When creating your brand, it’s imperative that you think about everything from your logo to color scheme to to the tag line. You also have to have a memorable brand name, strong message, support system, and all of the necessary legalities, like getting trademarked, in place.
But, that’s only the beginning of your branding process. To help you complete building your awesome brand, give these 7 tips a spin as well.
1. How do people see you?
“The interesting thing about your personal brand is it’s never what you say it is, it’s actually what everyone else says it is,” What’s your something? so Identify What Makes You Different
The first step of building a brand identity is identifying a trait (or traits) that sets you apart from your competition — your USP (Unique Selling Proposition). So study your competition. How do they define their brands? And just as importantly, how don’t they define their brands? Look for characteristics that you can call your own.
2. Be Consistent with Branding
“The interesting thing about your personal brand is it’s never what you say it is, it’s actually what everyone else says it is,” What’s your something? so Identify What Makes You Different
The first step of building a brand identity is identifying a trait (or traits) that sets you apart from your competition — your USP (Unique Selling Proposition). So study your competition. How do they define their brands? And just as importantly, how don’t they define their brands? Look for characteristics that you can call your own.
3. Associate yourself with strong brands.
“Your personal brand is strengthened or weakened by your connection to other brands,” said Shama Hyder is Founder and CEO of Marketing Zen. “Find and leverage strong brands which can elevate your own personal brand.”
You can begin by looking at the three C’s: company, college, colleagues.
For example, you could contribute content to your alumni or company newsletter or blog.
4. Have an “Our Story” Page
The bios you write for your Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter accounts might be limited when it comes to brand awareness. There simply isn’t much space to let your brand strategy shine through.
If you want to further develop your brand strategy, consider executing an “Our Story” page. (You could also call this page “About,” “About Us,” or something along those lines.)
Lots of your brand awareness efforts will in one way or another lead to your website, and the About Us page is one of the focal points of your website. Or at least it should be.
Explain why your store is different, why people should feel good about shopping with you.
5. Get sneaky with brand-building awareness.
Finally, you can start spreading brand awareness by using some outside-of-the-box techniques like:
- Setting up a referral program.
- Creating an infographic.
- Offering freemium content.
- Partnering with local businesses.
- Wrapping your car with ads.
- Giving away swag.
- Running a social media contest.
- Hosting a podcast.
- Setting up PPC ads and a remarketing campaign.
6. Know Your Audience
This is super important as if you don’t know who your audience is, you cannot know how to build brand awareness that turns the right heads. Define your target audience before you create your brand so that you will attract the right people and not have a mismatch between your company and your customer.
You can even take it a step further and talk to your customers during your rebrand. Invite your biggest customers into your office and ask them what they like about your logo, tagline, and other important identifiers of your brand. Make sure these things remain after the rebrand so that customers can still identify with your brand. These common characteristics will ensure that brand awareness will be seamlessly.
7. Produce value.
You should be producing value with whatever you do. You don’t have to be Apple to have an amazing product. Even lower end products like Ikea produce a lot of value to their customers.
When thinking about the value that you can add, ask questions like:
- What sets your product, service, and company apart from your competitors?
- What value do you provide and how does that value differ from that provided by your competitors?
- How do these benefits tap into your customer’s emotions?
- Is what I’m producing for my customer to produce enough value for the price I’m charging?
- Is my brand in sync with how I’m marketing myself?
How have your created your awesome brand?
KALIKA YAP, AUTHOR OF LITTLE BRAND BOOK, SHARES HER BRANDING INSIGHTS.
As a young businesswoman, Kalika had to adapt as the world of marketing and business evolved around her. Here, she shares her own story — how she learned to consider archetypes while marketing, why she wrote Little Brand Book and how you can incorporate better branding strategies in your own business.
Read more here.
