5 Steps To Building Your Brand

Your brand is the emotional expectation of the service or product a customer will receive. It includes everything about your business, from the way the telephone's answered to the quality of service or products you provide. Building your brand will lead to increased trust and established long term relationships with your customers.
Large

businesses spend millions on developing a brand and on ensuring it is consistent in everything it does. Take, for example, the McDonald’s restaurants; they are consistent in everything they do and have the same brand guidelines for every restaurant that has the McDonald’s name above the door. These guidelines are protected fiercely and any
restaurant flouting the guidelines can be closed.

Having brand guidelines results in customers knowing what they are buying. If they
visit a new area; they can pop into any McDonald’s restaurant and receive the food that they like and expect. A consistent brand gives the customer reassurance and avoids them taking any risk, which could lead to them being disappointed with what they receive. While manyof the population are happy to take a chance and try something new, many are not. The strong brand has helped McDonald’s to grow to the vast size it is now. They have given people a brand which they trust!

While you may not have the budget of McDonald’s or even like them, there is still a lot we can learn and implement from them.

Defining your target audience will help you focus on who you need to reach. It will help you to speak directly to them, in a way which resonates. You will never appeal to everyone, and you shouldn’t even try to. Concentrating on a smaller niche of people will allow you to have more impact.

Looking at your best customers can help you to narrow down who your audience should be:

• When do they use your services and why?
• What are the problems they need you to solve?
• Where are you likely to find them? This could be on social media, networking etc.

If you are not yet working with your ideal customer’s research who you would like them to be and find out where they hang out.

Knowing your why, will help you to keep to your core values and to create a clear mission statement.
The mission statement will define your purpose for existing and will be something your target audience values. It will help your customers to align with your values and give staff guidelines to follow.

Some examples;

• Nike - “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.”

• Costa Coffee - Our mission has always been to save the world from mediocre coffee

Analysing your competition will allow you to find out what differentiates your business from your competitors.
While obsessing, over your competition is not a good idea. It is worth looking at what they are up to every now and again.
It may help you to find ways that your business can stand out and define your message.

• Look at what their customers saying in reviews?
• How they are marketing themselves
• Are they publishing content?
• Which social media channels are they using?
• Look to identify anything that they are not currently using? Something which will resonate with your target audience and you could use?

What are the qualities and benefits that make your business stand out and make you unique?
The way you stand out may not be one definite point. Instead, it may be a combination of a few things, which come together to make a more significant difference.

Look at the results your customers achieve from working with you, that they will not achieve working with others?

How do you provide value that improves their lives?

Do your products or services take them from point A to point B?

Demonstrating how you are different can help to avoid direct comparison with your competitors and can show how you add value.

Consistency is key.
A logo is a visual representation of the business, which acts as a trigger for the emotional expectation it has created.
Showing the same consistent brand and logo, helps people to remember the business and over time. So much so that in some cases, they will only need to see part of the logo to create that emotional trigger.

An example is Coco-Cola. Many people only need to see part of the red and white of the logo to be reminded of the brand. Coco-Cola has achieved this across the world, which has cost them millions of pounds. However, you can use the same principles in a smaller area and with a targeted audience to achieve the same recognition.

To keep the logo consistent:

• Have brand colours
• Use the same fonts
• Have consistent images

Keeping your logo and tag line details to ensure they always look the same wherever they appear. The consistency will help people to remember the emotional expectation of your business.
Whilst it may seem complicated and take a little time to create brand guidelines, overtime it will help to keep consistency as the business grows. It will also save time in the long run as many of the choices as to which colours and fonts to use, have already been made. Making the creation of marketing material easier.