why branding is important, and here are the steps to brand building

Wherever and whenever you read this article, you are surrounded by countless brands. You choose the brands around you: you often know them because you trust them, think they are the best for you, or simply because you like them.

It’s fascinating, but everything has a brand: your product, service, and even you, even if you didn’t do anything for it. But how do you consciously build a brand? We will tell you crystal clear and understandable — without jargon and bullshit.

That’s why the brand is important.

Your brand will be strong and well-known if you go through the branding building process step by step, keeping in mind that people like well-known brands and that -

There is no other solution. You must build a brand so that people know and choose your service and product. But how do you get involved in brand building?

What does brand building mean?

You have a brand right now. Even if you haven’t taken a single step to make it happen. Your brand is now what your colleagues, partners, and business partners think of your reputation. You have a brand even if you don’t have a visual appearance yet, if you don’t have established communication if you didn’t consciously do anything to create one.

Brand building strategy— a longer process, but you will soon learn its steps — is nothing more than getting them to think about you and your products and what you want them to think.

For example, your products are delicious. Or that your products are healthy. Or that your shoes are extremely comfortable, or that your lawnmowers are durable. You can also associate a company with each marker.

To build your company, you need to build a brand. It’s not magic; conscious branding has the classic steps.

Conscious brand building

Conscious brand building is only easy, according to one-person brand builders. It is not. You have to pay attention to a lot of things.

The first step in conscious brand building is an answer to some questions you’ve already heard a thousand times. Here are the questions/tasks you have to answer: “think about how you are different from others, “tell them why they should choose you, what is the value of your brand,” and “articulate what advantages your brand has/will have.”

So far, this is pure emotion and psychology, and — although there are always those who think it’s not worth overthinking — you have to find the simplest, most logical answer possible.

Volvo is a teaching example of how to build a “safe car” brand consciously. For decades, it has continuously communicated that its cars are safe and that the most important value for them is: you. Volvo’s conscious branding and the brand message hit the mark because when most of us hear the brand name, it comes to mind that it is Swedish, sophisticated, elegant, and safe.

Building a brand seems easy, but it’s not.

That is why brand building is important.

Advice that comes out at the elbow: we call it when it is described for the thousandth time that you need to build a brand to establish your credibility. Or is brand building important to find and keep a loyal audience and customers? Or to help you stand out from an oversaturated market.

These are meaningless arguments. Don’t build a brand for that.

Build a brand so that your company and service are successful, as a well-built, strong brand guarantees this.

Look around you. Every object that surrounds you is a brand. And you didn’t choose that one by chance. Consider, for example, the Apple brand, which Simon Sinek says in one of his TED videos in his branding example: “Apple is just a computer manufacturer. There is nothing that fundamentally differentiates them from their competitors. Their competitors are just as capable of producing them.

This is branding, and this is exactly what you need: to be chosen. Here are the steps to get there.

Building a brand is not an easy task. Let us help you! Contact us today!

Branding steps, or how to build your brand

steps of brand building

The first step in building a strong brand is to define your target audience: you’ve heard this phrase countless times. Then they scored the “target audience” steps for you. We do more than that.

1: The first step in branding: is the target audience (but be careful with the buyer persona)

We will be burned at stake for what we say in the next sentence, but we will accept it.

To define your target audience, the key is the exclusion or relationship, not the already mentioned buyer persona, i.e., the ideal — but non-existent — ​​customer or group of customers. Of course, if you already have customer data from which you know exactly who and what they buy from you, you can build on them.

Even if you have a special product (for example, a cleaner for the ice dispenser of side-by-side refrigerators), or if your product or service must be purchased, you are a fire safety expert.

Otherwise, you’re just guessing and using tabloid psychology methods to do enough to define your buyer persona. Of course, you need a definable target audience because you will sell your product and service to them, but you have to choose it more rationally.

2: The second step of brand building: the message and mission of your future brand

You will need a brand message and a mission. Staying with the above example: if you sell electric radiators, your brand’s message could be that your radiator uses renewable energy and is, therefore, environmentally friendly. And the brand’s mission is to bring warmth to homes with the help of your electric radiators.

Every brand has a message, and every brand has a mission.

3: The third step of brand building: tell us what you are different about, why you are needed

One of the most difficult brand-building tasks is telling prospective customers why they need your service, why they should choose you, and why you are the solution.

We return to the electric radiator: at least 5–10 companies sell similar products. The question is, why should someone buy the radiator from you?

