If you're new to the world of entrepreneurship, you'll have heard a lot about ''building a strong brand''. But what exactly IS a brand and how do you create one? Your brand is so much more than just a logo, your business name, or tagline. In this blog post, we will explore and break down the key elements of a brand and what you need in order to create a strong one.
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1. Brand Identity
Brand identity is the visual representation of your brand. This includes all visual elements such as your logo, typography, color palette, and any brand imagery. Your brand identity should be consistent across all your marketing channels and be easily recognizable to your audience.
Ensuring that your branding is cohesive will help you to stand out and be taken seriously in your industry. Cohesive visual branding differentiates you from your competitors, builds trust, and strengthens brand recognition.
2. Brand Personality
A brand's personality is different from its visual identity. Your brand's personality is the way your brand communicates, behaves, and interacts with it's audience. It is the tone of voice, the language used, and the values that a brand stands for. Developing a strong brand personality helps to establish an emotional connection with your customers.
Think of your brand as if it were a person. It should have a set of characteristics that appeal to its target audience. Common characteristics in branding are sophistication, excitement, competence, sincerity & ruggedness.
3. Personal Brand
You might have heard the saying, ''it takes 2 brands to create a successful business''. The first is your business brand, the side that deals with satisfying customers and building an audience. Business brands tend to be limited to the industry they serve. The second is your personal brand, the face behind the business. Your personal brand connects people to the human side of your brand and allows you to have more flexibility to experiment when it comes to your products and services.
Think about all the big brands you know and love and I bet you'll be able to name the face behind the business! Tesla has Elon Musk, Apple has Steve Jobs, Social Chain has Steven Bartlett and PLT has Umar Jamani. Start building your personal brand alongside your business brand and you'll have twice the amount of opportunity to reach success.
4. Brand Story
A brand story is a narrative that explains how the brand came to be, what it stands for and what it hopes to achieve. It is the history, mission, and vision of the brand. Your brand story helps to establish a deeper emotional connection with your audience by making the brand more relatable and human.
Having a clear brand story can help to steer your brand in the right direction and reach the right audience, if you're not clear on your brand story, you're not clear on your brand.
5. Brand Strategy
Your brand strategy is a long (or short) term plan created in order to achieve a series of business-related goals. A successful brand strategy is able to clearly identify your target audience, where you should be marketing to them, and what content strategies you should be using.
Your brand strategy should encapsulate everything your brand is, from your brand story right through to its visual identity & brand personality. A clear & cohesive strategy is the blueprint to your brands' success.
In conclusion, the key components of building a strong brand are; brand identity, brand personality, personal brand, brand story & brand strategy. These elements work parallel with each other to create a powerful and recognizable brand that stands out against your competitiors. Building a strong brand isn't something that will happen overnight, it takes time, effort, and a lot of experimentation for you to get it right, and it won't always be linear, your brand will constantly evolve, needing tweaks and changes when necessary.
If you're feeling a little bit lost and don't exactly know where to begin when it comes to developing your brand, we can help to simplify things for you. Send us an enquiry to info@thebrandologylab.co.uk or drop us a message over on instagram @thebrandologylabuk