5 Tips To Help Brand Your New Business Like A Pro

In 2021 branding can make or break your business, and if you’re the new kid on the block then you’re going to have to fight for your right to party. Jokes aside, there is an awful lot of digital noise online. If you hope to stand out and make a statement then ensuring awareness, visibility and consistency are absolutely crucial in maintaining your brand identity. If you’ve recently launched a new business, then branding will be your best and most valuable friend.

While you could centre your marketing around your product, service or organisation, you’ll find most effective strategies are customer-centric. Essentially, it’s all about your target audience. Loyalty to your brand can be achieved through effective branding. Customers know what they’re into and what they won’t like. More established businesses knot too, and once they’ve caught a customer, they know it’s unlikely that person will go elsewhere. Essentially branding is how you turn your visitors into regular customers who’ll continue coming back.

If you’re an up and coming business, you need to pull out all the stops. Get to know your target audience through and through and create a branding strategy that gets you seen and heard.

What is branding?

In a nutshell, branding is the process that gives meaning to your business or organisation. To create a brand is to portray a message and overall tone to customers, in particular your target audience. The objective of branding is to attract and retain the loyalty of your target audience. You’ll do so by delivering a product or service that is aligned with your brand promises and objectives.

In order to achieve effective and successful branding, visibility, awareness and consistency are key. Brand visibility simply means your business or organisation is seen, whereas brand awareness means you are instantly recognisable to your audience. Think Apple, Nike or any other big company that is recognisable from their logo and branding. Brand consistency refers to the visual aspect of your business, and simply means your branding is visually consistent. You can’t have brand awareness without consistency.

Mission statement

Every business, organisation and company should be built on trust. Trust is something you earn and by writing a clear and concise mission statement, you give both your employees and your target audience the chance to understand your business ethic, what you’re trying to do, and how you’re setting out to achieve it. Make it clear, easy to read and without any unnecessary jargon.

Brand guidelines

To ensure you have visibility, awareness and consistency, you should also start your branding journey by writing a series of guidelines. Your brand guidelines are a set of rules, regulations and steps your employees must take to ensure your branding is visually consistent across your marketing.

These guidelines are also crucial when it comes to portraying a tone of voice and message to your target audience. Your guidelines should cover everything and anything, from your logo and colour palette to your chosen typography and imagery. You can even state what line spacing you wish to use – don’t leave any details open to interpretation!

Target audience

Before you even start to think about the visual aesthetics of your brand, you must be clear about who your target market is. Claiming your audience is everyone will result in vague advertising that simply doesn’t work – even Google and Amazon had a target audience when they started out, and unless you are Google or Amazon you must identify your target audience. Get to know them through and through, from age and gender to what they need, where they shop and what they like.

No business or organisation can be all things to all people, but when you know who your product and/or service should be marketed to, you can create a branding strategy that connects with your target audience on an entirely different level.

Get to know your competition and find your niche

Getting to know your competition isn’t about copying or impersonating another business. Researching into the digital marketing strategy of other businesses helps brands understand where the niche in the market lies. Ask yourself why customers would go to your competitor? If you were a customer seeking out your product and/or service, how would you go about finding it? Once you’ve found your niche you can see things a little better from your customer’s perspective and create a unique selling point (USP). A USP can help your business with brand awareness and visibility.

Create a logo

Your company logo is much more than just a logo. It’s at the heart of your brand and it should be instantly recognisable whenever and wherever it appears. Hiring a professional creative with bespoke graphic design skills and talents will help immensely. They can take your idea and create something worthy of your business that fits with your brand guidelines. They can also ensure you have the right colours, sizes and formats for any media platform.

Branding with Priority Pixels

Your overall brand is essential to your business. It provides clarity, personality, tone, and style to everything your business says and does. From your logo on a business card to the words on your website, your brand should be there – and it should be consistent. Even your conversations with your customers should be branded.

Building a successful brand takes time and getting it right from the start will help you and your business in the long term. It can take you from ‘just another’ start-up to becoming a leader in the market who is liked, respected and trusted.

Experts in branding since 2016, Priority Pixels boasts a team of knowledgeable and experienced digital creatives with a wealth of expertise to get your business off the ground. We specialise in all aspects of digital marketing, from SEO and PPC to copywriting, web development and social media.

If you’re finding the whole process of branding overwhelming or simply would like a chat, then contact us today.