How to Build a Brand? – Detailed Guide with Pro Advice, FAQs, Tips, & More   

As you can probably imagine, it’s not an easy feat to build a brand from scratch that will stand out and become successful. 

There are numerous factors and aspects you must be aware of to ensure you set up your brand for success.

What Is a Brand? 

A regular person would think of a brand as a recognizable name, a logo, and a product or service that the brand offers. Of course, a single brand can also sell multiple products and/or services as well. 

While this is definitely part of it, it doesn’t give you the whole picture. 

Your brand definitely consists of all the components listed above but in the end, your brand is how consumers, collaborators, and competitors within your niche perceive you. 

Their perception of your brand is something that will be built up through your marketing content, the quality of your products, and the experiences consumers have with your brand. That’s why you have to strive to make every buyer interaction as smooth as possible. 

The point when you develop a brand and its values are to expand those values to every part of your business. Hence, if one of your values is to put the customer first, that should reflect at all stages of the customer’s journey with your brand. 

Naturally, if you take great care to ensure that your consumers have a great time throughout their buyer journey, they’ll develop a healthy perception of your brand. This can be categorized as brand building. 

As a result, they might be much more likely to buy from your brand in the future. Who knows? They might even recommend your brand to their peers and friends. 

To build a successful brand, the first step is to always identify what values and beliefs you want to instill within it. That’ll help to develop your brand image. 

After you identify the values, it’s important to be consistent with those values throughout all stages of your business. Consistency is something that will make your brand memorable among consumers and leave a lasting impression on them. 

How to Build a Successful Brand? (Step-by-Step Guide) 

As we established earlier, some steps may vary slightly depending on the type of brand you want to have, your niche, as well as other factors.  

However, the steps we are about to provide below are fairly generic. They are actions that you will most likely have to perform in most instances when you are about to set up a brand. 

However, the point is that you carefully consider all of the aspects that we have provided below. 

Let’s dive into it: 

Step 1: Research and Define Your Target Audience 

Your brand identity and brand image will both be heavily influenced by who your target audience is. Your target audience or target market is something that will depend a lot on what type of business you want to run and what products and services you want to sell. 

It should go without saying that if you want to create a strong brand, you need to have a deep and thorough understanding of how your target market works. If you want to understand the dynamics of it, you should start with the audience or the consumers. 

To start off, you need to get a rough idea of what your target demographic would look like. While it’s true that you can have multiple audience segments that you can target, we recommend you start off with just one at this stage. 

Once you have a rough estimate of who your target audience is, you can begin to analyze their interests and behaviors both online as well as offline. 

Here are some ways through which you can do this: 

• Google the product you want to sell and have a look at some of your competitor’s listings. Check out the reviews and comments to see what consumers have to say. 
• Check out subreddits related to your product and analyze what people are talking about. This can be a great way to identify problems that consumers have. You can then adjust your product to ensure it solves those problems. 
• Talk to people within your target market and get a feel of what type of brands they prefer. 
• Check out the social media pages that people within your target audience follow. This can give you an indication of what type of “tone” you should go for within your marketing content. 
• Try shopping online for a product similar to yours to get a feel for how a potential customer of yours would browse. 

When you check out comments and messages from people in your target audience, it can help you identify many things that will help you out on your journey. For example: 

• You’ll get a feel for how your target audience talks and what type of language they tend to use. You can then employ that same tone within your marketing content to relate to them. 
• You can identify what problems they are currently facing. You can then aim to solve these problems through your product or service. 
• You can figure out what their browsing patterns are and what social media platforms and channels they use. This can help you make informed decisions on which platforms to use to conduct your digital marketing campaigns. 

Step 2: Develop Your “Tone” or Your “Brand Voice” 

This is the stage where you will first start to define brand identity. This is essential and it’s something that we highly recommend that you focus on before you actually come up with your brand’s name. 

We’ve seen countless occasions where people pick their brand name but then use language within their marketing content that does not suit it at all. 

You must develop your brand voice first so that it can dictate what your brand name will be like. 

This will ensure everything stays consistent across the board and you don’t confuse your audience. Remember that inconsistency within your brand identity will cause customers to forget about you extremely quickly. 

One of the first things you should work on at this stage is your brand positioning statement.

A positioning statement can be described as two or three sentences that help describe what your brand is all about and what its place within the market is. 

Your positioning statement should highlight the following things about your brand: 

• What product or service do you sell. 
• Who are your target customers? 
• What is your unique value proposition is. That means what’s something that your product or service can do that your competitors can’t. 

