5 Rules to Creating A Renowned Brand
What Does A Brand Do For You?
Seems like ever since money started exchanging hands, we’ve been introduced to brands that transformed into mega-corporations that still retain that brand persona. Nowadays, a brand can instantly transmit a message, and manifest an intangible appearance through a visual logo; think Nike, Wendy’s, or IKEA.
Wouldn’t it be much easier to just market your company by what you’re selling? “Here comes Shoes™, they sell shoes!” It truly would be much easier for a company to do so. However, the reason brands exist is so that you’re able to put yourself in front of your target consumer among all the noise of today’s market.
What Should A Good Brand Have?
A brand needs to be something that’s easily digestible and memorized, so that anyone who’s seen it once, can remember seeing it the second time, bypassing that “Window shopping” hesitation and creating a sense of familiarity with zero additional marketing.
Which is why a lot of brands put an emphasis on their branding, even if it doesn’t seem to directly increase sales. Just by creating a logo, you’re already way ahead of 99% of your competitors who are just marketing the product they’re selling with no care about the brand behind it, and some could create a brand that’s so generic that you forget it even exists.
How Can I Make My Brand More Unique?
While it’s not rocket science, a lot of people fall into that generic brand group. You’ve seen them before, brands that just seem to blend in with all the other competition, which is truly antithesis to the point of a brand in the first place. Fear not, cosmic agency’s got your back though.
First off, you could:
- Understand Why Your Brand exists
- Set A Clear Mission for Your Brand to Achieve
- Establish a unique vision
- Create a Strong Personality
If you follow these 4 points, you’ll be able to get a head start in creating a unique brand that eclipses your competition. However, they’re far from the top points you need to pay attention to when creating a brand.
We’re about to dive into the top 6 points you need to keep in mind (and some to avoid) when it comes to creating, managing, and sustaining your brand…
Why Do Brands Exist?
What Is Your Brand?
Your brand is more than just some complimenting colors and a catchy logo, it’s actually your entire identity as a business. Just like how we’re not defined by our names, but by how we make people feel about us.
What Does Branding Do For You?
Branding unifies your AD messages, symbolizes what you’re trying to give to the community, and actually helps build trust with all of your users. It can be used to tell people what they should expect to get from you from the very first step they take with your business.
Your brand literally exists because you want a unified message ringing in everyone’s minds, a message which leads directly to your product. No, it’s not some voodoo witchcraft, it’s proven successful marketing, especially since social media became so prevalent after the covid-19 lockdown.
Does Branding Help With Customer Loyalty?
Nowadays, people realize the importance of brand loyalty. A brand might do a great job of getting someone to keep on going to your business for their needs is how great brands create customer loyalty!
Branding most definitely helps you in cultivating a loyal customer base. If they interact with a brand that gave them a uniquely positive experience, they would want to repeat that experience for as long as possible.
The way to do that is by giving your brand a more human side, since we’re social creatures, we tend to relate more with brands that seem human, even if their brand or logo isn’t.
Branding helps you build a relationship with your audience that guarantees a long-term investment.
We’re about to delve into some of the key points you’ll need to focus on when you’re coming up with a brand for your business.
What is your unique value proposition?
Before you start tinkering with your brands color scheme and hiring some talented artists to create your brand persona, you need to answer 3 important questions:
We’re not talking about your product’s value props, the question is asking what is unique about YOUR product that warrants attention.
Comfy, economical, and stylish-looking shoes are value props. Comfy, economic, stylish lemon-scented shoes are unique.
Essentially, your brand needs a reason to stand out in the market, and your unique value proposition will allow you to start drafting ideas for how your brand should be in order to do so.
Secondly, you need to set a vision and mission statement. These are the bread and butter of your business. A business with no vision cannot move past its initial launch phases, because it’ll be blind to what it should be focusing on doing.
