It Starts With the Blank Page: Steps to Branding Your Business
When we are starting, we can very easily gloss over the idea of a brand. After all, we need to cover so many different aspects that we cannot learn them all. Branding your business is crucial, but it’s not an easy thing to get right.
We have to remember we have a solid purpose behind us but also organically develop the business. We can spend more time thinking that we need to earn money rather than focusing on the static components. So how can you brand a business effectively?
Focus on the Emblem
The logo or emblem is an icon to brand your business. Therefore, it must represent what your business is all about in the image and the purpose. This means that you need to think about how your iconography is presented. While we can look at branding through digital components, we must think beyond the digital and into the real world to get an edge. 3D logos, when done right, can have a significant impact, and this is not just to do with how it looks, but the material it is printed on too.
And this is something that, if you are running a business in the manufacturing realm, is easier to do. For example, if you look at https://universalengraving.com/product-pages/sheet-fed-dies/copper, you can see how the image of an intense copper look can help transform a business, such as a workshop, from a small company with limited resources to something that makes a big impact. Iconography is about what is front and center. Branding your company is about engaging that “wow factor.”
Determining Your Target Audience
The target audience is the foundation of any brand. To appeal, we have to be specific in our demographics. When we are marketing to a demographic of mothers, we have a stringent set of guidelines. This is where we consider the tone of voice in conjunction with the products.
Your target audience is a key factor that dictates your marketing strategy, the way you tell your story, and your brand’s visual identity, among other things. Even your product presentation is affected by your target audience. Many businesses often use custom packaging to appeal to different demographics. That’s because consumers from different demographics have preferences that their age group tends to share.
When you start to market to mothers, you can break it down into even more finite components, such as single mothers or mothers who work at home. Then, when we determine our particular target audience, we can ensure the brand message comes across. There’s plenty of resources on defining your target audience, but the guide https://www.marketingevolution.com/marketing-essentials/target-audience is a great reminder of the fundamentals.
Establishing the Brand Story
To establish a brand story, customers need to recognize who you are instant. When building a brand, you must go beyond the logo. A brand story is about appealing to people on a human level. And when people are buying from you, that emotion is crucial. In creating a brand story, we start to humanize our business and appeal to a customer to lure them in.
As you can see, branding your business is not just about the logo design or iconography in general, but it’s about the entire message. Because every single component has to work in tandem, this requires a significant amount of work upfront. The temptation to get the business out there always rides high, but before you play out of the starting gates, take a blank piece of paper and think for a while.