It’s something that you should come up with as soon as you define your audience. It’ll help establish your unique brand voice and also help you come up with a tagline. 

Your unique value proposition is something you will use to stand out amongst your competitors. Hence, it should be something that really does give you an edge over your competition. Once you define it, make it a consistent part of your brand’s messaging. 

After you develop the positioning statement, you must define your brand personality. This can range from what your brand story is and what type of language you want to use within your messaging. 

The type of language you use will play a big role in whether you can rope in customers or not. It will also determine whether you can keep existing customers loyal for a long time or not. 

Step 3: Come Up with a Brand Name

As we mentioned above, your brand’s name is not what defines it. Rather, it’s the brand personality, actions, reputation, and interactions you have with consumers that give meaning to your brand’s name. 

That being said, that does not mean you shouldn’t give it a lot of thought when you actually are coming up with a brand name. As a small business owner, it can be a pretty big commitment to come up with a brand name and stick to it. 

Hence, we highly recommend that you take your time. 

You’ll have some idea of how to build a brand name from the previous step where you just came up with your brand voice and personality. 

It goes without saying that your brand name should be something that is consistent with the brand voice, brand personality, and brand story you defined in the previous step. 

Some other tips to come up with a brand name that will stick are: 

• When you choose a company name, make sure that it does not sound similar to other competitors within your niche. 
• Think of the future when you come up with a recognizable brand name. Ensure that it’s something that cannot be easily ripped off or imitated. 
• If you intend to add further different products and/or services down the line, keep your brand name broad. This will ensure you don’t have to change it in the future once you add more products and/or services. 
• In most cases, your brand name will also be your domain name. Hence, be sure to check out domains to ensure the one you want is available. If it isn’t, you may have to think of another name. 
• Once you decide on a brand name, ask for opinions on it. Run it through a focus group of people whose opinions you trust. This will ensure the word doesn’t have any unintended meaning that you may not have thought of. 

Remember that your brand name is what your company will stand upon. It’s what you will use to build brand awareness and it’s an extremely important part of the brand-building process. 

Hence, do not rush through it. Think about all of the factors we’ve described above and ensure that you pick a name that will not lock you into a corner. 

Step 4: Write a Slogan 

At this stage, it would be a very good idea for you to come up with a slogan for your brand. A slogan is nice to have because it’s something that you can use within most, if not all, of your brand marketing. 

You can use it both for traditional marketing as well as online marketing. Remember that the slogan that you come up with needs to be consistent in tone and style with your brand personality; The one you defined back in step 2. 

The brand positioning statement you came up with in step 2 is also something you can refer back to. It’ll help you come up with a slogan. 

An ideal slogan should be short, memorable (or catchy), and should convey the ideas of your brand in a consistent tone. 

It’s also important to note that a slogan is definitely something that you can change in the future as you introduce new products and change your approach. It’s not as difficult to change your name. 

Just look at Pepsi which has gone through over 30 different slogans in the past few decades. 

Step 5: Define Your Visual Identity 

You might think this is the part where you develop the brand logo but we’re not there just yet. When you develop the look of your brand, your brand’s logo is something that should come right at the tail end of it. 

That’s because you don’t want the brand logo to dictate the look of all your marketing campaigns and content you will make in the future. Rather you want to choose a color scheme that works best for the content you have and then develop a logo that fits well with it. 

It’s a much less restrictive approach to developing your brand’s visual look. 

Not only will it help out in your marketing efforts because you’ll know exactly which colors to use but it will also come in handy when you create a website or online store for your brand. 

Here’s how to start: 

Choose the Primary and Secondary Colors 

Colors are something that you can really leverage to evoke the feeling that you want from your customers. Remember that when you want to sell to consumers, you have to evoke that emotional response to achieve success. 

Having the right look for your brand is something that can single-handedly convert a potential customer. 

Just like with everything else that we have talked about above, the colors you choose for your brand should also be consistent with your brand’s messaging. You may wonder: “How can colors come into conflict with the messaging of a brand?” 

While color psychology and the emotions different colors evoke in people is not an exact science, it still helps to think about these things. We highly recommend that you take your time and experiment with different color schemes before you decide on one. 

Try not to use too many different colors as that can confuse your customers. You want a maximum of 2 – 3 colors for your brand. Not more than that. 

This is because if you have too many colors associated with your brand, consumers will have trouble tying a singular color or two with it. As a result, your brand will not leave a lasting impression on them and they’ll forget about it very soon. 

