By
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Dec 26, 2021
In this digital age, people judge a business by its online presence. It is why companies, both big and small, invest their time and resources in brand development.
Brand development is all about creating a lasting impression on your prospects and customers by differentiating your business from your competitors. It allows you to build a brand image, personality, and message that resonates with your customers, from your logo and color palette of your website to the content you produce.
Good branding not only sets you apart from your competitors, but it also convinces your prospects why they should choose you among a long list of options. More importantly, good branding increases the value of your company.
The most successful businesses today have one thing in common: Strong branding.
They’re able to effectively build an identity for their company that their customers love and relate to and successfully convey this in all customer touchpoints. Their unified identity and consistency makes it possible for their brand to provide a memorable experience that impacts people’s lives.
If you want to be like Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Glossier, and other big brands, mindfully read our tips below and apply them to create your brand development strategies for building a brand that your target market will admire and patronize.
Before we can get into that, however, let us discuss the brand development definition.
Brand development is the process of identifying how you want consumers to perceive your brand and communicating this to your target market through your brand name, logo, and symbols.
Branding goes beyond logos. It focuses on building an image and creating a personality for your business that will make your audience admire, remember, and trust you, and taking steps to maintain and improve this image.
If you do it well, you can uniquely position your company in the market and set yourself apart from your competitors. Keep in mind, though, that brand development is a constant thing. It is a continuous process that helps your business grow.
Brand development plays a crucial role in helping your business grow. It helps align your brand with your business goals, communicate your brand message to your audience, and strengthen your brand constantly.
What’s more, brand development promotes brand awareness by telling people who you are as a company, what you have to offer, and why you’re different from others. If you get this right, you can convey the value of your products or services, attract customers, build trust, and create customer loyalty.
Brand development is just a concept without a strategy. That’s why you should have clear and well-executed brand development strategies in order to achieve specific goals that will help you establish a strong brand for your company.
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Good brand development strategies are centered around your consumers’ needs, emotions, and your competitive environment. Whether you’re starting your brand strategies from scratch or are trying to improve an existing one, you should be able to understand these two things beforehand:
Building an effective brand strategy requires knowing who you’re targeting or who you’re trying to sell your products or services to. Once you’re able to determine who these people are, you can identify their needs and wants and how they’re not being met.
However, don’t rely on creating buyer personas because you can get glued to thinking about who you want your target market to be - not who they actually are.
It’s best to read product reviews, help forums, customer testimonials, social media, and other platforms where your target market gives feedback. From these details, you can then develop strategies that position your brand as a solution that meets their needs in a way that is not being met.
You need to study your competitive environment and who your competitors are so you can identify where you stand, who you are, who you’re not, how you fit in, and which areas you stand out.
Knowing these things gives you an insight into where your position is in the industry. It will give you a better idea on how to build your brand development strategy so you can effectively communicate with your audience why they should choose you over your competitors.
Doing a SWOT analysis for you and your competitors can make a huge difference.
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Every brand holds a set of core values that influences its story, actions, behaviors, and decision-making process.
Considering that people prefer to patronize a brand if its core values align with theirs, it’s critical to identify what your principles are. Your principles will pretty much influence how consumers perceive your brand, eventually bringing people together and cultivating a community with the same beliefs.
Plus, building your brand around your core values allows you to stay true to yourself, which makes growing your business and making decisions a whole lot easier.
Your core brand values are made up of four things, namely:
These four aspects help clarify who you are, what you do, and why you’re here, and they also form the narrative that sets your brand storytelling in motion.
You then translate your core brand values through your visuals (logo, color palette, typography) and messaging and let it communicate to your audience. That way, you get to present your brand in a way that inspires and forms deeper connections with your customer base.
Everything about your brand should reflect your core values to provide a distinct overall experience - and those include your logo, color scheme, ad copy, and customer interactions.
To summarize, your core brand values help you:
Aside from your brand values, you must also determine your brand essence and develop good brand messaging so you can create a visual identity to represent it.
Now that you know who you are through your core values, your next move is to figure out how to express who you are (brand essence) and how to communicate it to your audience (brand messaging).
Your brand essence is basically about what you want to do, what you currently do, and how you do what you do. It consists of your personality, voice, and tone. If you’re not sure what your business’ tone, voice, or personality should be, here are tips that can help you establish them:
With your brand essence made clear, you won’t find it difficult to communicate who you are at every touchpoint.
Next, plan how you’re going to communicate this to your audience. While there are different ways to talk about your brand convince your audience why they should choose you over others, the most powerful one is through your brand message.