You need to find some competitive advantage: installing each radiator yourself. Or you can personally take it out and give further advice on the spot.

This is called USP.

Looking around, you can see great examples: one cafe, for example, asks for your name, writes it on the glass, and calls you by your name when it’s ready. A company that distributes cars gives every car a doormat embroidered with your name as a gift.

4: The fourth step of branding: a (visual) communication

Again we are writing heretical thoughts.

We do not dispute and do not argue against the fact that your company will need a unified brand image. For an (own) logo, business card, signature, or company paper. For a matching website and corporate email design. That’s a fact. But you don’t have to overcomplicate and overthink its importance.

You are a startup company or a startup, and you will grow to any size; you don’t need a 100-page Corporate Design book, and you don’t need to spend months thinking about which blue best expresses the fact that your radiator is cold and what red color the letter should be ( and what it looks like).

Adidas, Nike, Hitachi, and Audi are big brands with logos. You know them all. They are simple and look good on any surface. And that is your goal.

You will have to pay attention to communication: it is a great decision if all — company — communication is part of some set rules and framework. He can be humble and respectful. Or just relaxed, friendly, and informative. The style depends on your target audience, but you should avoid dissonance. The image, brand message, and communication must be consistent.

For example, we wrote this article so directly because we are a loose but dynamic company, one that knows to introduce your brand, but at the same time, we are flexible enough not to stick to things rigidly.

5: The fifth step of branding: your story

Every brand has a story worth sharing that makes it stand out from other brands and brings your (prospective) customers a little closer to you.

It’s also a story if you write — because it happened — that you were once out in Finland, where you liked this brand, and that’s why you’re selling this heater.

And it’s also a story if you tell me that you were very cold when you were a child because there was electricity but no wood or gas. And you don’t want to be cold anymore, and you don’t want others to be cold either, so you sell an extremely simple heater: this radiator, which provides heat wherever there is electricity.

Whatever your story is. Tell!

6: This is how you build a love brand

The pinnacle of branding is building a love brand. You can do this with the tools of classic branding, but in such a way that you do not focus on your brand but on the customer. You pay attention. You let her in on secrets. You bring him close to your brand.

You also have a brand of love: the perfume you’re thinking about now. The restaurant that comes to mind when you hear the word restaurant. The car that makes you think of the car.

Building a love brand is the pinnacle of branding.

6+1: Increasing brand awareness

Whatever brand you have, you need to introduce it to people. The goal is for them to hear about you, and to achieve this is one of the most difficult because this is exactly your goal for everyone.

Getting heard about you doesn’t depend on your logo. Not by telling you what makes you different. Not because of who your target audience is, and certainly not because of what your brand message is (although this is possible on some nights).

Increasing brand awareness is a conscious, step-by-step communication that has communication channels. Here are some.

Content marketing

We don’t want to learn the concept of content marketing, but the essence lies in the fact that you need to create a lot of valuable content about your brand. These contents must be placed in the right place, at the right time, on the right channels, and delivered to as many people as possible. Many people think that content marketing is always written text, but this is not a good view since you have to create a video for YouTube, a short video for TikTok, an image for Pinterest and Instagram, and text content for your blog.

SEO or search engine optimization

You’ve probably heard the term search engine optimization many times, and it’s almost certain that you see it as some nebulous magic, but it’s not. The point is to write and create (search engine-friendly) content for the keywords that your future customers will search for. The goal is to get as high as possible in the organic (i.e., unpaid) results for as many keywords as possible and to drive as many visitors as possible to your site for free.

Social media

You can increase the awareness of your brand on social media marketing platforms as well: communicate on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, or any other platform where your prospective customers can be present and hear about you. It is important to adapt your communication to the platform: you have to say the same message or something to say differently on Insta than on TikTok.

Email marketing

Email marketing increases brand awareness, but its purpose can also be sales and education (of course, there can be countless other reasons for a newsletter or series of newsletters). You must do the same as the companies from which you regularly receive exciting and valuable newsletters. First, you must convince as many potential customers as possible to subscribe to your newsletter. Then you have to send them newsletters with valuable, exciting content that is attractive to them.

Paid marketing

Paid marketing or google ads service is a complete “industry” as it includes all paid collaborations, paid appearances, and advertising that increase your brand awareness. The articles about you that you pay for (for PR articles or when you are wanted as an expert do not belong here because your appearance there will be free), your ads, social media ads, and your paid promotions: with the help of which you can quickly. Targeted knows your brand build, increase brand awareness.