How to build your brand from the ground up

Unless you want your business to remain unnoticed, branding is an essential component of your company’s continuous growth. You must build your brand correctly. Your brand is the identity that you eventually become accustomed to. Your company’s brand differentiates itself from the other brands among the industry’s noise. Companies like Nike have put so much intention and work into their branding, which makes them so distinguishable, between the identifiable logo, voice, and overall aesthetic of content and initiatives. So you’re thinking about branding your own business? You’ve come to the right place. 

A brand is not merely curated overnight. A lot of research, planning, and critical thinking goes into it. Think about a personality—one’s character is not built overnight! It takes time and the patience of actively recognizing one’s personal characteristics and skills. This is why we have provided you with some of the most necessary building blocks. Here are quick 8 tips on how you can build your brand from the ground up.

1. Form your business model

Building your brand is a business procedure, with the help of advertising and marketing. Just as you would sit down and brainstorm all of your ideas surrounding your company, such as employees and products, branding involves careful outlining. You need to think about the mission, what values your brand should portray to other people, what should it look like and feel like, etc. Branding is all about how others will perceive your business, so keep that in mind when you critically consider the messaging, the tagline, the color scheme, logo, etc.

2. Research, research, research

Did we mention research? This is the backbone of a successful branding process and marketing launch. It’s like moving to a new city or taking a trip without reading about anything that’ll be there—if it’s a new environment you’re jumping into, you should look into what to expect. If your brand is trying to figure its way into a specific industry, research that industry to discover ways to make yourself stand out. We recommend you research competitors, the industry’s dominators, the habits of those who fell off, the demographics, etc. It’ll be more apparent what you can capitalize on and what to avoid entirely. The research will help you find the holes you can utilize when building your brand. 

3. Put yourself out there when building your brand

Research is crucial to your advertising and marketing efforts, just as advertising and marketing efforts are crucial to branding. Through research, you will discover your target audience, determining what channels through which your brand will promote itself. Different demographics interact with varying forms of media, whether those are traditional or digital. By promoting your brand on social media and digital platforms, you should also implement Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, to provide your brand with more exposure on the Internet. Without social media promotion, your potential clientele will have no idea that you exist. 

4. Make your brand interactive and user-friendly

Another aspect of social media is a website, and every brand should have a website. Consider this the foundational home of your brand, where consumers visit to inform themselves about its different services, products, and information that might not be accessible via social posts. Your website can make or break your image, so strategic conception is essential. Above all, ensure that it is user-friendly. Studies find that internet users will quickly exit out of a website if they feel as though there is an overwhelming interface. If you outsource a web designer, provide your vision to them, but understand that it should be clean and easy to interact with. A web agency will understand how to build the website cohesively and easy to navigate for your demographic. 

5. Making it look and sound pretty is not enough

A misconception about advertising and marketing is that it is a successful initiative as long as it looks and sounds good. We are debunking that by insisting that everything about your brand, from its tagline and messaging to its logo and color scheme, must be rooted in a strategy. Be deliberate about everything, because these assets are what will shape your brand’s individual identity. The research comes into play here because it can navigate your decision making within these disciplines. For example, specific colors naturally trigger innate feelings and emotional cues. The color red triggers hunger for many people, which is why you will find it used in many restaurant chains. There should be something inherently symbolic of a logo, other than it looking attractive. Your messaging should have a specific and different tone to it also. 

6. Consistency is key

What makes a brand…a brand is its consistency and ongoing nature. If a company was not consistent with its image, messaging, and initiatives, you would not be able to identify it as quickly. Maintaining structure and consistency through your brand’s look and feel, social/digital content, sales and customer services, and physical environments such as its storefront or office, will allow it to differentiate itself from others. How your brand exists can easily influence a consumer to neglect its loyalty with a different brand, to come to yours, if there are strong value propositions. 

7. You are never done promoting

Just as the famous mantra goes, that “we are never done evolving,” your brand is never done promoting—partially because it is always evolving! The market is ever-changing, with the influence of the economy and different trends, so by keeping up with actively promoting and marketing, you will shape your brand as a result. Always have your next step in mind, and continuously think of ways to grow your image. There will always be potential consumers within your target audience that haven’t seen your brand yet. Staying stagnant won’t get you anywhere!

8. Stay true to your brand’s mission but also your company’s actual beliefs and values

Consumers are smart; they can see right through a brand that lacks authenticity and truthfulness. While your brand can stand separately from who you are as a person, make sure that the beliefs and values reflected through the work align with your own beliefs and values. It will make it much easier to stay authentic if there are overlaps from your business and professional views. Also, make sure you are hiring the right people for the job. Consumers will be more inclined to establish loyalty with your brand if they feel it takes a humanized approach, and their interaction with your brand is genuine. 

Here at Grova Creative, we do it all: not only branding, but also advertising and marketing, message strategy, graphic design, web development, and more. Let’s talk so we can get to work launching your dream brand!