Entrepreneurial success can be attributed to a good branding strategy. Your brand is your identity and there are so many different aspects that need to go into it for it to be successful. Having a strong brand identity gives your brand personality, as it instantly tells customers who you are and what you’re all about. Without good branding, your entrepreneurial endeavour could be a flop.
Having a well thought out branding strategy can set you apart from competitors and create a lasting impression that resonates with your target audience. That’s why you must understand why branding is important for a brand, so you can then plan out a good branding strategy as an entrepreneur.
Entrepreneurs usually build a brand from scratch, so good branding is very important. That’s why we are exploring entrepreneurial success through the advanced world of branding.
Competitive Advantage
A strong brand design can set you apart from your competitors and create a competitive advantage. Creating an identity that resonates with a target audience and makes you unique from the competition can then allow you to further grow your business. It allows you to justify increasing prices for services and products, which can then boost profits.
An example of this is Starbucks. They have managed to establish themselves as the top brand for coffee through a well planned branding strategy. This has allowed them to boost their prices to a premium rate and customers are still willing to go there to pay for their coffee.
Trust and Credibility
As an entrepreneur, you should want to build trust and credibility with your customers to ensure that they keep returning for your products or services. Branding can help with this, as it can allow you to communicate a sense of reliability, professionalism and quality, which can be difficult to achieve without a good quality strategy. This can lead to better word of mouth, as customers who trust a business are more likely to tell their friends about how good it is.
This can be very important for entrepreneur businesses that ship products overseas. Customers need to be sure that a company on the opposite side of the world is reliable and trustworthy. Good branding can help with reassuring overseas customers that you are the right choice for what they are looking for.
Instantly Recognisable
Any business aims to be instantly recognisable by everyone across the world. Entrepreneurs need to start a good brand strategy early if they want to maximise the impact of it and become recognisable as soon as possible. The more people that know about your brand, the higher the chance that customer percentages would increase. This will be good for profit gains.
Having a distinct logo that is aesthetically pleasing and has good visual elements will help with making your entrepreneur brand more recognisable. Even a small glance at your brand logo can make a big difference in customers deciding if they like it or not, so making it appealing is very important. Hiring a digital marketing agency can help you with this process.
Attract Top Talent
The obvious impact of good branding is that it leaves a good impression on customers. However, it’s also good for recruitment purposes. Entrepreneurs should want to hire the best personnel to help with their business, so creating a good branding strategy can make your business shine which will make top talents want to join you.
Potential job candidates will research your brand online, so they will see your website, social media accounts and what the internet is saying about your business. The consistency across these platforms, as well as the tone and character you portray, can influence the best personnel to apply for the positions.
How to Build a Brand Identity
You can make your brand instantly recognisable and create a strong brand identity by using these 10 steps:
- Know your foundation: You need a clear understanding of your brand’s personality and what your goals are.
- Assess current identity: Doing this can help you to rethink your brand strategy and create a new identity.
- Audit the competition: You can compare your brand to each competitor to find out what they are doing better than you.
- Find your vision: Establishing your brand traits, visuals and feelings you want to involve will help with branding.
- Branding brief: Create a brief that details the pertinent info you need to keep your team on the same page.
- Design the logo: Think about creating a brand logo that is unique and can be instantly recognisable to customers.
- Choose colour palette: You need to outline your main colour, two primary colours and up to five complementary colours.
- Typography: Every visual element in your identity should contribute to a cohesive visual language.
- Additional element design: Experimenting with different types of content can help you with finding out what works and what doesn’t.
- Build brand guidelines: Creating your brand image is the easy part as you need to figure out how to successfully utilise the brand image.