Intro:
Branding is essential to business success.
And yet, it’s a surprisingly elusive metric.
Many business owners struggle with the proper way to brand their company.
And on the flip side, some business owners seem to magically and accidentally stumble upon a brilliant brand identity, almost without even trying.
But here’s the thing.
In the highly competitive business landscape of the modern world, it’s essential that you create a brand that your customers can know, like, and trust.
And it’s important to build brand value as well, so that you’ll not only be recognized as a market leader in your space, but also a trustworthy face to go along with your products and services.
Of course, however, the question remains:
How do you improve your brand, especially if you’re a small business or a medium sized business without a ton of marketing experience?
Well you’re in luck.
Building a brand isn’t rocket science.
And while it can be a little bit complicated, you’ll find that even small to medium sized businesses with limited budgets can absolutely crush it.
And in this post, you’re going to learn four unique strategies that you can use to start improving your brand today.
1. Define Your Values
Every company sells something, right?
Every company is also going to have a face that represents those products or services.
This ‘face’ is the brand; but it’s not as one-dimensional like a lot of people try to make it.
A lot of people think of a brand as a catchy logo, designed with perfectly selected colors and font schemes.
Well, visuals do matter.
But they’re definitely not the most important factor.
It actually goes a lot deeper than that. And the creation of every successful brand begins by defining your company’s values.
When you define your values as a company, create a mission statement, and establish a vision and a purpose for why you’re doing what you’re doing, you’ll create a roadmap that’ll help you to figure out exactly what your brand is, who your target market is, and how to appeal to your customers to build legitimate ‘know, like, and trust factor’ into your business.
This is absolutely essential, and is a crucial first step.
2. Use Visuals That Match Your Tone And Vision
Alright, now it’s time to break out that logo creation software and those color palettes.
The visual elements of a brand are important.
A brand with a terrible logo that’s mismatched with its target audience is going to turn fewer heads and cause you to miss out on more business.
Create a visual brand identity that really matches the tone of your business’s purpose.
It’s also important to create a visual brand identity that your target customer avatar will identify with and be drawn to.
This is kind of a niche skill.
You may need to hire someone to help you come up with the proper visuals to match your company’s vision and purpose.
But that’s ok. Once you get it nailed down, you’ll be ready to move on to the next step.
3. Be True To Yourself – Always
Honest brand messaging, as it pertains to social media and marketing, is every bit as important as your values and the visuals.
It’s vitally important to be true to your vision and purpose as a brand; in every bit of messaging, in every social media post, and on everything that your brand releases.
Some brands make the mistake of trying too hard to appeal to too many people.
As a result, they may publish compromising messages that make them look hypocritical, or like they’re ‘people pleasing.’
Hypocrisy and a lack of integrity never look good on a brand.
Therefore, it’s vitally important that you always stay true to your brand identity, your purpose, and your target market.
It’s up to your brand to speak to your customer avatar in your market.
And your primary point of contact with your customers is through your messaging.
4. Meet Your Audience At Their Level
Some companies struggle to communicate with their target audience.
They try to use marketing to sell products (of course), but they fail to market to communicate and connect with their customer base.
Here’s the thing.
You need to create a buzz and true connection with your customers.
And sometimes, this means letting go of some of the ‘fancier’ aspects of marketing and embracing a more ‘grassroots’ approach.
The good news is that social media makes this easier than it’s ever been for businesses.
The hard part, of course, is learning how to let go of some of those ‘big business marketing ideals’ that marketers tend to embrace.
But once you get used to interacting with your customers where they are, you’ll find that they’ll be much more receptive to what you have to offer.
Why?
Because they’ll see you as legitimate and real.
They’ll see you as a company that they can truly know, like, and trust.
And believe this… trust is infinitely important in the modern business landscape.
Conclusion
There you have it.
4 unique strategies to help you improve your brand.
It’s not rocket science.
But it is marketing science. And it’s up to you as the business owner to take the steps necessary to get your brand in line with your customers, your purpose, and your vision for the future.
All you have to do is answer a few crucial questions and go through these steps to establish a branding strategy that’ll really help you to stand out.
Now that you know how to do it, get out there and crush it.
You’ve got this.
