How your brand looks online is how people perceive you from the off. Therefore, to ensure positive first impressions, it is an element of your business that you need to get right. A business’s name, logo, colors, fonts and tone of voice are the key elements to its brand identity, and reputation. For a business owner starting out on that brand-building journey, it can be challenging to know what you want your end result to look like. Here are six simple steps to make this brand-building process as easy as possible for startups.
Step 1— Know your audience and competition
Before you do anything, you need to know what type of audience you will be targeting. Depending on your business’s product or services, having a clear understanding of who you want to communicate with is extremely important. When conducting research, it is useful to research your product or service and analyze the competitors that come up.
Also, look at the relevant social media accounts and pages your target audience follows and communicates with, and try to get a feel for how audiences interact. This specifically includes establishing your tone of voice and choice of language to really engage your audience.
Step 2 — Give your brand its own personality
Establishing relationships is extremely important, and studies have found that 86% of customers claim their experiences with business or brand are just as important as the actual product or service they purchase. Generally, your business personality is the human characteristics shown by your brand and as a rule, you want your brand’s personality to satisfy five areas; authenticity, memorability, value, trust-ability and authority.
Remember, your brand’s personality is different from your brand’s identity, and how you want your audience to perceive your brand is mainly through the way you communicate. Whether it be posting messages via social media channels, or using television advertisements, the way you communicate will determine the voice of your brand. Therefore it is important to get this right as early as possible.
Step 3 — Choosing the right business name
While your business's brand is so much more than the name, having a catchy, unique name helps enhance the memorability of your brand. Your business’s name is also one of the most significant commitments you have to make, as once signed on the dotted line, it will impact all other brand elements such as your logo, trademark legislation, domain, and website. Although it can be difficult to choose a name that doesn’t already exist, you want it to have meaning, be short, snappy, and of course, be memorable.”
Step 4 — Have a catchy slogan
A slogan is a great asset to have, as it can be used for a tagline in your social media bios, on business cards, or repeated on advertisements to imprint this line into your audiences’ imagination. A good slogan is short, catchy, and makes a strong impression to boost brand awareness. But if you don’t get it right the first time around, there’s no need to worry. Big brands such as Pepsi have had at least 30 slogans over the years.
There are numerous techniques to a slogan. You can simply describe your brand, for example, The World’s Most Sustainable Fashion Business, use rhyming words such as Beanz Meanz Heinz, or even use a metaphor like Red Bull gives you wings.
Step 5 — Choose your colors
The colors you choose can have a significant impact on how your audience will feel when they look at your brand. If your colors are bright and engaging, people are most likely to get the impression that your brand is fun and welcoming. Ideally, the colors of your brand should portray a message. If your colors are mainly green and blue, this could represent elements of nature and sustainability.
You also want to choose the right color combinations and think about how colors contrast with each other. Try to consider how white and black text would look over your color palette and how colored text might look over a white and black background.
Step 6 — Think fonts
You may not think audiences would notice the choice of font you have on your website. However, choosing specific fonts can help with readability and portray a tone of voice. It might help to think of a font as the accent a word is said in. For example, if you have a font such as Times New Roman or Arial, this could portray a formal tone of voice, whereas more quirky fonts such as Monsterrat or Comic Sas MS can portray a more laid back vibe, attracting a younger audience.
Step 7 — Design a killer logo
A brand's logo may be the first thing many business owners will have in mind. However, this is one of the last things you need to worry about, but that doesn't make it any less important. The logo will often result from the colors, fonts, straplines, and personality of the rest of your brand. It is crucial to create a brand with a logo that’s unique, identifiable, and scalable to work at all sizes, allowing it to cater to different platforms including mobile, internet, billboard, etc.
Remember to consider the different places your brand’s logo will appear, from your website, your Facebook page’s profile picture, YouTube channel banner, TikTok display picture, and more. It may be helpful to hire a graphic designer to help you produce a logo that is suited to different mediums. For creating the perfect logo, follow these Business Logo Tips from the experts.
JC Glancy is co-founder at business formation provider ZenBusiness.
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