How To Brand A Product: A Step-by-Step Guide On Brand Building
Introduction
Figuring how to brand a product from the ground up is no easy task.
Will my customers love it? Will they resonate with the product? What colours should I use?
These are random questions that may pop up when you try to put it all together.
Whether you are just starting a business or revamping an existing product, here’s what you need to understand about building a solid brand identity for your business.
Table of Contents
What Really Is A Brand?
Simply put, your brand is outlined by a customer’s overall perception of your business.
Your brand is your reputation!
In today’s market, a winning brand must be consistent in communication and knowledge, across several applications:
- Environment (storefront or office)
- Print collateral, signage, packaging
- Website & on-line advertising
- Content production
- Sales & client service
- Internal (with employees)
The reality is: branding doesn’t happen overnight…or even in few months.
Building a brand is a technical process, therefore needs planning. However, the process will end up in creating a long-term relationship with your customers.
This can result in a gradual increase in leads and sales, word-of-mouth referrals, and support for your merchandise or services.
How To Build A Brand
The definition of brand building is to come up with awareness strategies about your business with the main goal of making a single and lasting image at the marketplace.
Positive image + standing out = successful brand.
Branding is often divided into 3 phases:
- Brand Strategy
- Identity &
- Promotion
Brand Strategy
This outlines how different, trustworthy, memorable, and likable you are to your ideal customer. It also conveys your purpose, promises, and the way you solve issues for individuals.
This is the primary step you would need to take when branding from the ground up (whether it is a new business or an already existing one).
You wouldn’t build a home while lacking a blueprint or plans, right?
The same goes for your brand.
Brand strategy can be thought of as the blueprint for how you want everyone to see your business.
An effective and comprehensive brand strategy ought to embrace these subsequent parts as part of the process:
- Brand discovery
- Competitor research
- Target audience
- Brand voice
- Message & story
Brand strategy is an important and fundamental piece for building a winning brand. It is usually overlooked by business owners because they jump into designing and promoting.
Brand Identity
This is the manner that you convey this to the general public with visuals, messaging, and knowledge. Your brand strategy can influence how you show your identity and align it together with your purpose for the most impact.
Your components of brand identity ought to be applied across all channels consistently. That is how your business gets recognized.
This includes your:
- logo
- colours and fonts
- website style
- content
- advertising
- print or packaging and more.
Brand Promotion
This is the way companies or organizations highlight and produce awareness to products or services by connecting values and voice to the proper audience through strategic communication.
In 2021, the amplification of your brand image is often done effectively through numerous digital promotional activities:
- User expertise (i.e. your website)
- SEO & Content promotion
- Social Media promotion
- Email promotion
- Paid Advertising (PPC)
Together, these channels fundamentally gain brand awareness and growth.
Simplified below is the trail for a comprehensive brand building method, this is to aid your business branding or personal branding.
Make a research on your target audience and your competitors
Before you make any decisions about your brand, it is advised to understand the current market, i.e. your potential customers, who your present competitors are, etc.
There are different ways to do this:
- Google your product or service class and analyse the direct and indirect competitors that shows up.
- Check subreddits that relate to your customers and pay attention to their conversations and merchandise recommendations.
- Talk to people that are a part of your target market and ask what brands they buy from in your niche.
- Look at the relevant social media accounts or pages your audience follows.
- Go shopping on-line or offline and know how your customers would browse and get products.
As you go about your analysis, take a note of:
- Who your “lowest hanging fruit” customers are—the ones you may most simply sell to?
- Who your top-of-mind competitors are—the brands that are established and best-known within the market?
- How your customers speak and what they speak about—the interests they need and also the language they express themselves.
It’s necessary to own a social media handle on this before moving forward, because it will help tell the story about your brand and distinguish itself from other competitors.
Pick your focus and personality
Your brand can’t be everything to everybody, particularly at the beginning.
It’s necessary to seek out your focus and let that influence the other parts of your brand as you build.
Here are some pointers to help get an idea of the focus and tune of your brand.
What’s your positioning statement?
A positioning statement is one or two lines that states your claim within the market. This isn’t essentially one thing you place on your web site or business card—it’s simply to assist you answer the proper questions on your brand and aiding your brand’s tagline.
Your positioning statement may go like…
We offer [your product or service here] for [your target market here] to [value proposition].
Unlike [THE ALTERNATIVE], we have a tendency to [KEY DIFFERENTIATOR].
