Building a brand doesn’t need to be complicated but there are many challenges, pressures, and distractions to take into consideration.  It is not as simple as choosing a name, a slogan or designing yourself a logo.  A strong brand is built with the intention of making it recognisable and familiar to consumers, showing off a personality and providing an expectation.

If you’re in pursuit of brand excellence there are critical components that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Focus:

In order to achieve any kind of success with your brand, there needs to be focus.  What is the aim of your brand, who is it targeted at and what do you want to achieve?  There are questions that need to be asked regularly and answered in order to establish the focus of your brand.  Write down a list of objectives and from here, you should start to establish a focus.

Differentiation:

Look at your competitors and assess what is similar between your brand and theirs?  It’s also important to look at what is different.  Establish what sets you apart and distinguish the identity of your brand.  Be sure to highlight what makes your product or service unique and more enticing to customers.  You want them to choose your brand over that of your competitors.

Relevance:

Once you’ve established what makes you different, you need to ask yourself if your customers actually care.  It pays to have a sound understanding of your target audience so you can tailor your brand to their wants and needs.  Do your research, ask the questions and then adapt your brand to be relevant.  Having a brand is one thing, but delivering it in a meaningful way is another.

Values:

What do you stand for?  What does your brand stand for?  In order to be strong, it needs to hold values and these need to be apparent in your brand.  Customers will identify and become familiar with your brand based on clearly defined values.

Consistency:

Now that you know what your target audience wants to see, it’s time to maintain it.  It can be hard in the current, super saturated media environment, trying to stay atop of every facet of your business, but if you promise a level of service, you need to uphold that promise.  Always check in with your focus, relevance and values to ensure you’re staying consistent with your promises to the market and to your brand.

We have some great tools on marketing and branding that could benefit your business.  If you are interested in learning more, give us a call today.