We all know a couple of businesses that are more successful and out there in the world. For example, if I say McDonald’s, the first thing that comes to your mind would be their fries, their burgers, and their classic logo. What happened here? Well, McDonald’s has created such a strong brand image for itself that with just the mere mention of their name, it can make you recollect its key identifiers, like the logo and the products.
Branding is the first step to ensuring growth and success of your business. Whether you’re a start-up or an established network, good branding will always help you stand out and be easily identifiable amidst your competitors. In this article, we will discuss the importance of branding, how to create a smart brand strategy, and how a branding design agency can help you break through the noise.
Why branding is important?
Branding is important because it becomes the first interaction between your customers and the brand. It shapes how the customers will perceive your brand and gives the business a brand identity. This ultimately helps drive new business, establishes brand loyalty, and increases brand equity.
What is brand strategy and why is it necessary?
While branding is important for a business, a way to effectively use branding to get optimum results is also very important. Brand marketing is a huge project, and like any huge project that involves different stages and different teams, it is easy to lose direction. That’s why devising a strategy to coordinate through different stages of the project and among different teams can help guide everyone.
A branding strategy includes –
- The long-term goals for the brand campaigns
- Step-by-step explanation of how to achieve those goals
- A list of key stakeholders responsible for different elements of the project
- How the strategy can benefit the consumers
- And an analysis of the competitive landscape
Why is it required?
Branding strategy will help you align marketing efforts. It will help a marketer ensure that the messaging stays consistent and that the campaigns have a clear representation of the brand values. Branding strategy also helps different teams working towards the marketing efforts to stay aligned. And the most important part of creating a brand strategy is, it helps to evaluate what worked and what didn’t.
How to create a smart brand strategy?
Creating a brand strategy is more than just creating a brand. Brand strategy uses all the key identifiers or assets of the brand like the logo, the colour palette and their social media channels to convey a message and a feeling to the audience.
There are various steps to creating a smart brand strategy and we’ve listed them below
Define your brand
First and foremost step to creating a brand strategy is to define your brand. You can define your brand by figuring out your brand personality, brand voice, brand identity, and your brand values. Determining these four categories will help you define your brand and how you want to portray your brand to your audience.
Establish the brand’s purpose
Brand purpose defines the core purpose of your brand’s existence and the reason the company was created in the first place. For example, Nike’s brand purpose is to inspire athletes and create innovations in sport. And keeping that purpose in mind helps them create ergonomic products that enhance an athlete’s performance. Having a strong brand purpose will help the brand become successful as it will not lose its focus. When figuring out your brand purpose, think about what gap you were trying to fill when you started the company.
Determine brand objectives
This is essentially determining the goals you want to achieve with your branding efforts. It could be anything from creating brand awareness, brand loyalty, brand associations, to brand quality perception, brand preference, and conversion.
Identify your target audience
While making your brand appealing to all age groups might seem really tempting, there are also chances that it can make your brand lose focus. That’s why it is important to identify and choose your target audience carefully. The time and effort you take to narrow down your target audience will help your branding campaigns be more fruitful. Once your key audiences are catered to, it is just an upward journey from there.
Visual identity
Your visual identity is crucial to any branding endeavour you undertake. From the brand logo, colour palette, to the fonts and photographs used, everything should align with your overall brand strategy. If you feel like any colour or font used doesn’t align with your brand strategy, then it is important to make some adjustments. If your brand strategy changes after a time period, then retaining your old visual identity will no longer contribute towards the marketing efforts. So adapt your visual identity to align with your brand strategy.
Competitor analysis
Like they say, competition is good. Competition drives us to become better. That’s why having a competitor analysis can help you determine what you are doing right or wrong and how you can improve your products and services. It gives the strengths and weaknesses of the competition and assists you in making informed decisions.
How a branding design agency can help
A branding design agency can help you create a logo that perfectly reflects your brand spirit. Logo forms the basic foundation of branding as it visually depicts your brand. So choosing the right logo is essential. It could be a simple typeface or a graphic element or a combination of both. Branding design agencies will also help you create stunning packaging design and brand collateral that will enhance your brand image.
Be it a cosmetics brand or a tech brand, every company needs good branding to have a strong foothold in the market and to grow successful with time. With branding, no stone should be left unturned, as even the smallest things count. Hire a branding design agency, like PitchWorx, to create an everlasting image of your brand in your audience.
