Making a brand that stands out is not easy. How does it need to look? How should it make you feel? Do you think people will understand it?
These questions will always come up when you think about how to connect what you’re selling to the people you want to reach.
The brand of an organization is a big part of how people think about it, who supports it, and how it stands out from its competitors. A lot of eCommerce business owners don’t know how to build a brand that stands out.
Creating a brand is more than just picking the right name or logo. Several things come together to make a brand that will change how people think about your business.
What is a brand?
To get people to associate your brand with your product or service, you need to do research, create original elements, and use them. Your brand identity is what makes you stand out from your competitors, sticks in people’s minds, and gets them to buy from you.
Consumers tend to buy products from companies they know or like, so branding is a big part of how they decide what to buy.
Branding is important and useful for businesses. It’s also important for your success to know the terms related to your brand. Brand awareness is how well people know about your brand. Brands with a lot of name recognition are often called “trendy” or “popular.”
Why Do Branding Important
Branding helps you stand out from the millions of other companies trying to find their way in the confusing world of business. You can’t make your business stand out if you don’t have a good product.
Good branding also lets you set your products and services apart from those of your competitors and become the go-to business in your niche by making a strong impression on your audience.
Users and clients expect brands to have a certain amount of humanity when they interact with them. Everything matters, from what the brand says about social issues to how it treats its customers.
There should be a balance between selling your brand and its products and services and being there for your customers when they need you.
How to Make a Name
Creating a brand can be easy if you break down the creative parts into simple steps. Don’t worry if you find yourself going back to steps. This is a normal part of building a brand. You might make a choice, only to find out later that it doesn’t work with the way the rest of your business is set up.
Once you’ve laid the groundwork, you can come back to parts of your brand whenever you feel like it. Let’s start working on your brand.
Do research on the target market and competitors and analyze them.
Creating a brand is just like planning anything else for your business. It’s very important to answer questions like, “Who do you want to reach?” How are you better than the other businesses? Why are you unique?
By giving answers to these questions, you can find out what your potential customers want and how your competitors present themselves in the market. Answering these questions will help your branding efforts right away. This way, customers can get rid of either choices that have already been taken or choices that don’t connect with them.
In other words, it will show off the pictures, words, tone, and graphics that your ideal customers will respond to best. In either case, it just helps you learn how to think critically about the visual and communication parts of your brand.
Tell people what your brand can do.
For a brand to be successful, it needs to be different from other brands. If you give your customers a reason to choose you over your competitors, that is, if you know who your competitors are.
Pick a Name
As a small business owner, the name of your company may be one of the first big decisions you have to make. If you go that way, your logo, your domain, your marketing, and your trademark registration will all be hurt.
Your store’s name should be hard to copy and even harder to mix up with those of your competitors. If you want to add more products to your business in the future, you might want to keep your business name general instead of choosing a brand name based on the type of products you sell.
Choose the look of the brand
To choose the right look for your brand, you have to figure out how people can recognize your business at a glance. How, for example, will your products be packed? How will a customer know which package is yours when they buy something from your online store? And what will they see when they look at your site?
The following things should be part of your brand’s look:
Typesetting:
You can get your brand’s message across in a way that is both subtle and very effective. When you use sans-serif type, you show that you’re creative. A serif font tells the world that you can be relied on.
You can even make a unique brand expression by mixing serif and sans-serif font styles.
Colors of a brand:
Your brand colors will show up in all of your branded assets, like your website, emails, and product packaging. Colors can affect how a customer acts. As an example, red is bold and full of energy, while blue can be calm and dependable.
Fonts:
Just like your brand colors, the fonts you use can have a big effect on how people see your brand. Serif fonts are old-fashioned and look professional, while sans-serif fonts are new and friendly.
Come up with a catchy phrase.
Taglines and slogans are like value propositions in a lot of ways. A tagline is a short, descriptive phrase that goes with your logo, in ads, and anywhere else it makes sense. Slogans should be short (one sentence or less) and easy to remember. If possible, there should also be a call to action.
Your slogan can change as your business grows. You might find that your value proposition changes or grows over time, or that it no longer fits with your brand. You can change and try out slogan copy as much as you want.
Get pictures of your brand
Photography can grab the attention and money of potential customers. How people see your brand is greatly affected by a consistent theme and well-chosen photos. Nike is an example of a brand that uses strong visuals to get its message across.
Browse photography sites like Getty and iStock to find pictures that fit your brand and start putting them together. Put in the words you came up with in your word association exercise and see what happens. This image can be used in advertising, on your website, and to give you ideas for how to design branding materials.
Make sure to use photos that match the message of your brand. At some point, it might be a good idea to hire a photographer or take your own pictures to make images that are unique to your business.
Design Your Logo
Your logo is the face of your brand, so it’s important to make sure it looks good. Before you make a logo, you should think about what your brand stands for and what its mission is.
Your logo can be made in many different ways, but it all comes down to three things: font, color, and symbol.
Any mix of these elements can be used in design, as long as it fits with the goals of your brand and business.
Figure out what branding tools you need.
You may have thought about this during the branding process, but now it’s time to figure out what brand assets your business will need.
Taking things a step further, this helps you figure out which visuals your brand will have to fit. Examples include:
- Social media publications
- Webpages
- Ads on websites and apps
- Print ads for videos Email headers
These are just a few of the main groups. You don’t need a complete list to start, but writing them down as separate projects will help you put them in order based on what your business needs. Most likely, you will need to change your brand to fit your website before you can move on.
The Brand’s Rules
The last step is to make brand guidelines that bring everything together. These guidelines are just a list of rules about how your brand works.
You might want to think about making a style guide for your brand. So, you’ll be able to keep track of everything about your brand and refer to it often.
Conclusion
A brand is more than just the name, logo, colors, voice, and images of your business. A brand is how happy your customers are when they do business with you. A brand that does well looks at the big picture. You have to figure out who your brand is for and then put it out there. If you do this, your brand will be successful.
Customers stop paying attention to ads when they get tired of seeing the same ones over and over again. Their curiosity goes away. Keeping in touch with your customers will keep your brand interesting.
Think like a customer and try to figure out what they would like to see. Whenever you can, ask professionals for advice. Strategies for building a brand need to be consistent and creative.