the types of imagery that should be used to represent the brand, such as photographs or illustrations.
- Voice and Tone: Approved messaging and language, including tone and brand voice, are often included in the style guideline to ensure consistency across communications.
As you create your brand’s style guidelines, remember all the work done up to this point. From your answers regarding who you want to be, your brand personality, and your ideal customer, you can use all this information to choose the proper color palette and typography that represents your identity.
Step 8: Applying Your Brand Across Your Business
You have done all the work to research your brand and decide how you want it represented. Now, it’s time to implement your newly designed brand and share it with the world. After creating a detailed and thorough brand style guide, you will have all the assets you need to apply your brand across new print collateral, social channels, website, PR, and events.
When you launch your brand, ensuring that the brand looks consistent across all assets and all representatives is crucial. This consistency helps with brand recognition and helps ensure that the brand is always represented in the best light, regardless of which representative of the firm is distributing messaging. A successful launch plan will require buy-in from every department in your organization.
Part of applying your brand also includes a well-planned launch strategy. As you plan to bring your brand to the masses, you need to consider:
- Develop a Content Strategy: Develop a plan for creating and distributing content that captivates your target audience and builds brand awareness. This can range from blogs to social content, webinars, whitepapers, and more.
- Develop a Marketing Mix: Develop a marketing strategy that includes advertising, organic search, public relations, social media, and other tactics to reach your target audience where they are. Some of this information should be made clear based on your market research but may require some trial and error to fine-tune its success.
- Outline Timing and Responsibilities: Develop a detailed plan of action for launching the brand, including timelines, budgets, and responsibilities.
- Measure Your Success and Adjust as Needed: Outline the KPIs (key performance indicators) you will use to measure the success of your launch and make adjustments as needed to ensure that the brand resonates with the target audience.
The Journey is Just Beginning
Hooray! You’ve successfully read ‘How to Build a Successful Brand From Scratch in 8 Steps’! If you’re like many other entrepreneurs, you’re leaving excited and motivated, while also a bit fearful with lots of questions.
In this article, we gave a high level overview of the eight steps to build a successful brand from scratch. If you’re stuck with questions and/or realize that your level of genius is operations or building out the company and it’s not branding, feel free to reach out.
AVINTIV is one of the only agencies in the country with a trademark pending system and process for how it successfully builds and grows brands.
The AVINTIV WAY is a proprietary 5-step process that marries consulting, branding, and marketing to allow us to successfully build/rebuild, launch, and grow any type of brand in any type of industry, no matter the size.
With over 12+ years of experience building and growing 400+ brands to date, we’re able to see businesses and industries like the matrix. To us, we see blueprints and a series of steps that need to happen in order for ample amounts of success to be reached.
The AVINTIV WAY is broken up into 5 steps: Brand Workshop, Brand Naming, Brand Identity, Branding Collateral, and Website. Once the AVINTIV WAY is complete, we have an entire growth division of our company that can help any client become an industry leader going head to head against the competition, no matter the size.
If you’d like to build a successful brand, reach out and we’d be happy to chat.
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