Why do people buy $5.50 Coffee when the same Coffee is available for $1.20 from a local Coffee vendor? Is it the service, the taste of the Coffee, or the environment that drives people to purchase the Coffee?
To tell you the truth, it is a combination of everything mentioned above. But from a wider lens, it is about branding. When everything else fails, it is branding that holds a company’s reputation together.
Whether you’re starting a website design agency, a brick and mortar store, or even a service from your home, branding needs to start 30 days before you launch the actual brand. And even before that, you need to align some things to get the most from your branding – Know and understand your brand inside out.
The Idea
Before you even sit down with your team to develop the strategies, you need to analyze, understand, and even contemplate your grand idea. What is your core offering? What differentiates your brand from the competition? Why are you offering what you’re offering? This is the glue that binds together all your elements to form a brand strategy.
If all the people are on the same page with the grand idea, it will be easy for you to move forward. Once you decided what will be your core values, it will act like a compass which will drive your branding forward.
The Vision
Where do you want your company to be in the coming five years? What are the challenges in the current market? What are your goals? Jot down everything you want to achieve as a team for the company, narrow down those points into one or two statements and that will be your vision of the company.
Brand Personality
Pick & choose 4 or 5 words that define the personality of your brand: The language, the tonality, and the design of your website. As a startup, your goal should be to create a strong brand presence in the market. Your social media can help in building a strong brand personality.
To establish a memorable brand, you can try building brand identity heroes. This will create engagement & interest among your users.
Action figures invoke our inner child. People can relate to the brand personality and consider their hero doing the leg-work for them. And finding the solution to their problems.
User-Centric Values
Of course, SEO is essential for any business, but the best approach is never to force your users to think about things like what to do next on your website. A big mistake that most of the startups make is not analyzing the value of their customers.
The focus of every startup needs to be on appealing the users. Put down the most prominent parts of your business and align them with the values of your end-user.
Being user-centric will help your brand to put down a clear voice that tells the user that you care for them.
Company Values
When you’re starting as a brand, you need to focus on creating brand awareness. For this, you need to evaluate your values & ensure that all your employees know what your company stands for.
Learn the art of engraving your values into every employee & showcase these values to your customers because values will build trust among your potential customers and help them take quick buying decisions.
The Power of Storytelling in branding
Good stories create noise, while great stories establish a strong emotional connection with your brand. Logic, stats, and graphics lead to the conclusion, while emotions lead to action.
Share your personal brand stories that will invoke the emotions of your customers. And once they are in the state of taking a decision, then you can use branding to persuade them to buy from you.
Brand Voice
Figure out where your target market is and use that medium to connect with your customers: email, website contact form, social media, or over the phone, etc. You need to get out there and answer the consumers.
The way you answer your consumers will help create a voice for your brand. This voice will be read and heard by all the people out there on social media. Ensure that you create a positive voice. Social media marketing can help you in creating a powerful image for your brand.
Brand Essence
Your brand essence is the single thing that will differentiate your brand from your competitors. The way your audience perceives your brand is the way they will engage with your brand.
This is tough, but one thing you can do to ease the process is by picking one word that sums up the feelings of the users.
How does the user perceive your brand?
What does it feel after using your brand?
Does using your brand make the customers happy or comforting?
Do you have a steady relationship with your customer?
Brand essence is something that establishes over a period of time. So, you need to stay patient and keep doing the right stuff while building your credibility over-time.
Conclusion
Starting a business is easy; however, to keep it running and generate the sales is hard. Before you lure yourself into the digital cosmos, you need to start with proper planning.
Branding can make or break your startup. Most of the modern-day Entrepreneurs don’t know the power of branding. And therefore 73% of the businesses close within 5 years of inception. But if you understand the power of branding in the initial stages, you’ll be able to counter the competition head-on.
For a startup, the only thing you need is brand consistency. Here most of the business owners need to realize that to establish authenticity and trust you need to get your message out there and repeat what is working for your brand and keep updating your strategies with the changing trends.