Create a strong and compelling brand message involves these steps:
In your brand message, explain who you are, what you do differently, how you can solve the problems of your target audience, and ultimately, why they should choose you over your competitors. In short, what will your customers get if they buy your products or services?
Your tagline sums up your value as a brand. You want your tagline to be powerful enough to create a lasting positive brand impression on people. There are five different kinds of taglines:
Your messaging pillars are what make you unique and different from others. Every content you produce and publish in all touchpoints should build up your message pillars.
With your core values and brand message in place, you may proceed to translate them into your visual identity. This part involves making your logo, choosing the right colors to use across all your visuals, the type of typography to apply, and many other elements that serve as the “face” of your brand.
Your visual identity should be purposeful. When designing, do it with your brand’s future in mind. To help you develop a good visual identity, take note of these essential tips:
Now, let’s start turning your visual identity into reality!
According to science, the most unforgettable logos are those that are simple and comprehensible. That said, aside from designing a logo that reflects your brand, see to it that you consider how people visually process and interpret symbols and images.
Your typography is an extension of your logo, so choose a font style and size that aligns with your brand. Pick your typography carefully because people are constantly consuming words across different mediums. It’s okay to use different font styles and font sizes for different applications because what may work well on your website may not work for your packaging.
The colors you use in your logo website, packaging, or ads can influence people’s moods and emotions. Warm colors like red, orange, and yellow can invoke feelings of warmth, love, or aggressiveness, while cool colors like blue, violet, white, and gray can invoke feelings of sadness or calmness.
Your imagery communicates your brand to your target market. It should be well-thought-of to maintain brand consistency, and it should make your audience feel what you want them to feel every time they look at your imagery.
Your brand illustration adds depth, character, and feeling to your company. When done well, it can set out a mood, tone-to-voice, and attitude in a way that copy and typography can’t convey. A unique illustration style can be so powerful because it can articulate your brand directly into a product, but don’t overdo it as it can make your illustration look cluttered and unappealing.
Brand guidelines consist of rules established by an organization to preserve brand consistency at every touchpoint. They tell you which colors and fonts to use, including the image styles and graphics, as well as the tone and voice you should set.
Brand guidelines may sound limiting but they actually give you an opportunity to get creative in your work while maintaining brand consistency. And, they can serve as an outline for people to follow when communicating on behalf of your company.
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Your brand guideline plays a vital role in the success of your marketing strategy. It defines what the essence of your business is, and it tells you how to use brand elements so you can effectively communicate this to your target market.
Over time, your brand image will be embedded in the minds of your consumer base and they will associate your brand with certain imagery or emotion.
Your brand guideline should include directions for your visual and verbal identity so any brand designer or creator can deliver a powerful work that builds up your brand.
Finally, it’s time to put your brand strategy to the test and see how well your brand performs in a market. Put your branding to work by integrating it all over your business and in all touchpoints!
Here’s how to implement your brand across your business:
Build a brand-friendly design by incorporating your logo, color scheme, and typography into it. Remember, your website is a customer touchpoint, which is why you should impress everyone that goes to your site from the first click.
It’s your chance to leave a lasting impression on your visitors and convince them to buy from you. Ensure that all the calls-to-action, web copy, and product descriptions on your site reflect your brand voice.
Your social media account should also reflect your brand. Consider using your logo as your profile picture so your customers can easily recognize your business.
Your packaging should reflect your brand, from its size, design, color, and feel.
Your brand development strategy will simplify your ad creation process, and it will guarantee that your ads establish brand awareness effectively and maintain brand consistency.
To maintain brand consistency in all levels, encourage your sales and customer service team to use your logo, tagline, imagery, and brand voice in all transactions.
So, how will you determine if your branding does work? You’ll need to make use of brand development index (BDI).
Brand development index is a tool for quantifying your brand’s performance in the market in terms of sales. It measures your net sales within a particular market group with respect to its population.
BDI can help you identify which specific geographic or demographic segment your brand is performing well or poorly, as well as in allocating your marketing dollars efficiently to achieve your desired results. You can also use it to evaluate the presence of your brand in a defined customer group.
BDI = (% of a Brand's total sales in a defined customer group)/(% of the total population in that particular group ) x 100
Or
BDI = [Brand’s total sales in a region / Population in that region] / [Total brand sales / Total population]
Your BDI should be a whole number.
Your branding is more than just your logo and imagery - it’s about how your customers feel when they interact with your brand. Aim to create a brand that resonates and connects with your target audience on a deeper level.
The tips we mentioned above can strengthen and improve your brand development strategies! Use them to your advantage and make sure that they work by gauging your brand’s performance in a specific market.
At Digital Resource, we can help make your branding visions to reality! Contact us to know more.
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