For example: we offer water bottles for hikers to remain hydrated, whereas reducing their carbon footprint. in contrast to alternative bottle brands, we have a tendency to plant a tree for each bottle you get.
Your unique selling point is the main thing you are competing for. Find it, get intuit and make it an integral part of your brand’s message.
Alternatively, if the organization you would like to begin includes a cause at its core (e.g., if you’re beginning a social enterprise), you may additionally write this out as a mission statement that produces a transparent promise to your customers or to the globe.
What words would accompany your brand?
One way to view your brand building is to try to visualize it as a person. How will he or she look like? What kind of character will your customers be drawn to?
This will facilitate your voice on social media and the tone of all of your works, including visual and written.
A fun and helpful branding exercise is pitching 3 to 5 adjectives that describe the sort of brand which may resonate along with your audience.
How To Build A Brand Personality
What metaphors or ideas describe your brand?
Thinking about your brand as a figure, or personifying it, will assist you establish the individual qualities you would like it to possess.
This can be a vehicle, an animal, an icon, a sports team, anything—so long as it includes a distinguished name in your mind that summons the type of feel you would like your brand to convey.
Select a business name
What is in a name? Considering the type of business, you want to begin with, you can argue if your name matters or not.
As mentioned before, a brand is more than just a name. The reputation, actions, and personality of your brand are what gives the name true understanding in the market.
However, as small business owners, your company’s name maybe one of the huge milestones to achieve. This is because it will perfect your logo, your domain, your promotion strategies, and trademark registration including the primary huge commitments you have to create. Your business name will impact your brand, your domain, your promoting, and your trademark registration.
Here’s a tip: It’s more durable to trademark generic brand names that virtually describe what you sell.
Ideally, you would like a store name that is not easy to imitate and even more difficult to confuse with existing brands within the market
If you have any plans to expandthe product lines you provide later in the future, endeavor to keep your business name broad so it can accommodate other products instead of just choosing a name based on the type of products.
Since your brand will have an effect on the domain/URL of your website, try to shop and check around to know what is available for domain names, so you do not have to go through the process of choosing another business name.
It’s also a great idea to get feedback on your chosen name from a focus group of close people, to make sure amongst other things that it does not depict something vile or something not intended for the brand.
Craft out a slogan/ tagline
A catchy tagline is an additional asset to have, something brief and straight to the point in your website header, social media bio, business cards, shopping bags and other places can make a big impact.
Keep in mind that you can change your slogan at will as you discover new marketing tips.
A good tagline is brief, catchy, and makes a solid impression.
• Decide the design of your brand (colours and font).
The next thing to do after figuring out a name, is to visualize how it will appear on your brand, this includes the colors and typography, which will be of great benefit when you start to build your website.
Choose your colors & typography
Colors not only define the look of your brand; they also communicate the vibe you want to communicate with your customers and help make it consistent in everything you offer. It is advisable to choose colors that will differentiate you from other competitors.
Color psychology helps to make informed choices, especially when picking one for your logo.
This infographic offers a pleasant summary of the emotions and associations that different colors evoke.
It is essential to think about how clear white and black text will look over your color palette and the way colored text would look over white and black backgrounds. You can try a tool like Coolors to brainstorm colours that blend together. Grab the hex codes to have handy, and sift through different shades to search out the ones you prefer.
At this point, choosing a typography is the next step.
Select two typography at most to avoid confusing visitors: one for headings and one for body text (this doesn’t include the font you might use in your logo).
You can use Font Pair to browse from a good choice of fonts that go well together.
Select a font to tally with your brand’s style.
Design your logo
A company logo style is one of the first thing that pops up in your mind when you think about brand building, which is because it is more or less the face of the company and It will be representing everywhere your brand exists.
Ideally, you will want a logo that is distinctive, identifiable, and scalable to work at all sizes (something usually overlooked).
Think of all the places your brand’s logo should be, including your website social media pages and even the favicon on your website.
It is almost impossible to read, if you have a text logo as your Instagram avatar, to make it easier, create a square size of your logo to use as the icon that will remain recognizable at smaller sizes.
Invest in a brand logo, that can be placed anywhere around the web and on print.
You can get more logo inspiration at seeklogo.
Stay true to your brand building.
Conclusion
If you’ve got a business, you have already got a brand, but building a rare business brand needs organization, planning, and detailed processes as listed above.
Leave a comment or two on how this article has given you some insights into brand building.