It’s a good idea to take the opinions of a small focus group of people as well.  They may help you by describing what they feel once they look at your brand’s messaging coupled with the color scheme that you chose. 

In addition to the emotional response, you also have to keep technical issues in check. For example, you must think about what white text will look like against a background that has your brand’s colors. Will the white text be legible or not? 

If it won’t be legible, what can you do to solve this issue? Will you use some other secondary color that’s also a part of your brand’s look? 

Remember that these are all issues that you will most likely run into. Hence, it’s a good idea to address them at this stage so you don’t have any trouble once you’re in business. 

Choose the Fonts You Will Use

After you have chosen the primary and secondary colors, this is a good stage to define the fonts you will use for your messaging. 

Similar to how you chose the colors, it’s also a good idea to not use more than two fonts for your brand’s story, messaging, and overall content. If you have too many fonts, that can lead to customer confusion as well. Hence, try to stick to two. 

Please note that this does not include any font that you will use within your brand logo. 

Step 6: Design Your Brand Logo 

To start off, take note of all the different places where you would need to have your logo such as your website, your online store, social media page pictures, Youtube banners as well as physical products. 

You must ensure that it’s a logo that can sit in all of these places in a harmonious manner. It should not look out of place in any of the locations where you intend to place it. Hence, think about this when you’re designing it. 

It’s a good idea to have two versions of your logo. 

One that can be used in wider spaces and one that can still be legible when it’s used in smaller spaces, for example, Instagram avatars. 

This will give you a lot of freedom to experiment with and will ensure that consumers can clearly see what the logo of your brand is. Once they’ve familiarized themselves with the brand logo, they’ll know to associate it with your brand. 

Another important thing to ensure is that your logo is not too similar to any of your competitors or any other prominent brands for that matter. This will ensure you’re not confused with any other brand. 

Again, you must think about consistency when you build a brand logo here. 

The style and design of the logo should be consistent with the overall messaging, tone, and content of your brand. It’s essential that the logo falls in line with your brand identity as it’s definitely one of the main symbols through which you will be known. 

Obviously, the logo design should be inspired by the color palette that you chose for your new brand back in step 5. 

Step 7: Apply the Branding You Have Designed Across All Avenues of Your Business 

Now that you have designed and planned everything, it’s time for implementation. 

When you are consistent with the tone, content, and messaging in all aspects of your brand, it leaves an extremely memorable impression on the consumer. As a result, they are much more likely to interact with your brand in the future. 

To ensure your branding is consistent throughout your business, you need to take many factors into account. 

The most obvious one to think about are the marketing campaigns that you will compose. These could be both traditional as well as digital marketing campaigns. In both cases, the tone of your content should be aligned with your brand personality. 

If you intend to hire any brand ambassadors, make sure that they know your brand story and what type of tone you want to push with your consumers. This will ensure that all customers have a similar experience when they interact with your brand. 

You will rope the new customers in through familiarity by using relatable language and a similar tone to what they use. Secondly, you will retain existing customers by ensuring that they receive a similar high-quality experience every time they interact with your brand. 

When you create social media and email marketing campaigns, you can include your slogan as well as a small message regarding that specific campaign. Of course, the message needs to be in the same consistent tone that you’ve defined. 

You can also include a link to your online store or landing page that customers can use to further interact with your brand. This can sometimes be difficult to fit in due to strict character limits on many social media platforms. To get around this issue, you can use a URL shortener.

To shorten your link through Pixelfy, register yourself and log in.

Step 1: Once you log in, you can shorten any link you want through the URL shortener box at the top of the dashboard page. 

Step 2: Copy the link you want to shorten. This could be a link to your landing page or online store. Paste it into the URL shortener box as indicated in the screenshot below. 

Once pasted, click the “Shorten” button.

Step 3: You will receive the shortened link on the next page. You can copy and use this link within all of your digital marketing campaigns. 

Not only that but you can also come back to the dashboard later down the line to check out the performance of the shortened link as well.

Wrapping Things Up…

There are many different ways to build a brand but you must be aware of all the pitfalls to ensure you build one that can last. 

Market research is extremely important and we recommend all our readers to study their relevant niche thoroughly before they actually take any action. Remember that if you’re aware of all the pitfalls that you could run into, you’ll have a much easier time with brand building. 

If you have any more questions on how to build a brand or want to tell us more about your own brand, let us know in the comments below. 

Check out more information about Branding on our blog.