Similarly, a brand with no mission statement sounds like any of the other gray corporations that are only interested in taking your money, nobody would really try to get to know any of these corporations.
Think of your vision and mission statements as if you’re adding a personality to the brand avatar that you’re trying to create.
What you need to keep in mind when creating your vision and mission statements is that they should never be self-centered. In fact, they shouldn’t be about the company’s future in the first place, but rather what your company needs to do in order to achieve them.
A vision statement should always be related to what you want to change in the world, and how you want to make it better for everyone, it makes your employees and customers feel justified in interacting with you.
Your mission statement should be related to HOW you can achieve that vision, after all, empty promises are only going to give a bad reputation for your brand…
Just by addressing these two points, you’ve already built a stronger foundation than most of your competitors, making it that much more impactful when you start advertising as a brand.
Avoid These Mistakes!
Just like there are things you need to keep in mind when branding your business, there are some pitfalls to avoid as well. A lot of business owners decide that their brand is their baby and as such, they can never trust anyone else with it.
So they quite literally make themselves the face of the brand. That might’ve worked with Colonel Sanders. However, that’s only because they advertised a caricature persona of him. Another example is Mark Zuckerberg, while they do try their best to make him the face of Facebook, most people don’t really think of him when they are introduced to Facebook ads.
Another thing you need to keep in mind is that you should never create a brand solely for your consumers, you’re not a one-man team.
Branding is actually great for employee loyalty, it provides value inside your business that helps employees feel comfortable working for your company.
A business with branding that also caters to its employees will find it much easier to gather and keep skilled individuals. Not only does good branding keep your team motivated, but it can also directly contribute to the look of your workspace and employee apparel.
Helping your team stay motivated throughout the work shift!
Impress With Less
Even if you have the means to end world hunger, nobody’s going to give you the time of day if you’re going to keep droning on and on about how great your product is.
People want something they can remember, and they want it to be as short as possible in order for their minds to spend the least amount of effort thinking about how your product will benefit them, and more effort in imagining how your product will make them feel.
Most of the time, your customers would only give you a full sentence to sell them your brand. If you can’t do it at that time, you’ve lost all of your potential customers.
- “It’s finger lickin’ good”
- “Just do it”
- “Connecting people”
- “Life needs frosting”
These are all known slogans that instantly conjure up an image of the brand, what they do, and how they serve you with just a sentence, not even 5 words.
That’s how impactful a brand can be, and it’s what you should aim towards when drafting up your brand slogan and message.
Rebrand Yourself, Evolve Rapidly
Keep in mind that every brand has had to rebrand itself at least once, Apple and Windows did it multiple times even.
The most recent rebranding took place when Facebook decided to rebrand itself to Meta, and start by expanding its social media sphere to include virtual reality.
Could they have gone with the virtual reality vein without rebranding as Facebook? Absolutely.
However, they would be giving up a chance to evolve their brand further.
A good business understands that the only constant in the market is change, and as such, your business needs to change with the times.
We’ve mentioned Colonel Sanders, and how KFC was able to find success when adding a caricature of his face as the brand. Did you know that this has changed over the years? They’ve begun rebranding to a younger-looking Colonel that appeals more to young adults.
That’s the great thing about branding, it’s your ability to constantly adapt your business in order to best appeal to your ideal customers.
Your Business, Your Branding
The #1 thing you need to keep in mind when branding your business, is that you shouldn’t copy what anyone else is doing.
Everything we’ve told you so far are just points to keep in mind when creating your own brand. They’re things your predecessors fell for or succeeded by doing!
That’s why you should always follow your gut when it comes to branding. After all, who would’ve thought Crocs would be a thing…
Even if you’re not selling a product, maybe you’re trying to start your own YouTube channel? In that case, your own online persona would be your brand, and it’s what you’re selling to sponsors of your channel.
We hope this article helped you understand just how impactful can branding be to your business, and how it’s an indispensable facet of your business if you ever want to succeed in today’s climate.