Establishing and strengthening your brand is a great first step in growing your business. Branding really refers to anything that allows your customers to immediately recognize your business.
For example, the famous Starbucks siren logo is instantly recognizable even if the word “Starbucks” is not visual on a cup of coffee, you would automatically know where it came from. Putting focus and energy towards building your company’s brand will definitely help it abstain more success.
Branding usually includes things like a logo, company name, slogans, and even the specific advertising methods you use. But when it comes down to it branding really refers to how your potential customers perceive your company. Even if your business offers premium products and superb customer service, poor branding could cause you to lose out to your competitors.
The idea of strengthening your company’s brand can definitely seem like a daunting task however a strong strategy to go about it is by creating content.
Branded content alone will help your company build trust with its customers while also educating and perhaps even entertaining them. The following guide is a stellar way to start strengthening your brand in as little as seven steps.
Establish Your Business Goals
Before even approaching the question of how to brand your business you have to establish your business’s main goals.
Once these goals are established you can more easily develop a branding strategy that fully supports these goals. Your current business goals could be anything from focusing on better customer retention, or perhaps driving towards increased conversion rates.
Whatever these goals end up being, establishing them early on will help you measure success in the long run.
Know Your Audience
If you want to know how to brand your business, you must know who your audience is. Knowing who your potential customers are, what solutions they are looking for, and how they are looking for them are all incredibly important to know in order to cater content around this knowledge.
The more detailed your message is and the more directly you can speak to your customers, the better your conversion rate will be,
It can be helpful to develop a customer avatar persona to really narrow down what types of topics and content to create.
Stand Out From The Competition
Before diving into creating branded content, find ways that you can stand out from your competitors. Take the time to research your competitors and what they are doing. This will give you the upper hand when you start developing your very own branded content strategy.
A great example of this can be found on InsurA’s ‘About Us’ page. They cleverly call out directly to their potential customers how they stand out from their competitors and offer a premium service.
Create Your Own Style Guide
A branded style guide is essentially a standardized rulebook that specifies every aspect of the look and feel of your personal brand. It is a great internal resource that allows your brand to be communicated properly and consistently.
A branded style guide typically includes your brand’s color palette, logo, slogan, font styles, and language style. This will help your branding stay clear and consistent across all digital materials and marketing campaigns.
An established brand style can be seen on Boho- Magic’s website. Boho-Magic consistently uses branded logos, color schemes, and language that delivers a very fun and inviting feel to the overall customer experience.
Develop Branded Content
All branded content you produce should always stay consistent with your established brand style guide. Effective branded content can help you create and nurture leads while also building trust with your customer base.
Branded content can include ads, videos, landing pages, and even blog posts. The branded blog posts you create can highlight your brand while also providing customers with helpful and useful content. A perfect example of this level of blog content can be found in Abram’s post titled ‘How to Survive Retirement Without Running Out of Money’. This unique blog post offers helpful knowledge and solutions while also highlighting their brand.
Promote & Optimize Your Content
Creating beautifully crafted branded content is totally pointless if your customer never sees it. Your company website needs to have helpful content that explains the unique solutions that your company provides.
When you start producing branded content it’s valuable to ensure that the content is easy to find and that you have a way to promote your content.
There are countless ways to promote your content (email broadcasts, social media marketing, paid ads, etc.). The most important step is to actually promote it. You don’t necessarily need a large budget to promote your content however putting in the time and effort to market new content will definitely prove to be fruitful down the road.
